Antonio Carlos E Jocafi – Hipnose
Antonio Carlos E Jocafi – Quem Vem La
Antonio Carlos E Jocafi – Deus O Salve
I’m getting ready to go into my grading bunker here at the end of the semester at CSULB and won’t be emerging until this time next week. There’s no radio show this week, due to a fundraising special, and I’ll have to postpone the planned review of Numero’s excellent Syl Johnson box set til next week (trust me, it’s fantastic and will make every single Soul aficionado very happy this holiday season). I did want to make sure to Dig Deep this week, especially as I begin to think about the best records I tracked down in 2010 (this month’s all vinyl radio show on Dec. 26th will focus on tracks from the best LPs that made it into my collection this year).
This is a record that I got on Ebay around Christmas time last year, but it didn’t arrive until Mid-January. I actually used to own a slightly beat up Brazilian copy of this record, the first from musical partners Antonio Carlos & Jocafi, that had a more psychedelic cover (I seem to recall giving it to Cool Chris at Groove Merchant at the end of a particularly advantageous trade). For some reason when this same record was released in Argentina, it was titled “Voce Abusou” instead of “Mudei De Ideia” (perhaps because “Voce” was the hit), but all the tracks appear to be exactly the same between the two versions.
Antonio Carlos e Jocafi straddle many borders on this LP, moving from slightly psychedelic sounds influenced by the Tropicalia movement to Brazialian Soul and Samba to even a bit of Brazil’s (then recent) Bossa nova past, occassionally in the same track. Most people know this record because of “Kabaluere,” which has been on a few comps and is admittedly a great slice of Brazilian Soul/Funk, but of the really solid tracks on this record that one may actually be my least favorite. I had a much more difficult time deciding which 3 of the 5 or 6 songs I like more than “Kabaluere” I’d decide to post here.
Top honors go to “Hipnose” which remains one of my favorite Brazilian tracks of all time, just for the way it opens. I could listen to that intro all day long, with all those percussive elements coming together one by one. I’m frankly surprised that no one has found a way to sample that intro or other parts of this track, perhaps it’s just a little too psychedelic in its funky. That bit of psych added to the funk and Brazilian elements is precisely why I dig this song so much.
I’ve also chosen to post up “Quem Vem La” just because I love how rockin’ that unaccompanied electric guitar is at the beginning (I think it’s courtesy of Lanny Gordin, who also played guitar with Gal Costa, but don’t quote me on that). I’ve heard this track probably 40 times, and in the context of the album (coming after a more traditional mid tempo samba track like “Descato”) it still surprises me a little every listen. Just as surprising is the upbeat workout from the full band that follows after those screaming lines.
As a final track for this post, I just had to flip a coin (or maybe several coins). I could have chosen the samba fueled “Morte Do Amor” the sublime “Voce Abusou” or “Mudei De Ideia” the funky “Se Quiser Valer” or the slightly wacked out country/vaudeville act of “Nord West”. As luck would have it, “Deus O Salve” ended up being the third track, it’s basically a straight funk workout, with a nice tight rhythm and punchy horns, that could have easily found its way onto a Toni Tornado record, and works as a nice closer here. I really don’t see this one too often stateside (basically the case with all the top shelf material from Brazil, thus my foray into Ebaylandia), but I did see a copy at a local record swap back in August. Suffice to say, if you see it, don’t hesitate with this one, you will not be disappointed.
Cheers,
Michael
