Os Mutantes

It is extremely hot and humid (currently 97 F by heat index), and I haven't yet convinced D to go with me (though I bought her a ticket anyway), but am looking forward to seeing

Os Mutantes tonight

From The Trib, by way of the Houston Chronicle:

Chron.com | After 40 years, Brazil's Os Mutantes is on the brink


After 40 years, Brazil's Os Mutantes is on the brink- By GREG KOT
It took 40 years, but the legendary Brazilian psychedelic rock band Os Mutantes is touring North America for the first time.

The band's headlining appearance Sunday at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago, one of only six shows in the U.S., promises to go more smoothly than Mutantes' first outdoor shows in Brazil.
In the '60s, the band was in the vanguard of the Tropicalia movement that revolutionized Brazilian music and culture. Os Mutantes, the youngest and most brazen of the new rebels, trafficked in outrage.

and from the Times

Os Mutantes - Review - Music - New York Times


Forty years after Os Mutantes got started in Brazil, this band played its first American concert on Friday night at Webster Hall. And for the length of its set, the psychedelic 1960’s were back: the 1960’s of playful ambitions, blithe eclecticism, virtuoso silliness and lighthearted but genuine rebellion.

Os Mutantes (the Mutants) were at the center of the late-60’s tropicalia movement, a particularly Brazilian mixture of intellectual ferment, pop novelty-seeking and try-anything experimentalism. There was defiance in it as well as joy; it emerged while Brazil was under an increasingly repressive military dictatorship.

Two of the movement’s great songwriters, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, were sent into exile; they wrote one of Os Mutantes’ best-known songs, “Panis et Circenses” (Latin for “Bread and Circuses,” alluding to the Roman emperor Nero). Tropicalia was gleefully modernistic, marveling (with many layers of irony) at the effects of mass media and global interchange. Political points were usually made obliquely, not through direct protest but by laughing at restrictions.

and from Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone : Tropicalia Legends Os Mutantes Reunite for U.S. Shows


On July 21st, Brazilian psychedelic legends Os Mutantes, once known for their outrageous multimedia spectacles, will reunite for their first tour since 1973. The shows will be the first ever in the U.S. for the group.
“Anyone calling themselves the Mutants feels like our brothers,” says Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne, who will share the stage with the Mutantes during their July 23rd performance at the Hollywood Bowl.

Tags: Chicago, /music