‘Why be normal?’

Brazilian rockers Os Mutantes were poised to take over the world, but they collapsed under the weight of 1960s free love and drugs. Now they’re back. By Will Hodgkinson

Thursday May 18, 2006 – The Guardian

‘Why be normal when you can go where the nuts come from?’ … Os Mutantes

There is a rich lineage of great musicians who have been discovered long after their due. The Buena Vista Social Club took 40 years to find an audience outside Cuba. When the English singer Vashti Bunyan released her debut album in 1970, it was met with such deafening indifference that it took her 36 years to get round to recording a follow-up. Had Nick Drake known that his dismal-selling albums from the early 1970s would become cult classics, he might still be with us today.

But perhaps the most dramatic revival story belongs to the Brazilian psychedelic band Os Mutantes. Formed in 1965 by Arnaldo and Sergio Dias Baptista, teenage brothers from Sao Paulo, and Arnaldo’s girlfriend Rita Lee, Os Mutantes were Brazil’s most inventive and irreverent rock’n’roll group. The trio became the backing band for TropicÔø?lia, the avant-garde movement formed by the singers Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso in 1967, but in the mid-1970s the band fell apart – not least because the two brothers argued over, of all things, guitars. By the 1980s, Os Mutantes had become a footnote in Brazil’s history; outside Brazil, few got to hear of them at all.
“What has happened to Mutantes?” says Veloso, when I ask him about his old friends’ late-flowering international success. “Everyone has gone crazy over them! When Gil and I were in England in the 70s, we would play people Mutantes records and the reaction would always be the same, ‘It sounds like a Beatles rip-off.’ We knew they were much more than that, but nobody else in England did … until now.”

Two decades after the band fell apart, the Baptista brothers are back together, rehearsing at Sergio’s studio on the outskirts of Sao Paulo for next week’s Os Mutantes concert in London. It will be the first time Os Mutantes have ever performed outside Brazil, and the first time the brothers have shared a stage since 1975. After that, they will be travelling across the US for a tour that is already mostly sold out. The US singer Devendra Banhart, a substantial name himself, wrote to Mutantes and asked if he could be their roadie. (They made him a support act for the London show.)

“It’s been so great,” says Sergio Dias, a toothy, cheerful, fiftysomething rocker who looks rather like a Brazilian version of Paul McCartney. “We’ve been working hard, Arnaldo is sounding better than I’ve ever heard him, and we’re getting on so well. I asked God for a reconciliation with my brother because all of this bullshit between us had been going on for too long. And you know what? It happened!”

Sons of a poet father and a concert pianist mother, the Baptistas brought a deep musical knowledge and a literary grounding to a love of the Beatles that inspired them to form a band. The latter they shared with Rita Lee, the rebellious daugher of Italian-American immigrants. Together, they would perform Beatles songs with an orchestra on Brazilian TV, and it was here that they met the classical maestro Rogerio Duprat. He introduced them to the singer Gilberto Gil (now Brazil’s minister of culture), who made Os Mutantes part of the Tropicalia movement. When Gil and Veloso were jailed and then exiled to England by Brazil’s military dictatorship from 1969 to 1972, it was left to Os Mutantes to lead the country’s psychedelic revolution, providing the hippy underground with its own anthem, Ando Meio Desligado (I’m Feeling Spaced Out). But they collapsed under the weight of free love and drug use in the years that followed.

Rita Lee left in 1974 to become a solo artist of stadium-filling popularity and questionable artistic merit, while Arnaldo Baptista had mental breakdowns; his brother Sergio worked as a session guitarist in the US. The brothers fell out (Arnaldo said that it was because Sergio liked Fender guitars while he favoured Gibsons) and by the 1980s Os Mutantes were either forgotten, or thought of as Rita Lee’s old hippy band.

Why the revival? Mutantes became a hip name to drop after endorsements by Beck and Kurt Cobain in the early 1990s, but the cult only really got going after the 1999 release of Everything Is Possible!, a compilation put together by David Byrne on his label Luaka Bop. On the cover was a picture of three freaky teenagers joyously jumping in the air; the inner sleeve showed them dressed as aliens – and the music was equally intriguing. Ave, Lucifer was a tender, poetic ode to Satan while a cover of the Brazilian singer Jorge Ben’s O Minha Menina (My Girl) turned the samba rock of the original into a garage-punk classic through the use of a bizarre effects pedal powered by a sewing machine, built by Sergio and Arnaldo’s elder brother Claudio.

This inventiveness was at the heart of Os Mutantes’ creativity. Frustrated at the lack of decent musical equipment in 1960s Brazil, the band had no choice but to find ways of re-creating the backwards tape sounds they heard on the Beatles’ Tomorrow Never Knows (by aiming a can of bug spray at the microphone) and Jimi Hendrix’s wah-wah pedal (Claudio’s wooh-wooh, which made Sergio’s guitar sound as if it was going to be sick). Everything Is Possible! got the message out: while the Beatles and the Stones were making history, three teenagers from Brazil were fighting the twin forces of a military dictatorship and a lack of resources with surreal humour and ingenuity.

The fact that Rita Lee isn’t playing with the Baptista brothers is a sign that not everything is resolved. Lee and Arnaldo Baptista met in 1964, both aged 16, at a high-school battle of the bands in Sao Paulo. They became sweethearts and, with Sergio on board, Os Mutantes were born. After Rita Lee stole the keys to the wardrobe departments of the TV shows they were appearing on, Os Mutantes’ theatrical image was born, too. She would dress the band up as conquistadors for one appearance, witches for the next. “Everyone came to me for ideas,” says Lee. “Why be normal when you can go where the nuts come from?”

The good times were not to last. Sergio dates the beginning of the end to the time Arnaldo took off on a motorbike across South America in 1970, leaving Lee behind. He returned to marry her on December 30 1971, the day she turned 24. The marriage was over by the time she was 25.

“I didn’t leave. They chucked me out!” says Lee of her 1974 departure. Arnaldo, whose heavy LSD intake in 1971 was already affecting his mental health, remembers it differently. “Rita Lee put me in the madhouse.” Why? “Because she wanted to go to Europe. I went to the madhouse five or six times over the next 10 years, and I was somehow disconnected with the world and I wanted to get out. So I jumped.”

In 1982 Arnaldo attempted to escape from a psychiatric institution by jumping from a fifth-floor window. The fall put him in a coma for six weeks, but he emerged from it with his future wife Lucinha – a fan who had read about the fall in the press – by his side. Since then he has been making a slow recovery, living quietly in a small town in the state of Minas Gerais. He is philosophical about the forthcoming concert. “I am happy to be making music with my brother again. Maybe it doesn’t matter that Rita Lee isn’t doing it because we have this new girl now.” (She has a name, too: Lia Duncan.)

The London concert fulfils a long-gestating dream of the Baptista brothers to play in the land that inspired them in the first place, and Sergio has been digging out Claudio’s old contraptions to re-create the unique Mutantes sound. Until recently, the Baptistas were unaware of the cult that has been building up around their old band. “I didn’t even know that we were booked to do the concert,” says Sergio. “Nobody told me! The whole thing seemed to happen naturally, like a spontaneous combustion. At first I was pissed off. Now I think it’s great because it would never have happened if it had been left to Arnaldo and me. In fact, it’s some kind of a miracle”.

Ôø? Os Mutantes play the Barbican, London EC2, on Monday May 22. Box office: 020-7638 8891.

Philip Slater * 05.17.2006 * The Huffington Post

The selection of General Hayden to head the CIA is merely another step in the neo-con campaign to eliminate democratic constraints and give the president dictatorial powers. A general who enthusiastically endorses spying on American citizens, Hayden’s appointment is a giant step away from that old-fashioned idea of checks and balances. I believe a secret, military, governmental authority aimed at its own citizenry translates pretty well as Geheime Staats Polizei.

The long-term aim of the neo-cons, it seems, is to transform the United States into one of those Third World military dictatorships that we used to be so fond of setting up in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Since these have become less fashionable in the Third World, perhaps it’s a bit of nostalgia that leads the neo-cons to seek it at home.

These “backward” countries (1) had centralized militaristic authoritarian governments that kept close tabs on anyone who disagreed with their policies; (2) had a steep gap between rich and poor–with a small wealthy class and a huge underclass; (3) had a large proportion of their budget given over to the military establishment; (4) placed little emphasis on education, except for the very rich; (5) had poor human rights records.

Democracy is still alive in the United States, but it’s not because the neo-cons aren’t trying:

1. Executive authority has reached unprecedented levels under the Bush administration. Bush has authorized spying on millions of Americans and initiated warrantless wiretaps. He has refused to enforce any laws passed by Congress that he doesn’t agree with. He has made explicit his belief that anything he does or approves is automatically legal. He has declared himself above the law–both national and international. Secrecy has attained epic proportions–the Bush administration spends six billion dollars a year keeping information away from the people.

2. For thirty years, after the end of World war II, economic equality increased in the United States, but since 1980 the gap between rich and poor has ballooned. Gini coefficients–the most effective measure of economic inequality–are growing at an accelerating rate, after a brief pause in the late 1990s. Incomes have declined for the poorest 20% of Americans, but climbed steeply for the richest 5%. This at a time when the most prosperous nations in the world are also those with the greatest economic equality.

3. The Pentagon’s budget is higher than those of the 25 next highest nations combined. A hundred nations have military budgets smaller than what the Pentagon spends in a day. Fifty have budgets smaller than what the Pentagon spends in two hours. The cost of the Iraq war and its fallout (the long-term health costs from the widespread maiming of our troops, for example) is now estimated at two trillion dollars.

4. Twenty years ago the U.S. ranked first in the world in the percentage of its people who held a high school degree. Today it ranks tenth, and our position is rapidly declining. In 1970 more than half of the world’s science and engineering doctorates came from U.S. universities. By 2001 the European Union granted 40% more than we did. The puny salaries we pay most of our teachers helps explain why the American educational system ranks at the bottom of industrialized societies. Money spent on teacher salaries is the single best index of a nation’s future economic health.

5. Since 9/11 and the passage of the ill-named Patriot Act, hundreds of individuals have been imprisoned for years without a trial, without being charged with any offense, and without access to a lawyer. These are the kinds of abuses that helped trigger our own revolt against Britain, and to prevent which the Bill of Rights was passed.

Decaying institutions are characterized by short-term thinking. They sacrifice future assets to maintain present dominance. The United States is increasingly handicapped by its enormous investment in military superiority at a time when military might is becoming less and less relevant to a nation’s strength. Bush’s huge deficits are creating a situation in which our government will soon become a wholly-owned subsidiary of East Asia. Subordinating education and economic health to military supremacy is suicidal in today’s world. The administration’s militarism, its authoritarianism, its mistrust of its own citizens, its reluctance to join other nations in tackling international problems, its inability to tolerate dissent or criticism of its policies–these are signs of the mental sclerosis that has always heralded the decline of great nations.

Come to “Thursday before Black Light Folk Festival West”

Featuring performances and movement exercises
from the New Energy Encounter Group, Jackie-O Motherfucker, and Carla Bozulich who’s playing with a bunch of other folks.

NEEG 8pm
CB 9pm
JOMF 10pm
Thursday May 18
Breathing Space
1307 Union (at Pico)
Los Angeles

Army: HBO documentary could trigger stress disorder
By Barbara Starr
<a href="CNN Monday, May 15, 2006; Posted: 2:10 p.m. EDT (18:10 GMT)"

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The Army surgeon general is warning that the HBO documentary “Baghdad ER” is so graphic that military personnel watching it could experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

In a memo dated May 9 and obtained by CNN, Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley said the film “shows the ravages and anguish of war.”

“Those who view this documentary may experience many emotions,” he said in the memo. “If they have been stationed in Iraq, they may re-experience some symptoms of post-traumatic stress, such as flashbacks or nightmares.” (Watch what made a bloodied soldier in Baghdad plead for his life –3:33)

HBO is releasing the documentary on the operation of the 86th Combat Support Hospital in Ibn Sina, Iraq.

The film will premiere Monday at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington as well as on 22 Army posts.

It airs Sunday on HBO — a division of Time Warner, the parent company of CNN — and will replay on Memorial Day.

Kiley, who has watched the film with senior Army officials, said it is “an extremely graphic and moving look at how we care for severely wounded service members.”

“This film will have a strong impact on viewers and may cause anxiety for some soldiers and family members.”

He noted that “some may have strong reactions to the medical procedures such as the amputation of a limb.”

Kiley said military medical treatment facilities should be ready to help troops and family members affected by the film. He suggested that mental health facilities should extend their treatment hours and reach out to the troops proactively.

Army officials said they fully support the film and note the Army gave the filmmakers access to the hospital. But privately they said it is so graphic that senior leaders do not want to turn Monday’s premiere in Washington into a social occasion so many will not be attending, preferring to let the limelight fall on the military personnel.

After screening the film, officials said they are aware that some may use it to make an anti-war message.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12777489/

Report: Suicidal troops sent into combat
U.S. military violated own rules on mentally ill troops, newspaper finds

The Associated Press
Updated: 10:04 p.m. ET May 13, 2006

HARTFORD, Conn. – U.S. military troops with severe psychological problems have been sent to Iraq or kept in combat, even when superiors have been aware of signs of mental illness, a newspaper reported for Sunday editions.

The Hartford Courant, citing records obtained under the federal Freedom of Information Act and more than 100 interviews of families and military personnel, reported numerous cases in which the military failed to follow its own regulations in screening, treating and evacuating mentally unfit troops from Iraq.

In 1997, Congress ordered the military to assess the mental health of all deploying troops. The newspaper, citing Pentagon statistics, said fewer than 1 in 300 service members were referred to a mental health professional before shipping out for Iraq as of October 2005.

Twenty-two U.S. troops committed suicide in Iraq last year, accounting for nearly one in five of all non-combat deaths and was the highest suicide rate since the war started, the newspaper said.

Some service members who committed suicide in 2004 and 2005 were kept on duty despite clear signs of mental distress, sometimes after being prescribed antidepressants with little or no mental health counseling or monitoring. Those findings conflict with regulations adopted last year by the Army that caution against the use of antidepressants for ìextended deployments.î

ìI canít imagine something more irresponsible than putting a soldier suffering from stress on (antidepressants), when you know these drugs can cause people to become suicidal and homicidal,î said Vera Sharav, president of the Alliance for Human Research Protection. ìYouíre creating chemically activated time bombs.î

Although Defense Department standards for enlistment disqualify recruits who suffer ìpersistent post-traumatic symptoms,î the military also is redeploying service members to Iraq who fit that criteria, the newspaper said.

ìIím concerned that people who are symptomatic are being sent back. That has not happened before in our country,î said Dr. Arthur S. Blank, Jr., a Yale-trained psychiatrist who helped to get post-traumatic stress disorder recognized as a diagnosis after the Vietnam War.

The Armyís top mental health expert, Col. Elspeth Ritchie, acknowledged that some deployment practices, such as sending service members diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome back into combat, have been driven in part by a troop shortage.

ìThe challenge for us … is that the Army has a mission to fight. And, as you know, recruiting has been a challenge,î she said. ìAnd so we have to weigh the needs of the Army, the needs of the mission, with the soldiersí personal needs.î

Ritchie insisted the military works hard to prevent suicides, but is a challenge because every soldier has access to a weapon.

Commanders, not medical professionals, have final say over whether a troubled soldier is retained in the war zone. Ritchie and other military officials said they believe most commanders are alert to mental health problems and are open to referring troubled soldiers for treatment.

ìYour average commander doesnít want to deal with a whacked-out soldier. But on the other hand, he doesnít want to send a message to his troops that if you act up, heís willing to send you home,î said Maj. Andrew Efaw, a judge advocate general officer in the Army Reserves who handled trial defense for soldiers in northern Iraq last year.

(Above: Pearson in Dublin, last week…)

from Bella Union…

Over the last year or so we’ve been inundated with questions about Lift to Experience: have they definitely split up, will there be a second album, has Josh given up Texas and music altogether??? The questions go on and on. As much as we wanted to answer them the truth is that we were often pretty much as in the dark as you were…until very recently.

At the current time Lift to Experience are no longer and sadly there seems to be no possibility of them getting back together. Perhaps there is just too much water under the bridge.

However after a couple of years in the wilderness, finally Josh Pearson emerged from the ashes of Lift to Experience, left all that baggage behind him and started writing again after a conversation with label boss and former Cocteau Simon Raymonde. Josh was really struggling to write a second Lift album and was feeling the pressure to write something that rivalled their landmark debut Ôø?The Texas Jeruslam CrossroadsÔø?. Simon told him to empty his mind of the masterplan for a bit and to just write something quickly, as a challenge. Josh responded by taking it upon himself to write a song a day for a week; he ended up writing easily more than seven songs. Thirteen in fact.

He is now back in the UK playing a string of shows on his own and with label mates Bikini Atoll and The Archie Bronson Outfit.

When Josh came over to do these shows he was not sure he was doing the right thing and was anxious about how people would respond to his solo project.
He needn’t have worried, the shows have been a resounding success and Josh is once again back to doing what he does best.

The following is an excerpt from a recent article by Stevie Chick and we hope it fills in some of the blanks. Sorry to those who’ve waited so long for answers to their questions and thanks so much for all your support.

——————————————————————————

Josh T Pearson played guitar, sang, wrote music, because it was only then that he felt the fire of God within him once again, the presence that shadowed him throughout his childhood, until his 19th birthday. The sensation of absolute belief that cradled his father, a lay preacher, so tightly he’d have his family starve, if only to prove his solemn belief that his God would ultimately provide.

Josh pieced together his opus, The Texas Jerusalem Crossroads, in solitude, every word, note, wash of feedback carefully choreographed. He gathered two dear friends, passionately gifted musicians, and laid his sacred communication down on tape. They called themselves Lift To Experience, and took to the road, every night discovering new truths within their symphonic sprawl.

The feedback rose, fierce and tapering like a flame, Josh’s voice keening, close to holy, picking out an apocalyptic parable cross-pollinating Biblical and Old West mythologies. Gentle melodies shimmered in the air, the Leslie-speaker coating the guitar with a heat-haze, the cymbals struck so hard they sprayed the drummer’s own blood and sweat. The volume soaring, until it infested you, until it felt like you might suffocate without it, gospel ringing in every gap, a call for salvation, a call to arms. The Leslie spontaneously bursting aflame, as French boys crooned sweetly, we will be free, we will be free.

With personal tragedy in the band, bass player Josh “Bear” Browning’s wife dying on the morning they touched down in Ireland for a tour in 2003, drummer Andy Young being kicked out by Pearson shortly after, Josh soon retreated from the world, from his music, from his hometown of Denton, TX. Rumours began to circulate amongst Lift’s dedicated fandom, of his exile to a shack in the desert somewhere, of his mental state, of the music within him yet captured on tape. Of whether he’d ever break his silence out there, amidst the sands and the winds, and try to channel that spirit one last time.

All that answered them was more silence, their questions amplified in the absence of a reply. Silence, save the solemn, fervent hum of an idling amplifier, its dust-laden husk cooling. The ghost within its heart dormant, but not dead.

Under the ‘X’ in Texas is where you’ll find me, it’s where I’ll be / Singing out the songs warning the world of the perils to come

These forthcoming solo shows derived from a concept Simon Raymonde, former Cocteau Twin and nurturing owner of Bella Union, Lift’s record label, suggested to Josh as he was struggling with writing a second Lift album. Empty your mind of your masterplan for a bit, write something quickly, as a challenge. Josh responded by taking it upon himself to write a song a day for a week the project; he ended up writing easily more than seven songs. 13 in fact.

“Francis Ford Coppola never meant to make the Godfather, he actually didn’t want to,” Josh says. “He thought the source material beneath him, but his career was suffering. He took a trashy novel and made a masterpiece out of it, somehow, and it gave him the power to make the movies he wanted to. I’ve been thinking a lot about that compromise, recently. I’m still not sure that compromise is a good thing, no matter the result.”

HeÔø?d been thinking a lot about film, about scoring soundtracks. Ôø?But only if the music has as much importance as the pictures,Ôø? he averred. He noted the emotional impact of music and movies, when theyÔø?re perfectly melded; when, after seeing the movie, you canÔø?t exactly describe the sounds or the images themselves, but that the movieÔø?s emotional impact is powerful. Ôø?Like when you meet someone,Ôø? he continued, Ôø?You canÔø?t explain, in words, why they mean so much to you, but their resonance, their impact upon you, is vivid.Ôø?

Demons take flight in the dark of the Texan night

He said that the closest heÔø?d got to making music lately was attending informal guitar circles in the small town where he was staying, where locals toting battered acoustics and washboard basses would sit and play Hank Williams tunes. He hadnÔø?t played at these circles yet; he preferred to sit in and simply reel at the emotional impact held by the words to Ôø?Your CheatinÔø? HeartÔø?.

However, that is all about to change. He is currently recording TWO albums, one of covers on a theme of Loneliness and secondly the solo album of his own songs.

We sing these songs because we have to, not because we want to.

The story of his life, of his music, is compelling, and near-fantastical. His myth has all of the ingredients, the portent, and the poetry of any of rockÔø?nÔø?rollÔø?s legends, the mysterious singer-songwriter with the fiery preacher father, his complex relationship with God, the seething epic visions, so finely realised. But the way in which Josh is conscious of his own mythology, his persona Ôø? he couldnÔø?t not be, given some of his pronouncements Ôø?and his enduring blindness to what Lift To Experience have wrought, is a perplexing and perhaps insoluble riddle. Just as his alter-ego in The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads couldnÔø?t seem to decide whether he were Jesus or John Wayne.

He has returned to his unfinished symphonies, and will paint his legend in sound, not pregnant silence. For his demons to take flight, in this darkest of Texan nights.

Adapted from an article by Stevie Chick.