Selling Brazilian psych

Anyone whose done some record buying/swaping with overseas dealers will know that genre classifications and music descriptions are often subjective, varying greatly country to country. One person's "wild psychedelic freak out" is another person's AM radio pap.
Knowing how Brazilian sellers have an unfortunate tendency to describe well-groomed jovem guarda bands in matching suits la-la-la-ing through cheesy covers of pop ditties by the Turtles and the Fifth Dimension as "hard psych," the recent appearance of an archival collection called Brazilian Guitar Fuzz Bananas (Tropicalia In Furs) left me more leery than elated. The fact that it was compiled from seven-inch singles dug up by Joel "Stones" Olveira, the kooky 36 year-old Brazilian-born New York-based proprietor of the tiny East Village record shop Tropicalia In Furs only heightened my concerns. A quick glance at the track listing of Olveira's collection subtitled "Tropicalia Psychedelic Masterpieces 1967-1976"– which oddly excluded everything cut by Tropicalia titans Os Mutantes, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa or produced by the movement's musical mentor Rogerio Duprat – wasn't terribly comforting,  especially after noting that the majority of artists featured were not at all the politically subversive long-hair types but instead, simply turtleneck 'n' medallion pop star wannabes destined for oblivion.

On the upside, none of the 16 tracks on Brazilian Guitar Fuzz Bananas have appeared on any of the numerous Brazilian music comps out there typically focusing on bossa jazz, samba soul and disco funk. On the downside however, collector-turned-compiler Olveira appears to have made the rookie mistake of placing a premium on rarity over musical quality when selecting tracks. It may have impressed his well-heeled shop clientele like Elijah "Frodo" Wood (who makes a brief cameo in the 15-minute video documentary included on the enhanced CD version) but it will ultimately cost him sales. And make no mistake, the seven-inch source material by artists like Loyce e Os Gnomes, Piry, Marisa Rossi, Celio Balona, Serguei, Com Os Falcoes Reais, Mac Rybell and the rest is definitely obscure, and probably largely unknown to many accumulators of vintage Brazilian vinyl. You won't find any of these records listed in your Hans Pokora guide so don't even bother looking.
Brazil's music consumers were largely LP-oriented during the late 60s and early 70s so the seven-inch format was primarily used by labels as a cost-effective test-marketing tool sent to radio station music directors and DJs to gauge whether an LP was worth releasing for a particular artist. The one-off pressing runs for the so-called "compactos" tended to be miniscule which means relatively few seven-inch records made it into general circulation. Consequently, some of the most experimental and exciting recordings cut in Brazil during the period never appeared on LP and have thus remained largely unknown right up until today.
The few vintage sevens which have appeared on the market in recent years were likely purchased in the 90s for resale by enterprising record dealers from Japan, the UK and Europe who strip-mined radio station archives of all the worthwhile vinyl that lay untouched since 80s digital changeover – the stuff which hadn't already been consigned to landfill. Some of those salvaged discs fell into the hands of Olveira in São Paolo who put them to work for him on Brazilian Guitar Fuzz Bananas.

While there are many shortcomings to the 46 minute hodge-podge – artist images are just as scarce as biographical and discographical information – there are a number of pleasant surprises. One is the trippy Lindo Sonho Delirante (LSD geddit?) by Paraguayan transplant Fábio, a hard-belting sidekick of samba soulman Tim Maia whose freakishly funky Racional recordings are crazier than anything here incidentally. The other killer discovery is the fuzz-enriched Vou Sair Do Cativeiro (Escape From Captivity) by Ton & Sergio which shines bright amongst the ho-hum Hendrix tributes and boring Lennon & McCartney covers. Regrettably Olveira can offer no more relevant info about the mystery duo or their backing musicians than the simple fact that the record was issued by Polydor in 1971. It's sort of understandable since Olveira is a DJ/dealer not a historian and he was probably too busy helping design the snazzy accompanying 3D poster (right) to ask somebody, let alone conduct some serious investigative research.
The rest of the material has moments of greatness but suffers from varying degrees of wackness. It's not padded out with mediocre junk because better seven-inch recordings don't exist – there are lots of other dope singles tracks that could've been used which makes me wonder if Olveira is keeping the really good stuff to himself or maybe just planning a second volume.
In any case, the door has been left wide open for someone else to step up with an all killer, no filler collection of primo Brazilian psych to eclipse this well-intended but ultimately disappointing first attempt.

 Brazilian Guitar Fuzz Bananas promo clip




 A Day At Tropicalia In Furs