At first impressions it all began a little like Jesus Christ Superstar, the band playing numbers that seem to be more fitting to punctuating a kind of ‘Os Mutantes: The Musical’. Perhaps it is because our familiarity with psychedelia and the attire of the sixities are often associated with parody or associated more cynically with the failed experiment of the 60’s utopia. At its best however Os Mutantes at the Forum was as contagious, experimental and politically current as it was in 1968.
The new Os Mutantes with Sergio Diaz as the front man and the only remaining original member was not going settle with being merely an Os Mutantes tribute band. The new material carries the touch of recent collaborator Tom Ze, who has also made a come back in the last few years. Experiencing the Os Mutantes live show was like witnessing your creatively inspiring uncle – sometimes a caricature, in that sixties fashion capes kind of way, telling truths you and your friends may not want to hear.
The audience experienced a little taste of the sardonic slap in the face that so firmly carved Os Mutantes their own space in Brazilian pop music. El Justiciero (The Avenger) is a dramatic Portuguese/Spanish tune which Diaz adapted to reference “the red-head†Julia Gillard and criticized her for sucking up to the USA, adding what was to an Australian audience an unexpected political edge. Next Diaz invited us to sing one of our most internationally well known Australian anthems, Olivia Newton John’s Let’s Get Physical while changing the the lyrics on us to “let’s get cynical†at the very last minute, the audience complying in ambivalence.
An encore of undoubtably one of the best known Tropicalia anthems Bat Macumba got the Forum shaking. Melbourne’s best looking-energetic-well dressed-multicultural crew of youngsters were invited up on stage with the band to dance. It was here that the band brought it home. We were indeed experiencing authentic and tropically flavoured psychedelia including epic prog rock guitar solos, but not without a sense that we were living in a present where we too can find our own way to challenge and make things happen.
Other Os Mutantes hits Minha Menina, Panis Et Circenses and Ando Meio Desligado; a melange of psych rock, pop, samba, folk and concrete poetry were a testament of how timeless and unique this music is, both in its recorded and live forms. Demonstrating the experimentation that has made Os Mutantes so important to contemporary artists four decades on.
Lucreccia Quintanilla
