You may be too young to remember this, but the 60s were a pretty far-out time. Maybe it was the crazy colours, maybe it was the social upheaval, or maybe it was the acid, acid, acid, but people tried new things like it was going out of style. A lot of what they tried didn't work, and disappeared quickly - pet rocks, Maoism, and The 1910 Fruitgum Company - but some stuff worked.Os Mutantes, a Brazilian band whose sound combines pop, rock, prog and traditional Brazilian music, worked. They formed in 1966 as the trio of Arnaldo Baptista (bass, keyboard, vocals), Sergio Dias (guitar, vocals) and Rita Lee (vocals), but disbanded in the late 70s. Now, after quietly influencing most of the musicians you like, they've reunited for a new album and a North American tour, bringing them to the Pop Montreal Festival tomorrow (October 3rd). We talked withSergio Diasabout it.There's a lot of anticipation for this concert. There's a strong political background and a lot of legends surrounding the whole Topicalia movement. Back in the 60s, when the American counterculture was protesting a distant war, Brazil was under a military dictatorship. How'd that influence your drive to make music?Honestly, I know it sounds corny, but I think that was meant to be. You guys here in North America, you had flower power, Vietnam, draft dodgers, and the assassination of Kennedy. I think America suffered and that triggered trouble all across South America… Basically, I think the most important thing is to see what resulted from that craziness in terms of culture, because the first thing the governmental wanted to do was to erase the culture and identity of the citizens. We were very young… When you're a kid, you know, you like everything! You immediately absorb and get influenced by all things that reach you. I remember watching movies with Canadian Mounties and I thought "I want to be that!" I wanted to be like the Beatles or like Jimi Hendrix or anyone else I saw on TV. As kids, we were never really infected by the military, political stuff - they never got our souls. So we were still free, and we ended up fighting back the way we knew how - with music. And when the censors came and demanded we change the words of our songs, we just took all the protest and put it into the music instead. We mutilated the song, put noise on top of it, so that everybody knew it was censored. Then in concert we'd just play the song with the normal lyrics. When we played classic songs, we distorted them too. Many times we were under threat of being abducted by the military, and several times the guys told us "okay, you have to leave the stage or there's going to be trouble," or some other pretext for stopping a show. But it was kind of an unspoken game of cat and mouse - we stayed free because we were clean, lucky, and young. It wouldn't be a good idea for them to grab a 15 year old and say that he's a threat to the country, you know.Speaking of being clean, what place do drugs have in your creative process? Have they always been a part?You know, the first record we did, we were completely straight. There were no drugs in Brazil at this time. We didn't even know that any of this existed. I think for the first five records, which I think is the most powerful stuff we did, we were clean as a whistle! And it's a great thing. I think it was around 1970 when we started to do acid and smoke. Today there is no drug involvement - we had our share of that already. Drug use used to be considered part of the human experiment - a collective sort of thing, a communion between people. I think that today, drug use is something very individualistic - something you do to carve out your corner of the universe. At some point it changed to that, and as long as it's this private thing, it prevents us from moving towards the universal…Was that what prompted this reunion tour? This sort of connecting to people?The fact that we're back now, it is such a positive thing. Because when we came back for the first show, so many people tried to bring us together, but always with the wrong idea. Record company schemes - they never really took it seriously. So when we came to Barbican we said okay, this was the right time. We decided to go, and we played after 3 months of rehearsals. In a month, before even playing one note, without a manager, without a record company, without any of the structure that normally surrounds a band, we had our tour in America booked in the most prominent places here. We were opening for Flaming Lips in the Hollywood Bowl, we played the Webster Hall, Fillmore - which was a dream for me, I was there when I was 17 - it's an amazing thing to see this happen. Yesterday was really important to us, we played Omaha. Heart of the country, heart of America. I can understand playing in New York, Chicago or Miami. But Omaha, my god, it is like…Exactly the kind of place Obama was talking about when he talked about people going for bibles and guns?What I meant is that it's so remote that, for somebody be able to understand us or the fact that we're coming from so far away, in a place so far from our context, it's incredible… It's fantastic to be able to reach people where normally they're not reachable, you know?What do you think of so-called psychedelic music in 2009 - bands like Flaming Lips, Of Montreal, Animal Collective, things like that. Do you like those bands? Do you think they're really part of this movement?I think the most important thing is that there is a new political factor in the world now, which is the internet. It's like the biggest dream that we had before, which is, like, one world, one government, one language. It's the whole planet within reach of itself, you know? It's good to be part of this, especially while it is something that the people still control. I think there's a lot of new stuff that is going to come out of this - these kids are basically interacting with the entire world. It's like a science fiction thing for us old-timers. This is where our new album comes from - this sense of global communion. We were so compelled by this that we wanted to release a new album as a thank you to the kids and the universe. And, of course, to not be afraid to release new music, and not feel like ghosts or anything. You have to be part of something, and we're very happy to be part of this new spirit, to be breathing this fresh air.That new album, Haih Or Amortecedor, has gotten some really good reviews here. There's a lot of people who agree to see it's surprisingly fresh for some kind of revival – although it's not really revival. How was it for you to work with new musicians. Are they all new musicians, or you knew those people for a long time? How was it to get a huge band and a huge tour with those people?I know them for a while. When we decided to do the Barbican I put a band together. I chose each one of the guys because I knew what their potential was and it became a really tight band. This isn't something that I did by myself. It has the spirit of a band. When I write music for myself it's completely different then writing with the energy of a whole group. It's magical. I cannot explain, i cannot put in words. It's just a way to connect. It's a very clean source of energy. It's so beautiful to be with these kids now, doing this new music. Great to meet Tom Zé again, and when I worked with him it was fantastic. He's one of the best guys that I wrote music with. It is an amazing thing that is happening.These musicians, these "kids" - do you think they were a bit frightened to be in Os Mutantes?I think in the beginning when we came in 2006 they were basically musicians. And when my brother left and Zelia Duncan left… we all ended up coming together as a band, really. And that was great. So they're basically living it as a band. But sometimes, you know, they get surprised by the whole thing and they just shine. They realize "oh wow, this something bigger than I thought". They're embracing it with the honour and merit that they deserve.Do you have an idea why these sounds, this music, still obsess people 30 years later? You were always an experimental band, and never too popular, but now there's this big following, and all these artists who cite you as an influence.I think what we really did well, and what they realized, was to really embrace the freedom of writing and composing and not really be worried about how famous you're gonna get, how your reviews are going to be, and so on. If you think about it, Os Mutantes doesn't have a gold record. We still haven't gotten one of those discs that tell you you sold 50,000 records. I don't think we ever will, but that's okay - it was never a meaningful thing anyways. Now, with the record companies collapsing and their manipulative structures falling down… you know, the internet and Napster and piracy and all that really changed things, and I think now we're in a period of change that'll end up in a new period of creativity, where there isn't the pressure to only absorb and imitate whatever happens to be #1 at the time. The feeling of freedom is back, because with the internet, you can reach lots of people without going through the big record companies. Listeners get to handpick what they want to listen to, and it opens the doors wide open for people to make real music again. It's beautiful. JP TREMBLAY
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