FREE (as in beer, speech) Musics

For those of you who are interested in free things, or the music of Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil (I know there are so many of you out there), this post should be of interest to you.

I'll skip to the part about the free music first. You can get it right here. Yeah, I know, most of you don't speaka dje Portuguese. It's not that hard to find your way to the good stuff though. You'll see a bunch of album covers, directly below which is a link to the site for that album. Click on it to get to the info and free downloads. But first, you may notice that below the link it says "com as musicas:" and then a list in bold. That is a list of all the tracks you can actually download for free from that album. So go there, look around, download some stuff, and leave a comment to let me know how it is, cause I haven't gotten around to listening to all of it yet. I do recommend Eta Carinae's album Mirando a Estrela because 1) it's really good and 2) you can download the whole album.

Now I'm nearly 100% sure that all the downloads you'll find there are legit. I've not generally known this site to blatantly violate copyrights. Also, the scene in Pernambuco is generally pretty into the Creative Commons. The group Re:Combo even got the CC to name one of the versions of their liscence after them. And Brazil's Minister of Culture is a pretty strong backer of the Creative Commons. So I'm guessing most of the songs available there are under some form of the CC liscence, and if not, the site has probably gotten some form of permission to give away their stuff. And speaking of Brazil's Minister of Culture and popular singer/songwriter, Gilberto Gil, and the Creative Commons, you can get one of his songs along with various others from the Beastie Boys, David Byrne, and others here from Wired Magazine's CC liscenced wired CD.

Now onto some further info for those of you who speake dje portuguese and are interested in the music of Brazil. If you care to keep up to date on mangue beat or any other music from the city of Recife or the state of Pernambuco, RecifeRock! is definitely the place to go. You'll find information on a vast number of bands and artists under Guia do Rock. Snoop around and you'll definitely find plenty more free MP3s and videos (of varying quality). On the front page you'll find the latest news, featured bands, and other stuff you might expect to find on a front page. If you should decide you need to purchase a CD from one of the many bands you'll find there, and can't find it on amazon or some such (in most cases you won't be able to) I recommend gemm.com. In fact I recommend gemm.com any time you need to buy a cd and can't find it anywhere else.

Can't Afford Tickets to London?

Not to worry. Os Mutantes are coming to the US for the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago on July 30. I will be there. You'd better be as well.

Os Mutantes were one of the front-runners of the Tropicalia movement in Brazil. It fused anglo rock culture with various aspects of Brazilian culture, and a good healthy distrust for authority and the status quo. Os Mutantes' first show together since the 70's will be in May in London, followed up by just a few other shows. Unfortunately, Rita Lee, their original lead singer with a heavenly voice will not be with them, but they kept on going for a while without her originally and still sounded damn good, so this is still something you don't wanna pass up. Trust me.

Filed in: Music Brazil Tropicalia Os_Mutantes

P.S. Help! My tagging procedure is broken! I had to do them all by hand. The greasemonkey script I've been using to add them automatic-like doesn't seem to be working. Anyone out there know the script I'm talking about and why this is happening?

Heist

I heard about this yesterday on NPR, I think, but I read it again today in the paper. Thieves in Brazil have stolen 68.8 million dollars from the Central Bank of Brazil in Fortaleza, making it the second largest bank heist ever, after only Saddam Hussein when he took off with about 1 billion dollars while fleeing from the US occupation. The thieves tunneled under the building to break in, drawing comparisons to another robbery last year in the Sao Paulo, where thieves also tunneled into a bulding to steal 1 million dollars. The robberies are believed to have been masterminded by the same man, Teixera da Silva (freaking everybody in Brazil named da Silva, including the President), who escaped from prison three years ago-by tunneling out.

Incidentally, there's a pretty good movie about the kidnapping of the US ambassador to Brazil in the 60s or 70s by the group MR-8, which early on in the movie pulls off another famous bank heist. If I recall correctly, that may have been the largest bank robbery in Brazil up until this point, though I could be totally making that up. The ambassador is played by Alan Arkin. The movie also features Matheus Nachtergaele, who is in every Brazilian movie you will ever see.

Filed in: News Cinema Brazil