What if Donny Osmond grew up to became Neil Young? That’s not exactly the North American equivalent of what happened to Brazilian singer-songwriter Erasmo Carlos. But a trio of reissues from Light in the Attic gives us the example of a musician who grew out of a lightweight early career to become one of his country’s most significant artists.
Unlike Tropicália legends like Caetano Veloso and Tom Zé, Carlos is less well-known outside his native land, even among American fans familiar with that politically charged scene. Carlos makes music that is perfectly accessible but harder to categorize. Liner notes by Allen Thayer attempt to place him somewhere between a Brazilian James Taylor, Neil Diamond or Phil Collins, but other than the latter’s appearance on milestones like Eno’s Another Green World, Carlos was more willing than any of them to experiment with his sound.
“I wanted to discover new music, new harmonies, new people, people hairier than me.” Carlos described an epiphany that occurred when he and a fellow musician attended an oldies show in Las Vegas in the early ‘70s. For the first time, Carlos was seeing idols like Chubby Checker and Bill Haley and the Comets, rock ‘n’ roll pioneers that had inspired his early career as a television teeny bopper. Not even two decades after their prime, these classic rockers were playing to a nearly empty auditorium. Carlos, whose own career was in transition, felt a kinship with his idols. In the mid-‘60s, he specialized in a kind of music that Thayer describes as the bossa nova equivalent of bubble gum. It was a style he outgrew, but not without growing pains.
Born Erasmo Esteves, Carlos borrowed the name of his more successful musical partner Roberto Carlos to signify their kinship, but the gesture seemed to be a way of hiding his own gifts. The duo was part of the popular Brazilian musical television program “Jovem Garda” (“Young Guard”), the show’s name describing a subsequent movement of Brazilian musicians influenced by American rock ‘n’ roll of the ‘50s.
“Jovem Garda” began a long partnership between Erasmo and Roberto, who wrote songs for each other throughout a career that has lasted decades. But after the show ended, a maturing Erasmo struggled to be taken seriously as a songwriter. The early ‘70s albums now reissued by Light in the Attic were commercial failures compared to his earlier and later work, but they present a Brazilian auteur who should be better known in the States.
Erasmo Carlos e os Tremendões (1970), the last of several albums he made for the RGE label that gave him his start, is the most conventional of the reissued titles. Still, it reveals a new ambition and experimentation, if only in fits and starts.
The album launches this next phase of his career with “Estou Dez Ano Atrasado” (“I’m 10 Years Late”), an Erasmo-Roberto composition that addresses the simple sidekick persona he adopted on “Jovem Garda.” “Espuma Congelada” (“Frozen Foam”) begins as a gentle ballad but quickly undergoes a series of transformations from Pepper-pomp horns to a final experimental montage that invokes the daring excitement of Tropicália. Despite such forward-looking flourishes, the album settles in with ballads like “Teletema” and even a version of the standard “Aquarelo do Brasil.” It’s a lovely album, yet underneath the gorgeous ballad “Saudosismo,” written by Caetano Veloso, is an indictment of a bossa nova scene that its writer feared had become too dependent on easy subjects like flowers. Only the most well-versed aficionados of Brazilian music will recognize the references to other songs (I wasn’t aware of any of them), but this places the song and the album in an intriguing context: that of a man who made money singing songs about flowers but has grown tired of it.
Released in 1971 on Phonogram, Carlos, Erasmo… was his first record for a new label and a musical step forward, its title constructed to distinguish him from his “brother.” While Carlos’ previous album began to acknowledge the counterculture, this time he fully embraces it. With Tropicália stars Veloso and Gilberto Gil in political exile, Carlos was inspired to change his sound further, aided by three members of psychedelic rock band Os Mutantes.
The change is evident from the opening guitar line of “De Noite na Cama” (“At Night in Bed”) a samba rock number composed by Veloso from exile in London. The folk-rock duet “Masculino, Feminino” is a gentle change of pace before the brooding rock of “É Preciso Dar um Jeito, Meu Amigo” (“Gotta Find a Way, My Friend”), whose rhythm guitar echoes “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” Carlos transforms “Agora Ninguém Chora Mais” (“Now No One Cries Anymore”), originally recorded by composer Jorge Ben as a gently swinging bossa nova, into a heavy rocker with fuzztone guitars and schizoid organ fills. “26 Anos De Vida Normal” (“26 Years of Normal Life”), co-written by the great Marcos Valle, is an indictment of politics and mainstream television: “Western Civilization look out/ I’m going back to life on the fringe.” The album ends with a thinly disguised ode to that counterculture staple “Maria Joana.”
Sonhos e Memórias 1941 – 1972 is the strongest album of this reissue program. Carlos is backed by musicians that would form the fusion trio Azymuth, who still records today. As stylistically restless as Carlos’ previous album, the inventive, wistful arrangements here bring this musical memoir into a more unified whole, aided by the fact that all songs were composed by Erasmo and Roberto.
The reverberating intro to “Largo da Segunda-feira” (“Monday Market”) suggests the blur of memory on a song that describes being raised by a single mother in a suburb of Rio de Janeiro. “Mané João” blends rock with forró, a dance music that originated in Northeastern Brazil. The song, which tells the story of a rowdy dance venue owned by Mané João, is an example of what the Carloses describe as a cinematic way of songwriting, as they imagine verses as scenes in a violently humorous movie: “And the game only ended/ With blood streaming down the hill/ And it was a lot of blood for a little hill.” “Bom Dia, Rock ‘n’ Roll” (“Good Morning, Rock ‘n’ Roll”) is a straightforward nod to Carlos’ American influences like Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry. Like “Saudosismo,” it borrows lyrics from other songs, but this time Carlos is paying homage to English-language songwriters from the Beatles to James Taylor. On paper, the segue “She loves you yeah yeah yeah/ ‘Cause you got a friend” may seem terribly corny, but Carlos gives it an unlikely charm. As much as Carlos looked back on his life for this album, he looked forward as well. He remakes his early hit “É Proibido Fumar” and turns it from a mid-‘60s swinger into a crunching heavy rocker.
Carlos redefined himself over the course of these three albums, and it was just the beginning for an artist who went on to become a legend in his homeland. Light in the Attic’s reissue series gives American audiences a chance to discover the legend right here.
The post Erasmo Carlos: Erasmo Carlos e os Tremendões/Carlos, Erasmo…/Sonhos e Memórias 1941 – 1972 appeared first on Spectrum Culture.