ArtistInfo

Che
Sexy 70

Album BR 2004 on YB Music label
Electronic, Jazz, Latin and R&B/Soul (Jazz-Funk, Acid Jazz, Easy Listening)

"Music inspired by the Brazilian sacanagem movies of the 1970's". Liner notes: First, WARNING: this is not a well-played-what-a-beauty-instrumental-music record, even so it is a well-played-what-a-beauty-instrumental-music record. It is an affectionate tribute to instrumental songs, special soundtracks of movies of a special time. Second, I remember two phrases of Alexander Caparroz, also known as Che, speaking on his record: “it is better not to mention the fact that I played all the instruments", scared to death of someone calling him the Prince of Vila Mariana; Third, I remember he summarizing, after giving up to explain what his first solo record means: “Anyone who watched Sala Especial [Special Room] knows what I am talking about!”. Said that, put Sexy 70 on and get back to reading. We always expect that after twenty years that dreadful haircut of ours would seem funny, that horrible song would sound at least nostalgic, that revolting group would come back as cult. In the case of pornochanchada and the movies produced in the Boca do Lixo [Trash Mouth] during the seventies, there is nothing of that, no. The movies do not seem better or worse. They are, yes, frightening. It frightens to remember all those people on bell-bottom pants, pantaloons, sideburns, sunglasses like the ones used by the patrol officers of CHiPs. It frightens to remember that the president was Médici, that people could not vote and that many of the today’s well respected actresses moaned of pleasure in the leather backseat of a V8 engine Maverick. It frightens to notice that those movies, produced in the matter of days, without aid of federal laws, tax incentives and Oscar nominations, dragged 60 million ticket-buyers per year to the theaters. Frightening is the least we can say of this thing. The history goes like this: in 1968, one of the politics to invent the “Great Brazil” was that all the movie theaters in Brazil have to show a certain quota of domestic productions. It was a market reserve, as it existed at the time in several industry areas. With the exhibition guaranteed, the production of Brazilian movies, of course, blew up. In downtown São Paulo, in a region that concentrated the local offices of film distributors, started a circuit of small producers that made films as if they were shish kebab. It was the Boca do Lixo (current Crackland, see how things change). They needed some shareholders (the owner of the gas station, the Portuguese of the bakery or the bus ticket collector of the Minhocão were fine), one hot woman that agreed to appear fooling around half naked and that’s it! That’s a dream factory! Classics as A Viúva Virgem [The Virgin Widow], Ainda Agarro Esta Vizinha [Someday I’ll Bang This Girl Next Door] e Lua-de-Mel e Amendoim [Honeymoon and Peanut] dragged thousands to the theaters during the seventies. The basic model of the pornochanchada was inherited from the classic Os Paqueras [The Girl Watchers], with Leila Diniz doing and thinking about sex without guilt. From this to serial productions alternating a naive virgin girl, a horny old man, a perverted widower and a gallery of small types was a shot. Everything done aside the official mess of Embrafilme, with small money harvested between comrades in the downtown São Paulo. The formula created incredible productions as Um Uísque Antes, Um Cigarro Depois [a Whisky Before, A Cigarette Later], Dezenove Mulheres e Um Homem [Nineteen Women and One Man], As Cangaceiras Eróticas [The Erotic Outlaws], A Superfêmea [The Superfemale], A Ilha das Cangaceiras Virgens [The Island of the Virgin Outlaws], O Bem Dotado – O Homem de Itu [The Well-Gifted – The Man of Itu], Os Galhos do Casamento [The Troubles of Marriage] and a whole series of movies that were worth it for the titles alone (plus the classic posters by the illustrator Benício). The sex was almost always only suggested, there was an evident moralist subtext and the scripts were almost always variations of the same idea. But everybody loved them, because it was very funny and because there was plenty of pretty women: Vera Fischer, Meiry Vieira, Helena Branches, Matilde Mastrangi, Aldine Muller, Adriana Pietro and many others of sweet memories... And even if that courier wasting time in the theater did not notice, it had music, in charge of heavy weights as Erlon Chaves (Procura-se uma Virgem [Virgin Wanted]) and Hereton Salvanini (A Virgem de Saint Tropez [The Virgin of Saint Tropez]). The cracking bass on the trembling speakers, the wah-wah guitar, vibraphones acting if it wasn’t with them, marimbas creating a “caliente” mood, the hardwired ropes giving that hint of fake European film. As you know, good pop music always must be in the service of something - in this in case, in the service of the native interests of the pornochanchada. The party lasted until the beginning of the eighties. When the dictatorship loosened up, “dangerous” foreign films as Caligula e In the Realm of the Senses stole all the fun of the old pornochanchadas. The gender survived for a few more years in re-runs of Sala Especial on Record TV, but on a beautiful day, even that blond that seduced children in Amor Estranho Amor [love Strange Love] became respectable. From that time on the pureness, the chastity and the flies had reigned in the few popular movie theaters in Brazil. What Sexy 70 has to do with this? Well, the truth is that Che wanted to make a compilation (later an album of re-recordings) of the original soundtracks of the pornochanchadas. Only the classics: first rate bossa-funk-lounge-soul-samba-Italian-style. Until he noticed that to locate the authors and to negotiate the rights would take much more time than compose his own soundtracks for imaginary films - and wouldn’t it be a good reason to have fun with his friends? Some of them even appeared on the album, as the bunch of Helena Ramos fans who played with Che in Professor Antena, a group that was the Jece Valadão of the bands that do not happened in nineties. Since everybody there used to watch Sala Especial, they knew what he was talking about. And Sexy 70 made the nights of those gentlemen much more amusing. It was almost a Friday, 11pm, Record TV, 1982.

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