"Viva a Maria da Fonte Com as Pistolas na Mão..."

Edição Original em LP Orfeu STAT 095 (1979)

Foi graças a este disco (e ao tão subestimado "Histórias de Viajeiros", de Fausto, também de 1979) que os Trovante começaram a ganhar a força que necessitavam para sair do circuito mais ou menos fechado das actuações em comícios do PC, que até então frequentavam. O grupo de "Baile no Bosque" é, de facto, o grande suporte musical deste trabalho, evidenciando também o empenhamento de Zeca (notório, de resto, em todos os seus trabalhos) no apoio às novas gera­ções de músicos. Incluem-se, aqui, os temas que Zeca escreveu para a peça 'Zé do Telhado', do Grupo de Teatro A Barraca, e duas canções escritas para a 'Guerra do Alecrim e Manjerona', da Comuna.
Depois de ter trabalhado com José Mário Branco e com Fausto, chegou a vez de José Afonso convidar Júlio Pereira. E em boa hora o fez, porque o homem do cavaquinho, da braguesa e de outras redescobertas, rodeou-se de excelentes músicos e melhores ideias para nos deixar este belo trabalho, que marca o regresso de José Afonso a algumas formas de expressão utilizadas nos seus primeiros álbuns, enriquecidas, no entanto, por toda a experiência adquirida, humana e artisticamente.

Aqui ficam alguns excertos de um texto de Júlio Pereira retirado da Revista do 4º Festival de Música Popular Portuguesa (Amadora 1991):
«Quando conheci o Zeca, em pessoa, tinha eu 24 anos. Todos deveriam ter a oportunidade de conviver com um génio. Que me perdoem alguns puristas se, com alguma perplexidade, confesso, admito o conceito de génio no meu vocabulário. Porque o que sempre me fascinou, certamente aquilo que será sempre o mais difícil de entender para um músico desatento, foi uma questão, porventura a tónica da sua maneira de ser, quero dizer, da maneira de ser de um génio – a humildade. Não façamos confusão. Só existe humildade porque não estamos sós. Daí que este conceito seja tão propenso a superficialidades.
A música não engana ninguém. Muito menos um músico. A música é o que não deixa um músico mentir. É por isso que um músico jamais poderá enganar outro músico. Quando eu conheci o Zeca, fiquei a saber que ele era um grande músico. Fascinou-me porque me perturbou, ou perturbou-me porque me fascinou?
O que é bom é bom; ou porque é bem feito, ou porque nos traz um acréscimo de sentido. E o que é bom, toca-nos. E o Zeca toca qualquer músico.»

"Cantai rapazes, dançai raparigas..."

Edição Original em LP Orfeu STAT 054 (1978)

À semelhança do album anterior, também este “Enquanto Há Força” se encontra impregnado da crítica feroz ao poder instituído (que atinge o clímax em Arcebispíada: «Se o Pinochet concordasse já em Fátima haveria mais de trinta mil vermelhos a arder de noite e de dia»), a par de um certo desencanto (patente, por exemplo, em A Acupuntura em Odemira, um tema anterior a 74 que Zeca recupera para este disco) e de uma ironia subtil, expressa nos versos quase ingénuos da segunda versão de Viva o Poder Popular.

Pela primeira vez, José Afonso reparte com ou­tro compositor a autoria de duas canções: Eu, o Povo, sobre texto do poeta moçambicano Barnabé João (Mutiatimi Barnabé João, aliás João Pedra Grabato Dias, aliás António Quadros (Pintor). Pseudónimos de António Augusto de Meio Lucena e Quadros (1933-1994). pintor. escultor e poeta. que tem vários textos musicados por Zeca e, mais recentemente, por Amélia Muge), e A Acupuntura em Odemira, ambas musicadas de parceria com Fausto, que com Zeca assume também a direcção musical do disco.

O elenco dos músicos e das vozes que participaram nesta gravação, é dos mais ricos e diversificados que o Zeca utilizou em todas as suas gravações. Em "Enquanto Há Força" surgem, por exemplo, o violino de Carlos Zíngaro, a guitarra portuguesa, o sistre e o alaúde de Pedro Caldeira Cabral, as flautas indianas de Rão Kyao, os baixos eléctricos de Luís Duarte e Paulo Godinho, e as vozes de Adriano, Fausto, Sérgio Godinho e outros. Chama-se a isto, um elenco de luxo: era a festa dos amigos do Zeca, com o Zeca.

DYLAN REVISITED

Original Released on LP EMI-Parlophone PCS 7078
(1969, May 2)

«The great writer and the group who are probably the most professional and proficient on the British scene, mix together like vodka and lime. Some of Dylan's songs have been lying around for years, just waiting to be sung properly and the mortice-and-tenon tight three part harmonies of The Hollies add a totally new dimension to them.»

Just one of the rave press reviews that greeted the album when it was released on May 2nd 1969. The recording sessions took place at Abbey Road Studios and were finished on November 11, 1968. Although Graham Nash was still officially "A Hollie", he was not involved in those sessions. And soon he made his decision to split and join Steven Stills and David Crosby to form CSN.

This is the most controversial album in the Hollies' entire output. Graham Nash claimed he quit over the decision to record it, and critics hated it. And on its face, this is all understandable — the Hollies' distinctive high harmony singing and British beat sound were not a natural fit with Bob Dylan's songs, with their mix of earthy sensibilities and raw musicality. With one possible exception, the songs here are not presented in their ideal forms, but that doesn't explain the hostility with which the album was greeted, until one remembers the reverence in which Dylan was held at the time and the Hollies' status as a pop/rock group; in many critics' eyes, the Hollies cutting an album of Dylan songs was only a step removed from Herman's Hermits recording one. Yet the album has virtues, including Allan Clarke's powerful lead vocals and the soaring harmonies of Terry Sylvester and Tony Hicks, along with Hicks' lively and inventive guitar contributions to the album; additionally, the group's decision to draw from some of the less well-traveled corners of Dylan's songbook makes this a more interesting record than it might otherwise be. The songs range from then new compositions such as "This Wheel's on Fire" to early, obscure pieces like "When the Ship Comes In." The latter is highlighted by Clarke's forceful singing and a lively contribution on banjo by Hicks. "I Shall Be Released" is nicely stripped down, played on acoustic guitars with soaring harmonies, with an understated embellishment of what sound like marimbas, topped by a steel guitar break played by Alan Parker. The overblown, orchestrated version of "Blowin' in the Wind" (in an arrangement by Manfred Mann's Mike Vickers) may be the worst version of that song ever cut and overstays its welcome by one chorus on a string- and horn-laden finale (that seems to be trying to mimic the fade out on "All You Need Is Love") that just lays there like musical indigestion, but the singing is simply extraordinary. "Quit Your Lowdown Ways" is well-sung and even better played, with some superb rockabilly-style acoustic guitar courtesy of Hicks. "Just Like a Woman" is one of the those tracks where one wishes it were possible to go back to the multi-tracks and wipe the orchestral accompaniment away, leaving only the band's moody, subdued performance, highlighted by Bernie Calvert's gospel-style organ. "The Times They Are a' Changin'" is done with bracing enthusiasm and an off-putting sense of drama. "All I Really Want to Do" has superb singing and a strange marimba accompaniment that somehow works. And then there is "My Back Pages," the best track on the album and the only one that sounds the way the Hollies of old would've done it, loose and flowing, with beautiful acoustic guitar at its center, a reed orchestra accompanying the band, Bobby Elliott beating the hell out of his snare, and Bernie Calvert's bass holding the beat. "The Mighty Quinn" has possibilities for about 30 seconds, until the excessively heavy orchestration comes in and wrecks whatever the group has accomplished in the way of rocking up the track. This album marked only the second round of sessions on which new member Terry Sylvester participated with the group. Released in America as "Words and Music By Bob Dylan". (Bruce Eder in AllMusic)

Straight from your heart

ORIGINAL RELEASED ON LP LIBERTY ST-7231 (1962)

I really don't understand why this particular album of Miss London has got so many bad reviews along the years. For me it is a very good album, very pleasant to listen to, from the beginning to its end. Specially when you're in the mood for romanticism. Well, here's the opportunity for you to forget about the critics and judge it for yourself.

She really gives me ideas...

A great and very seductive piece of lolita-pop; the whole album is very good (produced by her brother Nino Tempo, with whom she also placed a few hits on the American charts in the early 1960's as Nino Tempo & April Stevens), but the title song here is just one amazing concoction. Stevens coos, she woos, she seduces and then comes the punch-line: "Teach me tiger - or I'll teach you". Must have been very naughty for its time...

"And Man formed Aqualung of the dust of the ground, and a host of others likened unto his kind."

Aqualung explodes like Jesus Christ Superstar sitting on a keg of dynamite, here starring Ian Anderson as our self-appointed conscience. Not everyone wanted to be preached to by a rock star, however, and the album found Tull losing some of their original fans even as they attracted new ones. The light and dark tones of Benefit are put into sharper relief this time by alternating disarming acoustic songs with a theosophical din of diabolical intent. The addition of Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond on bass (yes, the very same “Jeffrey” chronicled on their earlier albums) doesn’t change the sound of Tull much, nor does the full-time addition of John Evan, who gets buried in the band’s sonic onslaught most of the time. The blurring of Ian Anderson the performer and Aqualung the character may be alarming to some, but wasn’t it just a natural outcropping of the rock opera movement? Music fans proved they were interested in the persona as much as the player, and Anderson gave them something to think about: a composite sketch of a demigod drawn from Jesus, Loki, and Merlin among others. Of course, no album could stand up to that sort of scrutiny, so take my enthusiasm with a grain of salt. It’s just that songs like “Aqualung,” “Cross-Eyed Mary, “Hymn #43” and “Locomotive Breath” are such epic clashes of morality and reality that Aqualung assumes the scale of a Greek tragedy. The acoustic breaks are sometimes no more than lovely little bits of fluff (“Cheap Day Return,” “Wond’ring Aloud”) and sometimes a mortal analysis of the world around us (“Mother Goose,” “Wind-Up”). Yet I won’t proffer an explanation of Aqualung. The album clearly takes umbrage with institutionalized religion and reintroduces the Aqualung character on “Cross-Eyed Mary,” but it’s hard to say what it all means. (Unlike musicals, which are designed to juggle different players, rock bands just don’t have a closet full of characters at their disposal.) Aqualung is a great leap from songwriter to storyteller, though some felt Tull slipped too far into the fabled woods for the inscrutable Brick and Passion. Me, I’d say this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship between music and one man’s illimitable fancy. (Dave Connolly)

Released at a time when a lot of bands were embracing pop-Christianity (à la Jesus Christ Superstar), Aqualung was a bold statement for a rock group, a pro-God antichurch tract that probably got lots of teenagers wrestling with these ideas for the first time in their lives. This was the album that made Jethro Tull a fixture on FM radio, with riff-heavy songs like "My God," "Hymn 43," "Locomotive Breath," "Cross-Eyed Mary," "Wind Up," and the title track. And from there, they became a major arena act, and a fixture at the top of the record charts for most of the 1970s. Mixing hard rock and folk melodies with Ian Anderson's dour musings on faith and religion (mostly how organized religion had restricted man's relationship with God), the record was extremely profound for a number seven chart hit, one of the most cerebral albums ever to reach millions of rock listeners. Indeed, from this point on, Anderson and company were compelled to stretch the lyrical envelope right to the breaking point. (Bruce Eder)