GLAMAZIL! (Pan-American Glam part 2)

 

The fabulous Edy Star

Was glam popular south of the US border?  It's harder to find glam music there than in Canada (and it doesn't help that I can't read Spanish or Portuguese).  There were political factors at play, as well as cultural and religious conservatism. Mexico outlawed performances by rock bands during the years that glam peaked, and other governments in Central and South America were under military dictatorship and severe censorship in the 70's and 80's. 

Tropicália was a musical movement in Brazil at the end of the 60's which protested against government repression and the complicity of the Brazilian bourgeoisie.  Some of the Tropicália artists were arrested and tortured, and some fled or were exiled to other countries.  But the quantity and quality of post-Tropicália music in the 1970's suggests that some Brazilian performers were undeterred. I found glam in Brazil, but almost none in other Latin American countries.  (This cover version of "All The Young Dudes" was released in Argentina in 1972, but I couldn't find an mp3 of it.)

Secos & Mohaldos (note Ney's nails!)

Secos & Molhados formed in 1971. The band name translates to "dry and wet". The group employed wild costumes and makeup as well as the "sexually ambiguous theatricality" and extraordinarily high-pitched voice of Ney Matogrosso.  Check out this 1974 TV performance and the article from Dangerous Minds.

Edy Star (pictured above) was a member of the psychedelic Society Of The Great Kavernist Order, and was known to mimic other singers.  At the end of "Claustrofobia" (from his 1974 self-titled album), Edy breaks into falsetto to sing a bit of Secos & Molhados' song "O Vira". And on Edy's single "Baiock" (the title represents a fusion between Baião and rock music), he incorporates the "na na na" refrain from "Land Of A Thousand Dances".

Edy's image was more glam than his music. He played Frank N. Furter in the 1975 Brazilian stage production of Rocky Horror, and he is credited as the first Brazilian celebrity to openly acknowledge his homosexuality. This was risky anywhere in the 1970's, but especially under a dictatorship.  Edy made a comeback in 2017 with a second album which featured Ney Matogrosso.  

Rita Lee, crowned A Rainha do Rock (Queen of Rock)

Rita Lee was a founding member of Os Mutantes. She was dismissed from the group, and later refused to join their 2006 reunion, calling them "old men trying to raise money to pay the geriatrician."  In the 70's Rita teamed up with a band called Tutti Frutti to make several glam-influenced rock albums. She has become one of Brazil's most successful performers, earning more than $60 million worldwide. Living well really is the best revenge!

Arnaldo Baptista (who allegedly kicked Rita out of Os Mutantes) camped it up on his 1974 solo debut, Loki?  He poses bare-chested with leather pants and a bullet belt on the album cover, and he sings about Alice Cooper and "sinking in lingerie" (if Google Translate can be trusted).   

Arnaldo Baptista (and his shoulders)

The wild and wide-ranging music of Raul Seixas can't be limited to stylistic labels like glam. He was known in Brazil as "Maluco Beleza" (the Mad Beauty). He co-produced and cowrote the Society Of The Great Kavernist Order's 1971 album. Raul and lyricist Paulo Coelho tried to create an "Alternative Society" based on the Thelemic principles of Aleister Crowley, but they were tortured and exiled by the Brazilian dictatorship. Paulo Coelho later became a novelist of international reknown.  Read more about their "Alternative Society" here.  

Raul Seixas (the Roy Wood of Brazil?)

 

Seixas' 1974 album Gita was so popular that Brazil's government was forced to allow him to return. Speaking of Alice Cooper, the original band played its final show on April 8, 1974 in Rio de Janeiro -- so the censors must have allowed some "decadent" artists from abroad.

The Sao Paolo band Made In Brazil represents the evolution from glam to glam metal, while maintaining the provocative and androgynous imagery associated with the first wave of glam. Their original vocalist was Cornelius Lucifer (pictured below), but he was replaced by Percy Weiss for the albums Jack, O Estripador (1976) and Massacre (recorded in 1977 but banned by Brazilian censors).  The group was known to incite riots among audiences. The track "Jack O Estripador" (Jack The Ripper) reminds me of Spinal Tap's "Saucy Jack", but it sounds like the Stones or the Dolls.  Made In Brazil still exists, and holds the Guinness record for most band members (126 -- just a few more than The Fall!)

Cornelius Lucifer (Made In Brazil's first frontman)

Another band from Sao Paolo was Joelho De Porco, formed in 1972.  Their first album was released in 1976, and they are considered precursors to punk in Brazil. Joelho de Porco (which translates as ham hock) broke up after their 1978 album, but reunited in the 80's.

For those with an academic bent (geddit?), an article is included with today's download from a journal of cultural studies about how David Bowie "amounted to nothing in the 1970's" in Latin America, "even in the glam rock gay scene in Brazil". Among both fascists and Leftists, "Bowie was regarded as a degenerate peddling regressive influences," rather than an agent provocateur.  

(dude on the right looks like Bob Odenkirk undercover at a Misfits gig!)

This post is by no means the definitive word on Latin American glam (and it may contain historical inaccuracies, as I am no expert in these subjects).  As with GLAMADA, some of today's music is glam-influenced or glam-adjacent. Rita Lee's albums with Tutti Frutti are probably closest to what glam sounded like in the UK and US, but the visual and sonic signifiers (and more importantly, the transgressive spirit) of glam are evident among all of these artists.  To hear more amazing Brazilian music (folk, jazz, prog, psychedelia, and hip hop), check out this blog. I hope you enjoy GLAMAZIL, the Pan-Am Glam companion to GLAMADA. Feliz Ano Novo!