Caetano Rehash, Part I

I'm still recovering from my Weekend Birthday Extravaganza this past (3-day!) weekend, but here's my belated take on my Caetano weekend. (And here's a link to what Jon Pareles of the New York Times had to say.)

OK, time for some personal disclosure: Caetano has been my favorite Brazilian musician from almost the beginning of when I got sucked up into the Brazil obsession six years ago. But more than just being a fan of his song-writing skills, gorgeous singing voice, and guitar playing, I've always been drawn in by his tremendous charisma, and the way he manages to embody all the disparate qualities I find sexy and alluring in one person. (I've said it many times that I would marry him if given the chance, and I'm only slightly joking.)

As a sucker for men who can sing and/or dance and for men of an intellectual bent, I get way too excited upon encountering a man who excels at both. Caetano is legendarily known for his vast carnal appetites (ooh, I've heard some stories) as much as he is renowned for his word-puzzle songs ("Zera a Reza"), his historic allusions ("Noites do Norte"), his knowledge of music theory ("Doideca") and concrete poetry ("Rap Popcreto"), etc. Who knows the real truth of Caetano's sexual escapades (as opposed to the polysexual image he himself puts out there--I mean, come on, "The Man I Love"?), and who really cares, because he would ooze sex no matter what. He is the only man (practically) twice my age who has ever made my knees weak (and apparently my fellow NYC blogger, Maccers, is somewhat fond of him as well: "you hear him sing and want to sleep with him, know you can't and then spend the rest of your life longing for it").

So, let me quit the blathering and tell you a bit about Friday's show. Caetano sang a bunch of stuff from the new English-language album, A Foreign Sound: "Diana," "Manhattan," "Nature Boy" (a favorite of mine since I heard his live version on Totalmente Demais), "The Carioca," "If It's Magic" (Stevie Wonder), "The Man I Love," "Love for Sale," "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" (Bob Dylan), and the infamous cover of Nirvana's "Come As You Are" (which wasn't half bad). But I must admit that I would rather hear Caetano singing Caetano songs and singing in Portuguese. I'd been listening to A Foreign Sound to prep myself for the show, and it definitely helped me enjoy the English-language songs, but part of me just wanted to hear some of his classic stuff (which fortunately he did get to on Saturday night, which I'll tell you more about tomorrow).

It's not that the English stuff isn't good, or that his interpretations aren't interesting--it's more a case of loving to hear his Portuguese, and knowing that it'll probably be a couple of years before he comes back around on tour again. Also, I'd have to agree with NY Times critic Jon Pareles' view that: "for too much of the concert he became another visiting crooner, singing to the audience in a language it happily understood. For that role he was overqualified."

As far as the non-English stuff on Friday night, he opened with the Noel Rosa classic, "Não Tem Traducao" (which translates as "There's No Translation"--as you can see, Caetano was tweaking the language issue right from the first note). He also sang "Manhatã" side by side with "Manhattan", for obvious reasons, after reading a passage about Manhattan from the English language translation of his book Verdade Tropical/Tropical Truth:

I think I wrote this book, for instance, because of New York. It's a curious city. Many of its residents say it has nothing to do with the United States, that it is a world city, farther from the typical American city than from another great city anywhere else. But still everyone knows that only the United States could create a city like New York. Coming for the first time in the eighties, I felt suprisingly at ease there, as I had never felt in England or even in continental Europe, even in the Italian or Iberian parts. I soon understood why: I was--as I am in Rio or Sao Paulo, in Salvador or Santo Amaro--on American territory. For one who knows himself to be, however western, profoundly Catholic in a southern European way, to feel at his ease in the Anglo-Saxon capital of the World Empire is complicatedly stimulating.

(This passage certainly warmed up his audience, not that we needed any warming up at that point.)

Some other songs of his own that he did were "Baby" (dovetailing it into Paul Anka's "Diana") and "O Estrangeiro" (giving it a reggae beat). And our prayers were definitely answered when he blessed us with "Cucurrucu Paloma" Almodóvar's 2002 film, Talk to Her. And at the end, he couldn't resist giving us a Brazilian classic that had worked its way into the U.S. consciousness as strongly as any Cole Porter tune: "A Garota de Ipanema" (a.k.a. "The Girl from Ipanema"). Thank God he sang it in the original Portuguese, whose lyrics run circles around the lackluster translation they were given back in 1964 by Norman Gimbel.

OK, that's all for now--mais amanhã!