In 1993,
Kurt Cobain made a valiant and formal attempt to get Brazil's
Os Mutantes to reunite. He failed. Om Platten reissued the band's recordings officially in the United States and they sold like hotcakes globally, fostering all kinds of interest in the most psychedelic of the tropicalia lot but not a peep from the band. In 1998,
Beck popped out his sideways tribute to the band with
Mutations, employing all kinds of vocal, instrumental. and production techniques employed by the band that had moved him so deeply. Still nothing. Leave it to
David Byrne (who had issued a wonderful compilation of their work on his Luaka Bop imprint) to encourage the original
Os Mutantes brothers,
Sergio Dias and
Arnaldo Baptista, who assembled a band that included the amazing chanteuse
Zélia Duncan (who replaced original female vocalist
Rita Lee), along with drummer
Dinho Leme, Henrique Peters,
Vitor Trida,
Fábio Recco, and
Esméria Bulgari, to perform in London at the storied Barbican Theater in 2006. This document is the entire concert, presented in stunning sound with crackling energy to prove that those who attended, press and punters, weren't lying about how great it was. These 21 songs offer proof positive that years can indeed melt away, and whatever dowdy and dodgy myths that surrounded the fate its creators had endured were wiped away within the first few minutes of set opener "Don Quixote."