Tracklist:
- Imunização Racional (Que Beleza) 3:28
- Lets Have a Ball Tonight 5:11
- O Caminho do Bem 6:06
- Ela Partiu 4:15
- Quer Queira, Quer Não Queira 4:51
- Brother Father Mother Sister 3:19
- Do Leme ao Pontal 3:12
- Nobody Can Live Forever 6:06
- I Don’t Care 2:47
- Bom Senso 5:07
- Where is My Other Half? 4:00
- Over Again 3:24
- The Dance Is Over 2:31
- You Don’t Know What I Know 0:33
- 15. Rational Culture 12:19
In the early 1970′s, Brazilian popular music was approaching a high water mark of creativity and popularity. Artists like Elis Regina, Chico Buarque and Milton Nascimento were delivering top-shelf Brazilian pop, while tropicalists Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil and Os Mutantes (see World Psychedelic Classics 1) were entertaining the college set with avant-garde fuzz-pop poetry.
Enter Tim Maia with a massive cannonball into the pool. It was the only dive Tim knew. Standing just 5’7 (6′ with the Afro) Tim Maia was large, in charge and completely out of control. He was the personification of rock star excess, having lived through five marriages and at least six children, multiple prison sentences, voluminous drug habits and a stint in an UFO obsessed religious cult. Tim is also remembered as a fat, arrogant, overindulgent, barely tolerated, yet beloved man-child who died too young at the age of 55.
Sebastiño Rodrigues Maia was born in Tijuca, Rio de Janeiro, on September 28, 1942. He was the 18th in a family of 19 siblings. At six he started to contribute to the family income by delivering homemade food prepared by his mother, Maria Imaculada Maia. Tim learned to play guitar as a child and was 15 when he formed his first band. They called themselves The Sputniks and were notable for also including Roberto Carlos, a neighborhood pal of Tim’s who would later become one of Brazil’s biggest stars. In 1957, at the age of 17, the singer went to America. He left home with $12 in his pocket and no knowledge of English. He adopted the name ‘Jimmy’ and lied to the immigration authorities, saying that he was a student.
Living with distant cousins in Tarrytown, New York, he worked odd jobs and committed petty crimes. Having a prodigious ear he quickly learned to speak, sing and write songs in English. He formed a small vocal group called The Ideals who even recorded one of Tim’s songs, “New Love.” Intent on starting a career in America, Tim never planned on going back to Brazil, but like a badass Forrest Gump, he also had a knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In a 1964 early pre-cursor to Spring Break’s modern debauchery, Tim was busted in Daytona, Florida for smoking pot in a stolen car and served six months in prison. U.S. Immigration caught up with him and he was deported.
Back in Brazil, Tim told his friends that he hadn’t spoken a word of Portuguese for the last 3 years of his stay in the U.S. Not surprisingly, he was completely out of step with the prevailing mode of MPB and Tropicalia. Eventually he got a huge break when legendary singer Elis Regina fell in love with his song “These Are the Songs” which had been released as a single on the Fermata label. She invited him to sing a duet of it with her in Portuguese and English on her 1970 album “Em Pleno Verño”. This high profile debut forced people to take notice of the unknown singer/songwriter with a big voice, bigger afro and huge ambitions. Soon after, Philips signed Tim to a recording contract. In 1970 his first album spent 24 weeks on the charts, beginning a new chapter in Brazilian music. Continue reading here
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