I will always credit this for propelling my interest in Brazilian pop music, although now, knowing a little more about it, it's easier to see how David Byrne stacked the deck in his favor here, wearing his anthologist cap, with multiple tracks from Jorge Ben, Chico Buarque, Gilberto Gil, Milton Nascimento, and Caetano Veloso, among others. In interviews at the time Byrne said it was impossible to buy anthologies of Brazilian pop music without at least a few excellent songs, often more. I thought that was ridiculous until I tried it myself. A few years ago, when mp3 blogs exploded, whole sectors were devoted to the stuff, going back to the '60s and sometimes further, and the amount of it was truly staggering. I am still sorting through some of those hauls. But this 1989 anthology, the first of a series that has been agreeably fine, has always seemed to me a notably propitious entry point. Or it was for me anyway. As I have come to know the wares of the above-named giants better, as often as not the songs found here still tend to remain high on my lists of their respective artists, though some of those lists are getting longer, and there are still other artists as well. By my lights, it's the best anthology by a good distance of Brazilian pop music that doesn't have any Antonio Carlos Jobim. That might be one useful way to think of it, though a bit of a cheat because Jobim is so ubiquitous on them. I scored this in the first place out of a slush pile, drawn by the Byrne name (of course) and the Sire label. I'm still not even versed enough on the intricacies to get into the nuances of the '70s and '80s periods. I had this on vinyl, short a song or two of the CD release, so I came to know it first as album sides, and then as an album entire when both sides sounded so great, and then I played the hell out of it for several weeks with many memorable things in my life going on, most of those memories attached now to this music. Oh yeah, that old story again. Therefore I love this. YMMV
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