Two years after ‘Build up’ Rita Lee launched her second solo album. That was a different history all together. Before Rita was still a member of Mutantes. Now, with Mutantes taking the progressive rock path influenced by Yes, the group would send her off to the Bauretz’s Planet. Her second record is a farewell album and, at the same time, the one that sounded more Mutantes than any other. None of the six records from the first phase – 1968-1972 – were composed exclusively by Mutantes themselves: Arnaldo-Rita & Sergio+Liminha. All others counted with external collaborators.

The strong censorship regime of those days cut up some lyrics that from acids turned into lyric. In “Beija-me, amor” (Kiss me, love) we hear: “…To feel your taste/ mixed with a taste of love/ chewing between my teeth” actually originally was: “To feel the saliva/ the spit’s taste/ melting through my teeth…”, told us Carlos Calado, in his Mutante’s biography, page 285.

The only collaborator (and for the first time as part of the band) was that of the singer, composer and player Lucia Turnball as backing vocal. In 1973, Lucia would become Rita Lee’s partner in the project Cilibinas do Éden. This duo would also work as a base for Rita Lee’s further group, Tutti Frutti, which included Luiz Sergio (guitars) and Lee Marcucci (bass). Their first album, “Atrás do porto tem uma cidade” (behind the port there is a city), was a come back or very similar to Mutantes first album. As in the 1968’s album, “Atrás do porto…” stamps a drawing made by Rita. Its graphic simplicity hides a basic element of the new group: the humour. This was hided or simply abandoned in the new Mutantes driven by progressive rock.

‘Hoje é…’ can be translated into final-solo-collective-catharses towards this element. If in “Bauretz” the humour is submerse, in this solo album it is explicit. Its musical texture sometimes sounds also progressive.

The album has two distinctive chapters:
1) Biographic, following the path of ‘Vamos tratar da saúde’ (Let’s take care of our health) and ‘Hoje é o primeiro dia do resto da sua vida’.
2) Humoristic in “Amor em branco e preto” (love in black & white, a non-official anthem to Corinthians Football Club); “Tapupukitipa” and “Tiroleite”. This was perhaps the only successful attempt to make a joke out of the hippie generation’s values. This song, although not turned into a radio-TV success, is one of the big hits in open microphone sections.

If this album is a return to Mutantes’ beginning it is also an album-project of what would be Rita Lee’s solo career. It was an amalgam of the anthropophagic formula created by Brazilian poet and writer Oswaldo de Andrade: love/humour.

After 1972, neither Rita nor Mutantes would be the same again. Each one followed their own paths. All, however, within a path that was trailed before. From that we can understand that the group’s first phase does not compile five albums but eight – their five plus the later ‘Technicolor’, recorded in 1970 and launched only in 1990, and Rita’s two solo albums.

Is this discography completed? Not for me. Actually, this phase has nine records. I would include the first Arnaldo’s solo album, ‘Lóki?’ (1974). What? Please, just re-read the above. All that was said for Rita’s two solo albums applies, in minor or greater degree, to ‘Lóki?’. I would stop there but you can still include the album-manifesto ‘Tropicalia – ou Panis et Circensis’; ‘A Banda Tropicalista de Rogerio Duprat’ (The Tropicalist Band of Rogerio Duprat – 1968); and the single by Caetano Veloso with four songs: ‘A Voz do Morto’ (The Death’s Voice); “Baby”; ‘Saudosismo’ (nostalgia) and ‘Marcianita’. All these songs were recorded live in 1968. (Marcelo Dolabela, Jul/Aug 2005).

1-Vamos Tratar da Saúde
2-Beija-me Amor
3-Hoje é o Primeiro Dia do Resto da Sua Vida
4-Teimosia
5-Frique Comigo
6-Amor Branco e Preto
7-Toroleite
8-Tapupukitipa
9-De Novo Aqui Meu Bom José
10-Superfície do Planeta

Apresentação como parte da exposição “Tropicália: A Revolution in Brazilian Culture”. Barbican Centre, em Londres, entre 16 de fevereiro e 21 de maio de 2006.