Sunday, August 26, 2012

50-Years of 'Beat', 50-years of 'Bossa'

There’s always great excitement at Liverpool’s annual August Matthews Street Festival and International Beatle Week, but this year there’s been the added spice of it being fifty-years on from a few notable Beatle anniversaries. One of the most important dates in Beatle history was the 18th August 1962, the day Ringo made his debut at a small venue in Port Sunlight, a town near Liverpool. On board the rock tour this week we had ‘Help’, one of Mexico’s top Beatle tribute bands. As part of Beatle week they are playing at the same Port Sunlight venue. Beatle week brings ‘Beatle-nuts’ in from far and wide; we also had the ‘Tefeatles’ from Guatemala on board an afternoon tour. Yes, Guatemala! Perhaps the most interesting Latin American connection, however, was a performance by the Brazilian band ‘Clube Big Beatles’ at Bem Brazil, a Brazilian restaurant in Liverpool, in a gig sponsored by The Beatle Story attraction. Just another tribute band? Hardly. Not only was the band absolutely terrific, adding Brazilian rhythms (and instruments) to the original arrangements, but Andreas Kisser from Brazilian heavy metal heroes, Sepultura’ stepped up to the plate to take on lean guitar role and vocals on a couple of numbers, including ‘Get Back’. Powerful stuff! Kisser is the first Brazilian artist to have a 'fame' brick enscribed to him on the Cavern Wall. There’s a certain irony in this Brazilian tribute. It was also fifty-years ago that the Bossa Nova was born; August 02 1962 was the day that Tom Jobin and Vinicious de Moraes launched ‘The Girl from Ipanema’. Despite this song being the second most recorded song after ‘Yesterday’, the rest of the Bossa movement was effectively drowned out by the success of The Beatles and associated beat music.

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