Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Nice compilation at a good price., March 29, 2000
Foursider was originally released as a two disk vinyl compilation at a bargain price. It was a good buy then & it still is now. A few hits mixed with a tasty selection of album tracks from the Sixties, Foursider is one of the "must own" releases until we get a definitive Greatest Hits package or a box set of the original albums.
Someday maybe A&M's corporate overseers will decide to release a collection with EVERY Brasil '66 single & B side plus the finest album tracks - I mean one including "Night & Day," "For Me," "Fool on the Hill," "Like a Lover" AND "The Look of Love" among others. If they need someone to do the job, I volunteer.
Bob Rixon, WFMU
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Sturdy Brazilian Pop of Brazil '66 Ages Well, February 6, 2005
The pop music of Sergio Mendes and Brazil '66 has aged well over the past 40 years. Brazil '66 quartet fronted by a pair seductive female singers, Lani Hall and Janice Hansen who sang American pop music and contemporary Brazilian bossa nova and samba music in the Portuguese language of Brazil. Hall and Hansen's lilting, frothy vocals gave Brazil '66 it's distinctive signature sound. Four decades later the pop/jazz/Brazilian fusion music of Brazil '66 sounds suprisingly fresh, while a lot of the critically lauded experimental music of the Sixties sounds...well.. quaint by comparison. It's a credit to the vision of Mendes who assembled a band of great players like guitarist John Pisano and others musicians schooled in the Afro/Brazilian and cool jazz traditions. Those who once dismissed Mendes as a musical lightweight with a gimmicky bossa nova sound have been proven wrong. Mendes' music anticipated much of today's world fusion music that combines conventional pop music with the exotic percussion and swaying tempos of third world music.
Today's Menedes fans are hipper than the cocktail hour core Brazil '66 Sixties fan base. The newer Sergio Mendes devotees are twenty and thirty somethings raised on punk and post-punk. It's the same musically sophisticated audience that rediscovered a a host of overlooked world music icons including; the French pop of Serge Gainsboro, the samba music of Carlos Antonio Jobim, the eccentric psychedelic music of Os Mutantes, the Afrobeat of Fela Kuti and buoyant ska rhythms of jazzy Jamaica's Skatalites. To their credit, these younger fans have created a demand for re-release of material by these overlooked artists, including Sergio Mendes
This album, "Four Sider" has more songs than any anthology, BUT song per song "Four Sider" is not as consistently sumblime as another Brasil '66 anthology, "Classics Vol. 18." "Four Sider's" inclusion of weak cover versions of songs like, Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth" or Otis Redding's "Sitting On the Dock of the Bay" may test the patience of a novice fan. "Classics Vol. 18" avoids some of Brazil '66's less inspired music.
On the other hand, the internet bible of music criticism AMG, has selected "Four Sider" as the best Mendes anthology. It's a toss of a coin..."Four Sider" may have four more songs than "Classics Vol. 18, but not necessarily songs of the 24 karat variety. The choice is yours. As a footnote, in 1992 Sergio Mendes released a solo album, the "Brasilerio" which has become a cult masterpiece of Afro/Brazilian roots music. Fans of Mendes should check out that CD, as well.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fun and upbeat music, February 27, 2002
It was Brasil 66 that made me want to go to Brazil (and I lived there, later). This is a great compilation. Brasil 66 evokes the friendliness of Brazil. The songs are mostly American and British hits done in an upbeat Brazilian style that I think was unique to Sergio Mendes in Brazil. He had a lead singer with a chorus of female and male singers chiming in. The closest comparison in english would be the Fifth Dimension. Sergio Mendes is the arranger but the lead singer was Lani Hall. She now has a solo career but her solo work is much different than Brasil 66: more balads and jazz. Sergio Mendes continues to produce some upbeat new material mostly in Portuguese with his wife Gracinha Leporace-Mendes on lead.
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