Novos Baianos – Novos Baianos
1974 Continental SLP-10.144 (Original release)
2016 Japanese reissue, Bomba Records Continental SLP-10.144 

Last Sunday, Brazil’s first World Cup match ended in a tie, and now they’ve won their a match against Costa Rica.  I didn’t watch.  I don’t care about the World Cup.  Even if I did, I’m not sure I would be cheering for Brazil this year.  Country has lost its damn mind, and Neymar continues to be whitening. Also FIFA continues to be an ethically dodgy facilitator of slave labor littering the world with disused stadiums built as monuments to their power.  So let’s listen to a record by some people who embody the “beautiful game” as, in my uninformed naiveté, I imagine it to exist in some parallel utopia – Os Novos Baianos, lovers of futebol and purveyors of fine music, still in the midst of their heyday.