Baby Consuelo: “Ao Vivo” at the 14th Montreux Jazz Festival, July 5th, 1980

A Shade of Nostalgia

Warner Music Brasil finally released this album (1980) on CD (2001), as part of their series Warner Arquivos. This band is great. Pepeu Gomes on guitar, Didi Gomes on bass and Jorginho Gomes on drums. Luciano Alves sometimes sounds dated on his keyboards. Oswaldinho sounds fantastic on the accordion. “Eu e a Brisa” (Johnny Alf) is one of the highlights. The accordion lines by Oswaldinho play with the melody; Pepeu adds very jazzy broken chords with funky bass lines by Didi. Baby Consuelo sounds very soft and beautiful. Next is “Toda Donzela,” with a teasing Consuelo singing with a cute nonchalance before using her vocal power in a wonderful way. Oswaldinho reacts very adequate to her playful approach. Here you can hear what great musicians Pepeu, Didi and Jorge are, too. They do a great job throughout the whole album. Oswaldinho, Consuelo and Pepeu Gomes wrote “Minha Oração,” which has a funky bass to support a friendly melody. You can only like this song. Jorge Gomes shows his talents on “Sebastiana,” an upbeat tempo where Baby Consuelo forgets herself during the last line. “Vale do Bonocô” is what you can call a Latin song rather than a Brazilian song. Unfortunately this is where the keyboards sound very dated, as they do on the closing “Menino do Rio.” That Veloso song is played in something like a double tempo; the keys don’t match with the accordion. Must have been the sound of those days (late seventies), however. A pity, since it doesn’t do any justice to the song. This CD has a shade of nostalgia over it. The whole CD only takes 35 minutes, but is specially priced (as in LOW price this time!). But it would have been nice to include a few extra takes from the concert (“Ziriguidum” and “Mania de Você” were performed, too, during this Montreux concert in 1980).