Tom Zé: Brazil Classics 4, Massive Hits - The Best of Tom Zé (compiled by David Byrne, Brazilian blue vinyl) [LUAKA BOP]

Why you'll love it

This limited Brazilian blue pressing comes in a gatefold jacket. Robert Christgau gave the album an A+ and later named it among his ten best records of the 1990s.

This edition

• Brazilian blue vinyl
• Gatefold jacket
• Compiled by David Byrne

About the album

Some of the best record-shop stories start in a bin in another country. On a visit to Rio de Janeiro, David Byrne picked up Estudando o Samba, a 1976 album by a songwriter from Irará in Bahia who had helped build Tropicália alongside Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, then stepped well away from the spotlight. Byrne went looking for him, and Tom Zé became the very first artist on Byrne's new Luaka Bop label.

This compilation draws on Estudando o Samba, Todos os Olhos and Nave Maria. Zé treats samba, bossa nova, forró and rock and roll as raw material, adds household objects to the arrangements and writes with the concrete poets of São Paulo in mind. "Mã" opens with a jolt, "Toc" turns rhythm into a puzzle, "Augusta, Angélica e Consolação" wanders three São Paulo streets, and "Nave Maria" closes things out warmly.

The album put Zé back on stages and back in the studio, starting with The Hips of Tradition in 1992, and introduced him to a whole new audience in North America. He has been known to play a typewriter in concert; ours mostly prints price tags, and it has never once swung like this.

Also at Kops: more Tom Zé on vinyl · browse World

Tracklist

Listen

On Luaka Bop, a reissue of the 1990 compilation.