phbart
08-20-2015, 01:11 PM
A very good friend of mine from Brazil sent some of his vinyl collection for me to tranfer, and this was among them. So he explained to me what this is about.
Turma da Monica (Monica's Gang in english) is a famous brazilian comic book franchise, and has been for more than 50 years. In 1982, their first animated feature was released theatrically in Brazil. At that time, the brazilian movie industry was at its peak, but it was still a huge risk to release an animated feature because simply it was never done before. It was a huge box office success and it was only surpassed by the 1983 sequel, "A Princesa e o Robo" (The Princess and the Robot), the most successful brazilian animated feature of all time. If you're interested in knowing more about the franchise, here's a cool Wikipedia article in english:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monica%27s_Gang
This vinyl contais songs and orchestrated music. Since the songs are in portuguese, most of us (myself included) won't understand a thing they're singing, but still the tunes are very pleasent to hear. And the instrumental compositions are really beatiful, worthy of an golden age film composer, IMHO. This Remo Usai guy is good. He did not composed any music for this film, but served as an arranger for all songs and conducted the instrumental versions.
Tracklist: (note: tracks 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 repeats themselves)
01 As Aventuras da Turma da Monica (opening theme) (instrumental) (02:06)
02 Monica (02:16)
(Is the leader of the gang)
03 Cebolinha (Jimmy Five) (01:12)
(Has only five strings of hair in his head and can't pronounce the letter "R", and pronounces the letter "L" instead)
04 Magali (Maggy) (02:08)
(Maggy simply eats a whole damn lot, and doesn't get fat at all)
05 Bidu (Blu) (01:13)
(Is a blue colored dog)
06 Cascao (Smudge) (01:25)
(Smudge hates water and never took a shower in his life)
07 As Aventuras da Turma da Monica (instrumental) (01:15)
(this is a cut version of the opening theme, it has an inexplicably lower volume)
08 Rock da Rata Lee (instrumental) (02:19)
(Roughly translatated as "Rata Lee's Rock", "Rata" been a female mice. Supposedly, "Rata Lee" is to rhyme with the name of the famous -and now retired- brazilian rock singer Rita Lee)
09 Um Amor de Ratinho (instrumental) (02:26)
(Following the context of the film, this can be translated as "The Love of a Mice", but in portuguese this can also mean "A Lovely Mice")
10 Vou Subindo (01:50)
(Roughly translated as "Up I Go")
11 O Imperio Empacota (instrumental) (05:28)
(Roughly translated as "The Empire Packs". Actually, this is an evil empire ruled by Lorde Coelh�o (Lord Rabbit) that intends to transform every living creature, literally, in a paralysed gift pack. Crazy shit...)
About brazilian composer Remo Usai:
Remo Usai is considered the brazilian John Williams. He was born in Rio de Janeiro on May 13th, 1938. Unfortunately, most of his work cannot be heard outside of the films because there aren't many soundtrack releases (I'm talking about vinyl) and NO CDs whatsoever. Seems weird, since the guy is considered one of the most talented brazilian film composer. Only in 2007, an unofficial CD-R was distributed to a selected group of people at a film festival, which contained a compilation of his "greatest hits", including one track from this vinyl release here.
He has long retired from the industry and is living with difficult financial situation, since he's not been receiving his royalty payment from the entity responsible for such things. Due to all of the stress that this is causing him (naturally) and his advanced age, he's facing some serious health issues for quite some time. Really shameful!
About this transfer:
Brazilian Pressing (Polygram 2494 644).
Vinyl transfer using Audio Technica AT-LP60 and Soundboard Realtek ALC888B, 96kHz/24bit.
I did no EQ, no click and pop remove, no volume normalization (overall recording volume was set to the highest possible without clipping the audio).
This is a pure and untouched transfer, except for the track splitting and removal of excessive silence at the start and end of each side.
[RE-UP September 13 2019] Mediafire:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/n45z6348rar2qg4/MONICA1982.rar/file