101 songs that marked Portugal #82: ‘Cristina (Beleza É Fundamental)’, by Roquivários (1982)
101 songs that marked Portugal is a section that aims to honor the songs, composers and performers that marked the history of Portuguese music in Portugal. Without rigid chronological order, they are a personal portrait (with a focus on the petite histoire) of the author. More than a contextualization of an inventory of known facts, it is above all an association of stories and many unrecorded ones. They are stories with stories beyond the music. Sometimes the wrong side of songs. Especially the wrong side of the songs.
‘Cristina (Beauty Is Fundamental)’, Roquivários (1982)
Today, 40 years later, one wonders how in such a short time it was possible for a movement to have so marked the music produced in Portugal. Portuguese rock didn’t last long but it’s more curious than two years, if what was in its origin and its so sudden end. Rock music in Portugal had been born 20 years earlier, in 1961, and would remain alive until the advent of democracy. Bands like progressive Genesis, Yes, Creedence Clearwater Revival or Deep Purple served as psychedelic, symphonic or Portuguese bands from the 70s, which deterred less virtuous musicians from venturing into this complex wave. Punk and the new wave came to encourage them to produce more uncomplicated sounds and at this time most of the bands that would embody the Portuguese rock boom were born, with the album “Ar deiniciado Rock”, by Rui Veloso.
Maria de Jesus had an aesthetics studio in which her form, her existence, may have been a reality. Fate, however, would reserve for Maria de Jesus another attitude – no longer as Maria de Jesus, but as Midus – and it would be this attitude that would make her unique in the period in which she was being born. The cassettes delivered by Rui Veloso’s mother to António Pinho (probing if his talent) would precipitate the advent of this new wave of rock and, without knowing it, they would have to get to know each other, as if time only measured, the bet that the publishers and the public demanded. It was time to form Rock&Vários, a name that portrays everything that fits into the musical formation of its members – pop, rock, reggae, ska or jazz. Roquivários, while not abdicating its genetics, sounded much more vigorous and raw – much more rock & roll, after all.
The Roquivários were one of the most prominent bands on the menu that rock in Portugal served, even if only one great song to contribute. what the market is not just did nothing: Portuguese rock is not just Rui Veloso, Táxi or Xutos e Pontapés. It was made of attitude. Of amateurism. From recycled dance groups. From recycled progressive rock groups. From acronyms reminiscent of PREC (CTT, GNR, UHF, TNT). From festivals. From contests. Of inconsequential lyrics and eared choruses. From a new language – as a digestive for intervention music. It was the time of hard rock, as Júlio Isidro called it; it was the time of ‘Saturday Morning Fever’, on Rádio Comercial. It was the time of the first music videos – to promote the work of the emerging musical movement. It was the time of the dusty, edgy music magazines – sipping an MTV generation where everything fits. In Portugal, there was mainly guedelhudo musicians dressed in denim and an audience eager for distortion, vitality and partying.
They had a great song, the Roquivários. A great refrain, this or that one who says. Great vocalist, in the singularity of the American Suzi Quatro – also a female bassist. Midus had been in the United States for two years and brought the temper of the B-52’s, the Pretenders, but also the groove from Santana and the Creams. She would be one of the few female vocalists of Portuguese rock and the only one to choose the bass as an instrument. Until the lode ran out, the party went wild.
Cristina, you won’t take this the wrong way, but beauty is fundamental. It was just that – that it was the substance that mattered. A great mesh. Look at Midus. Rebel pose by the entire band. Instruments played with impetus. It was one of the songs that best represent this period. It made the Roquivários run the country from lés-a-lés, the public yearning to de-electrify their bodies to the sound of ‘Cristina’ and accompany the chorus with guttural fervor.
From the recording of the second album, still the bang Halfway through, the Roquivários, aggravated by internal quarrels, had little more to say in this language. They were already yearning for new concepts – which did not fit the nature of each of the members. The Roquivarians were a whole; the whole became a sum of parts. And finish. They disappeared in a year when most bands still believed the phenomenon would last.
Midus continues to make the pop he felt identified with – in London, alongside Anne Clark, Melanie C., Tanita Tikaram, Jay Smith, Billie Myers or Bryan Ferry. She started to take the bass as her extension, much more than the voice. The other Roquivários members did not dedicate themselves to expressions that did not fit in a rock band and Roquivários followed the path of being a parallel.
Do bang of Portuguese rock, the best remained – and some of the best had to tame their fiber to continue to stand out in the market they chose. we are not the one hit wonders – albeit with very good things to say about these ephemeral successes. Today only a handful remain, which have shaped themselves to the cyclical demands of the market and the public. Os Roquivários kept in memory as one of the most representative bands of what was at the beginning of the 80s, a carousel of fantasies and the harbinger of a new one.
You say you saved yourself just for him
You were always waiting
Are you tired of waiting so long
now you are a beast
listen too: ‘Totobola’ (1981). A-side of a single that covered one of the songs from Roquivários’ first album. This one ska he had the voice of Mário Gramaço and not of Midus. The lines became famous:They say thirteen is the unlucky number, but this game makes you money“.