I lived in Brazil very briefly in the mid-80s. I fell in love with Brazilian music, especially the musicians who became famous in Brazil during the late 60s: people like Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Jorge Ben, Os Mutantes, etc. But I also fell in love with contemporary pop and rock musicians like Legião Urbana, Paralamos do Sucesso, and the subject of this post, Camisa de Venus. Camisa de Venus literally means “Venus’s shirt” and was “camisa de Venus” was slang for “condom.” It would be a little like an American band naming thmselves, i dunno, Scumbag or Steely Dan. You kind of knew they were punks.
They had a big hit while I lived there: "Eu Não Matei Joana D'Arc” (this translates to “I Didn’t Kill Joan of Arc”). As bands go, their output wasn’t epochal. But "Eu Não Matei Joana D'Arc” sticks in my memory as kind of a snotty classic. Here it is:
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