Your favorite "Crystal Illusions"

Which is your FAVORITE Version of "Crystal Illusions" by?

  • Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66

    Votes: 12 70.6%
  • Paul Desmond

    Votes: 3 17.6%
  • Edu Lobo

    Votes: 2 11.8%

  • Total voters
    17
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Dave

Well-Known Member
Which ONE has

Your Favorite

CRYSTAL ILLUSIONS

...???



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Dave

[Moderator: Post edited to remove color effects since some color schemes would render it unreadable.]
 
Not a favorite, but they're all about equal in my book. Sergio's gets a slight nod over the other two.
 
This is a little tough to answer because, like Rudy, this is not a favorite of mine. Actually, it's one of the songs I dislike most on both the Mendes and Desmond albums. (The Lobo album rarely gets played here.)

I'd have to go with Desmond's cover, since the arranging is tighter and better overall. I've been a little annoyed how the electric pianist on the Lobo version doesn't use a sustain pedal, which makes the sound rough. With Mendes, it simply didn't appeal to me, and I thought that the climax of dissonant strings at the end was overdoing it.
 
I go for Edu Lobo's version hands down. I like his vocals on this song, and I like the groove on Lobo's version. Sergio's is okay, but it gets too cluttered for my taste, although I like the piano solo in the middle. Paul Desmond's version was the pits, since that whole album was not really what he was about.



Capt. Bacardi
 
I voted for Sergio's version. I just like how the last half of the song is this instrumental / trippy escape. Lani singing: "I'm only looking for the sun... Want my eyes to feel the rain... Will begin and end again" She makes the lyrics real and it sounds like she's lost trying to get somewhere.
 
Captain Bacardi said:
Sergio's is okay, but it gets too cluttered for my taste, although I like the piano solo in the middle.

Good point--it's all that leaden orchestration that drags the song down for me. That's actually why I prefer Desmond's version some of the time--it's lighter.

Makes me wonder what a version with Brasil '66 without all the heavy-handed orchestral clutter would have sounded like. That's why I mainly prefer the earlier albums--a little bit of orchestral sweetening is fine, but IMHO, things go downhill when it dominates.
 
This song is one of the few where I think the orchestra really adds to the mix, rather than dragging it down. The strings in particular give the song its spooky quality.

I think the orchestration is pretty good on the FOOL album, but by this album it was just taking over. That could be one reason why I like the STILLNESS album so much...practically zero orchestration there on many of the songs.
 
Mike Blakesley said:
This song is one of the few where I think the orchestra really adds to the mix, rather than dragging it down. The strings in particular give the song its spooky quality.

Indeed it does. I just feel that the way the song ends, I feel like I'm being bludgeoned by strings. I'm still one to maintain that strings have no place on a Mendes album--give me the Brasil '66 band anytime. :agree: The way strings took over on the later albums, the less I like them--I feel it takes away from their "Brasil-ness".

Imagine "Song Of No Regret" with just the solo guitar, and maybe an alto flute and acoustic bass...what a lost opportunity.
 
I really enjoy the Mendes version of "Crystal Illusions", partly because it's the album closer. I think if that wild finish had occured in a middle track, it would have been a letdown afterwards. As it stands, I find it a perfect "crashing" way to end the album.

Harry
 
Imagine "Song Of No Regret" with just the solo guitar, and maybe an alto flute and acoustic bass...

Sort of like the STILLNESS title track, in other words! :D

A good idea for a Sergio album of the future would be to take those later heavily "orchestrated" songs and release them again without all the orchestration. Sort of like the Beatles did with LET IT BE - NAKED, except Sergio might have to add in a few instruments here and there to fill in some areas. But it would have possibilities.
 
Well, my reason for Paul Desmond's version coming in First-Place was that he gave its "experimentation" The Right Touch... True, an "All Brasilian Album" really didn't seem to be in his "character" and "Crystal..." being done as a bit of an an "afterthought" nearly renders it my "least-favorite track" on ...Hot Afternoon, just compared to how more "finished" the other songs on the album sound, which make them as a whole, more preferred... The album's loose cuts are a lot more spacious and the tighter compositions are also avoided being "too restricted"...


Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66 give "Crystal..." a bit of a climactic feel and building-up the tempo a notch towards the end, and of course adding those strings may have served as some inspiration for Tommy James & The Shondell's "CRYSTAL Blue Persuasion"...!

However, the string-orchestrations are so overbearinging, and really overwhelm the song, as does almost giving it a "false-ending" and I, too, am now a bit curious about what the song would sound like without 'em... The psychedelic/pop flourishes forshadow an effort like Ye-Me-Le on the horizon, and orchestrations do come a bit more minimal 'round that time, especially by the release of Stillness, of which a similar "...Illusions" would sound more "in-place"...

Gone, then, are the more arty and less-cluttered and of course, more authentic and simpler Brasilian Pop of Herb...Presents and Equinox, which led to the ambitions growing, yet remaining more milder on something like Look Around and Fool On The Hill, of which the sound was a bit tighter, the band getting a little looser, and nothing more really left to be desired as far as "outreach" was concerned...

Hence, the Crystal Illusions outing as a whole going a more Trippy route, and just seeming to be empty in a few places and the title-track being put in Second-Place here on the grounds that there is a huge contrast here and with material like "Sittin' On The Dock Of The Bay", "Goodbye Sadness", "Dois Dias" and "Salt Sea" which were more simply done, and still showing some sign of "growth"...


Edu Lobo's version just seemed to be a blue-print for improvasion by artists such as Sergio and out of nowehere comes Desmond "jazzing it up", though keeping in in its Brasilian context... Edu just made his version a bit "plain" and I think he needed to do more than just "sustain a note, or two"... Falling into Third-Place, though also "Last but not Least", meaning that it is a good song, and my discovering it and listening to it mostly of late, long after discovering the other two versions, reveals that despite how I probably needed to give it more of a fair shake, I wasn't really blown-away enough by it, that I would'a ranked it any higher, either...



Dave
 
Dave said:
Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66 give "Crystal..." a bit of a climactic feel and building-up the tempo a notch towards the end, and of course adding those strings may have served as some inspiration for Tommy James & The Shondell's "CRYSTAL Blue Persuasion"...!

Not possible. CRYSTAL ILLUSIONS was released later in the year than Tommy James' record.

Harry
 
Harry said:
Dave said:
"Crystal..."...may have served as some inspiration for Tommy James & The Shondell's "CRYSTAL Blue Persuasion"...!

Not possible. CRYSTAL ILLUSIONS was released later in the year than Tommy James' record.

Harry


Yow, I never knew that! In that case, could Tommy's song have been inspiration to Sergio?! :freak: :tongue:artyhat:

There are some far-out, wayward moments on the C/I album that sure blended in with the Mod/Psychedelic crowd... Just the idea of Lani Hall singing how she "left her home in Georgia, headed for the 'Frisco Bay...", maybe... :laugh:



Dave

...Getting just a wee-bit carried away with things--and trying to avoid use o' my KRAYOLA's here, too...! :)
 
Y'all need to remember that this was written for a play. There are bootlegs of the original theater performances and the "original" version was very spare and haunting. That said, add me to the camp who loves Grusin's orchestration for Sergio's version. Again, it must be seen in its historical (hysterical?) context--this was 1969, after all, pretty near the apex of the psychedelic movement and there's no question that this was Sergio's most psychedelic recording. In fact, I remember very well when the album came out, "Crystal Illusions" (the song) was featured on one of the nascent AOR stations in Seattle and the DJ specifically said something about it being "Sergio like you've never heard him before--definitely trippy" (with "trippy" said in that Wolfman Jack kind of way :wink: ). I actually love Desmond's album, too, but, then, I'm a pushover for Desmond and Brasil, so when you put the two together, I'm pretty much gone.
 
Portlan' said:
...Y'all need to remember that this was written for a play...


Well, which Play was it written for...? Yes, the Haunting Qualities of it do give way to certain Theatrics, so that, yeah, I'd guess that a Play is where there'd be some connection to...

--And that's counting all THREE versions of it!!! :agree:



Dave
 
Have you noticed its parenthetical title? "Memorias de Marta Sare," was first mounted (no pun intended once you read on) in 1968--a play about a northeastern (Brasil, obviously) prostitute who rises to fame and fortune in Rio.
 
OK, now I noticed... Just didn't know more "background information" about its Origin; really just took "Crystal Illusions" to be an "alternative translation" as opposed to be something more "direct", as neither "title"--English or Brasilian--are particularily mentioned in the verses...

Pretty interesting Story Line and enough that this Production should'a gone a bit more mainstream and existed along the lines of stuff from PHANTOM OF THE OPERA to PIPPIN to MAN FROM LA MANCHA... Just as far as its tenure on "Stage" is concerned...



Dave
 
It wasn't a musical--it just had some incidental music by Lobo in it. Both Lobo and Chico Buarque (A Banda--Miucha's brother and Bebel's uncle) wrote a lot of theater music. We're in the midst of a gigantic remodel and I have all my CD's in boxes (suitcases, actually, and you *don't* want to know how many, LOL), so I can't say this for sure, but I think there's even a Buarque/Lobo collaboration on a theater piece that I have the CD of.
 
Er, I brought this one up, now that Crystal Illusions--the album and the song, are being "currently reviewed" in another Thread, and now that we've gained a few more Members, or perhaps, Participants at A&M Corner, I would get their opinion on which/who's version of "Crystal Illusions" is "The Best"...!



Dave
 
Well, at the risk of being a verbose self-proclaimed critic (and thereby inciting eternal damnation for offering a worthless critique on something 40 years on), I’ll merely state that the Desmond version gives the song a tight, succinct reading: be it the excellent alto solos or the much preferred Edu Lobo + Wanda De Sah vocals.
 
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