The First Mutante - Texto de Marconi Ricciardi

The first Mutante!
- by Marconi Ricciardi

Left to right Cláudio and Rafael on the top of the Sugar Loaf, when Marconi Ricciardi knew them and the Laranja... Photo by Dalgiza.

(The text below is part of the e-mail message my dear friend Marconi Ricciardi sent from Australia, where he lives now, in May 9, 2006 to our friend, an american film-maker in Hollywood, which name I supressed. The message contains three parts, but I am presenting here only the one about myself. It is important to say: today I am living in another place; the one described by Marconi is the same from which I created the flying saucer Laranja to the opus Géa. - CCDB June 8, 2006).

Dear ____,

It's been quite a long time. Things can get pretty busy here at work sometimes. Well, anyway...:)

It's so funny that a freckled, blonde, bushy-haired girl from California introduced you to Mutantes for the first time!!!!

Well, good things can come from places you never expect...

Things were a bit different for me. After all, Mutantes is part of any one's life who grew up in Brazil in the early 70's. So, I know Mutantes' music from as early as any memory I have of my childhood. Especially because their songs were not only on the radio but also on TV everyday on Shell's adds.

I met the three original Mutantes, Claudio, Sergio and Arnaldo on different occasions. So, I'm gonna split my story in three parts. It can get a bit long and I just hope you don't fall asleep...:)

INTRODUCTION
I come from a very musical family. My father plays the violin, my mom sings and my brother plays guitar and flute. So, music was always on in my house.

I started studying the piano when I was 9 and always lived between classical and rock world in a sort of healthy schizophrenia. And as long as I remember I always LOVED the Beatles. So, this was the perfect environment to be passionately trapped in the Mutantes world. So, time went by and I was growing up in this very healthy music scene, Mutantes included!!! But Mutantes was only music to me. I had no idea there was a whole lot more to it, including the electronic equipment and instruments used by the group.

CLAUDIO
Then everything changed when I met the 1st Mutante: Claudio...

...growing up with Mutantes, Beatles, Beach Boys, Quincy Jones, Led Zeppelin in one year and Paganini, Bach, Stravinsky, Chopin and Beethoven in the other created a very demanding person when it comes to quality. And the quest for quality is what brought me for the first time to Claudio's house.

Most audio and musical equipments in Brazil were crap at that time and importing from the US was almost impossible due to the extremely high importing taxes (around 200% sometimes).

So, it was 1986 and a friend who I played with brought me together with 3 other band members to that horrible building at the neighbourhood of Laranjeiras in Rio. The building looked like one of those old government complex in that late 70's flat and squared architecture style. External walls were really dirty and from the street perspective it seemed to have 10 thousand windows.

To gain access to the elevator we had to go through a concrete ramp and at that point I remember making myself the famous question: "What the fuck am I doing here?"...:)

The building had 2 blocks of apartments with 6 elevators each and we could see that only 2 or 3 were working at that time.

So, there was a huge line and we had to wait something like 10 minutes or more to get in the elevator. But once we got inside I immediately thought that the waiting was not long enough to prepare myself for that ride. The elevator got packed, the speed felt like 1mile/day, the smell that was coming from the vent shafts were awful and we were heading for the 15th floor, the last one. So, for the second time I asked myself the famous question.

Finally we got there. We stepped out to a very long corridor with too many doors and too little light. We looked for the the right number and there we were, facing a brown door. It was different from all the others on the corridor. It had some sort of odd wooden box in the shape of a half hexagon popping out the door. With a closer look we could see that it has 6 or 7 peepholes facing every possible direction, including floor and ceiling. So, basically you could see if an Oompa Loompa was waiting for you with a Golden ticket by the door or if Dracula was hanging on the ceiling thirsty for you neck...:)

My first thought was: I wanna look through this thing!!!! It took me some visits to ask permission to do that and it was worth it!!!

We rang the bell and I guess everyone including myself kept staring at the thousand eyes device trying to catch a glimpse of light...

it never came.

We heard the familiar sound of a door being unlocked, a head popped out and with a beautiful and welcome smile said: "Hello, how can I help you?". There he was, standing in front of me, the first Mutante!!!

My friend told him the purpose of our visit and the door fully opened...When I looked inside, I felt like it was not only a door, but a passage to another dimension. And do you wanna know something? It really was!!!!

I got inside that new world. For the first time I was there: Laranja 1509-A and I feel like I never left!

The contrast between the ugly journey inside the building and through the dark corridor and the light that came from Claudio's laboratory was overwhelming. Like a thousand times stronger than any Sci-Fi movie.

We were invited in and talked about music and audio. Claudio showed us his new creation, the superamplifier Turbo-Compressor 500. I had never seen something like that before and when I learned the tech specifications it just blew my mind. I still own a newer version of that superamplifier, the Turbo-Compressor Bi 1000. I tried to buy something equivalent here in Australia but it just doesn't exist.

Anyway, back to Claudio, I don't know if you ever talked to him in person, but his voice is smooth and his accent is very clear. And he can be very accurate and specific when it comes to give you an explanation about anything. As a musician I knew I had found something that would fulfill some aspects of my quest for quality but there was more to it...and I could feel very strongly that there was a lot more to it, so I came back, but this time, on my own.

At that point I had no idea that Claudio was the guy whose articles I used to read at Nova Eletronica magazine when I was a lot younger and had a great interest in electronics.

At that point I had no idea that Claudio was the 1st Mutante.

I just learned that later because I kept coming back and through the years our conversations grew from audio and electronics to music, food, poetry, ballet, women, life, death, the Universe, God, Mutantes...

You can imagine how amazed I was when Claudio showed me for the first time a collection of photo albums with pictures that showed a wonderful story that was still about to happen. He showed me pictures of how he built the first Guitar and the first mixing desk and I saw pictures and listened to amazing stories of the recording of Mutantes' Albums. I could realize that I had a lot to learn from a guy who did everything he did and virtually nobody really knew about it!!!!

...and somehow, all that talking brought us to the point that we became and still are the best friends two people can truly be.

See this text to know something more about Marconi and his opinion about this site (in Portuguese)

Hear and download to your computer the music "Potencial", composed by Marconi Ricciardi for the opus Géa

More English pages

Something more about CCDB (in Portuguese)

Pequena História de CCDB (Little story of CCDB)

Melhor que o resto do site? - confira! (Better than the rest of this site? - check it!)

About CCDB literary opus

TO ALL EDITORS (in English)

When Géa is filmed (in English)

Nem plágio nem coincidência (the most visited page of this site)

Géa em quadrinhos (the opus Géa in comic strips)