Genival Lacerda - Ralador De Côco (O bom) (1974) Tropicana

Genival Lacerda - Ralador De Côco (O bom) (1974) Tropicana

Ralador De Côco (O bom) is a pedal-to-the-metal, throbbing, turbocharged forró côco monster. It’s relentless. It’s breathless. Not only is it Genival Lacerda's greatest album, it’s one of the greatest forró albums ever recorded. It’s also a very difficult LP to find.

Genival Lacerda - Ralador De Côco (mono forroemvinil & stereo forrolpgringo transfer versions) from Ralador De Côco (O bom) (1974) Tropicana  

Click on the video above to play the song.

iOS? click here: http://youtu.be/tS7ats6EkLA

Genival Lacerda - Maria Nega (forrolpgringo stereo transfer version) from Ralador De Côco (O bom) (1974) Tropicana 

Click on the video above to play the song.

iOS? click here: http://youtu.be/F7xVd6evLdE

The rarity of forró..

Most forró albums are pretty rare. Collectors and dealers speculate, based on available stock of used LPs, rumors, collector demand and perhaps industry insider information, that average major label pressings ranged from 500 to 2000 copies. It’s anyone’s guess how many records private labels pressed. Luiz Gonzaga probably had substantially larger pressings, but he was the great exception.

Forró records were probably played at parties or casually around homes, with varying degrees of care. Quite a few LPs were probably thrown away over the years. Most excellent / mint copies that I've acquired came from liquidated radio station libraries. Finding these records can be exceedingly difficult, especially outside of Brazil. Like Jackson do Pandeiro's O Dono Do Forró, Genival Lacerda’s Ralador De Côco (O bom) was ridiculously hard to track down. This is slightly odd, because Genival (and Jackson, for that matter) was a popular and well known artist back then. Tropicana was a pretty big label for forró. It was distributed by CBS. You’d think that the pressing size would have been generous and copies would be fairly common, but it took 4 years of hunting to find a copy of the LP.  *Thank you Joel Stones of Tropicalia In Furs for your generous help!

Something Sounds Odd with this LP....

I first downloaded Ralador De Côco (O bom) in 2009 from a great blog called forroemvinil. After 4 years of listening to an MP3 dub, I put the LP on the turntable and I was surprised to hear loud accordion and flute coming through the speakers.  After a little tinkering with the stereo, I realized that the version on forroemvinil, which is what I have been listening to for FOUR YEARS, featured the left channel in both the left and right speakers.  This means the right half of the stereo image was gone in the forroemvinil transfer.  

So, in 2013, I got both an album that I knew and loved and something that sounded brand new. Although it’s nice to hear the album properly, the incorrect transfer, which featured almost nothing but percussion, cavaquinho and vocals has a certain seductive and reduced power of it's own.

You can really hear how distinctive the difference is with the forroemvinil transfer vs. my new transfer below. I actually prefer the forroemvinil mix for certain songs because of the rawness and energy, primarily thanks to the economy of the instrumentation.

Genival Lacerda - Celina & Desafio (forrolpgringo stereo LP mix transfers) from Ralador De Côco (O bom) (1974) Tropicana  

Click on the video above to play the song.

iOS? click here: http://youtu.be/jbkZWypbGqw

Genival Lacerda - Celina & Desafio (mono double left channel forroemvinil mix transfers) from Ralador De Côco (O bom) (1974) Tropicana  

Click on the video above to play the song.

iOS? click here: http://youtu.be/MVItXjWT4ok

Genival The Great...

Genival sounded fiery and masterful on Ralador De Côco (O bom). Like the Beatles slamming through the recording of Please Please Me after 100s of gigs and years of experience, 20 years of recording and road work made Lacerda a master. Not everything catches fire for an artist, but when it does, the world is lucky enough to get a record like this one.

Lacerda’s songs tended to sound faster and more hyper than any other forró artist. Genival’s voice sounded close the point of frying and cracking throughout the album. The songs are like a live-in-the-studio greatest hits with entirely new material. The tunes are immediate, wild and even epic. Genival’s Ralador De Côco (O bom) caught fire with the right songs and band in the right studio at the right moment. It’s by far his best album and greatest artistic achievement.

Genival the great... Genival Lacerda strikes a pose for Ralador De Côco (O bom) 1974