I'm making a brief detour from our English theme to celebrate the 80th birthday of Sergio Mendes. My brother Howard told me about this yesterday, the great man turned 80 yesterday. Howard introduced me to Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66 sometime in the early 90s and I have never looked back.
They did a sort of greatest hits compilation called *Foursider,* which I bought on CD and quickly became a Desert Island Disc for me. I played it at a party I had in my cute little one-bedroom apartment on West Wash back in Madison. One of the attendees was my friend Christine Seitz, who went NUTSO when the music came on. She had that album on LP back in the day. She asked to look at the CD. She laughed her head off and said, "Ya know, it's called *Foursider* because it was a double-album set. Four sides. Now it's a onesider."
Happy birthday, Sergio! Here's the band introduced by the equally groovy Eartha Kitt, doing one of their best-known songs, "Mas Que Nada":