Concert review: Os Mutantes at Skipper’s Smokehouse

All photos by Tracy May.

Beneath the white Christmas lights dangling from the canopy in the half-filled venue, the hum of anticipation was upset, ruptured by the audience crowding against the stage, hopping and whooping and hugging, the applause thundering as Sergio Dias, age 57, dressed in the immaculate white robe a cleanshaven cult leader would wear, stepped onto the stage at Skipper’s Smokehouse this past Tuesday, October 13, backed by a group of musicians decades younger.

Anyone expecting the Os Mutantes show — the Brazilian band's first ever in Tampa and in support of their first album in 35 years — to be like the Mike Love Beach Boys Experience, some bastardized Charlie Watts Presents The Rolling Stones, or even the current edition of Lynyrd Skynyrd at your neighborhood strawberry festival, was absolutely mistaken.

This article appears in Oct 15-21, 2009.