Frenéticas

Originally employed as servers at Nelson Motta’s Frenetic Dancin’ Days Discothèque inside a Gávea shopping center in Rio, the future members of As Frenéticas attended customers each evening. The venue quickly acquired fashionable status, receiving a nod from Caetano Veloso in “Tigresa” and supplying the premise for a widely watched soap opera. Vocalist Dulcilene “Nega Dudu” de Moraes and five stage performers—Sandra Cristina “Sandrita Perão” Marzullo Pêra, Edir Silva “Del Castro” de Castro, and three ex-Dzi Croquette artists, Regina Maria “Tia Rege” Rodrigues Chaves, Leila “Leiloca” Neves, and Maria Lídia “Lidoka” Matuscelli—completed their shifts at midnight, then mounted a compact platform to deliver high-energy, sensual routines that enthralled the crowd. Although the discothèque folded after a single summer, one of Rio’s transient vogues, WEA chairman André Midani, a friend of Nelson Motta, arranged an audition that led to their first recording. The single “A Felicidade Bate à Sua Porta” sold 32,000 copies and the ensuing LP moved 140,000 units, securing engagements at Teatro Teresa Raquel and a string of well-attended tours. A late-’90s attempt to reconstitute the lineup ended without success, yet the Frenéticas’ mythic aura, preserved in costumes and later stylistic echoes, long outlived the group’s brief run.