Jose Cid, Green Windows - No Dia em Que o Rei fez Anos (2008)

This is the only LP recorded by Green Windows, the Portuguese outfit that was a variation on psychedelic group Quarteto 1111. It features songs from the three singles they released up to that date, and also some material by José Cid solo. Two of the tracks are sung in English and are completely exclusive to this LP, as they were never published in any other record.
Green Windows were formed in late 1972 with all four members of Quarteto 1111 plus background singers. They’ve recorded some songs in England, from which the most famous was “Twenty Years” (featured here in its Portuguese version), with Ivor Raymonde coordinating the operation. In 1973, they lost drummer Miguel Artur da Silveira and bassist Tozé Brito, adding Vítor Mamede (from top psychedelic group Chinchilas and jazz rock band Sindicato) and Mike Sergeant (the Scottish musician that settled in Portugal in the late 60's, having previously played in the UK with the Studio Six and in Portugal with the cream of the psychedelic groups, like Quinteto Académico + 2, Mechanical Dream and Objectivo). Next year, they would release two more singles, which were also two of the entries to that year Portuguese Song Contest as applicants to Eurovision (“Imagens” would reach third place), and had fantastic B-sides. Eventually, the career of Green Windows with José Cid spanned until 1975, when one final single was released.
What you get here is a fantastic psychedelic rock sound, with some of the tracks being killer ones. “Doce e Fácil Reino do Blá, Blá, Blá” [Kingdom of Too Many Talk], originally released in 1972, is an amazing psych hard rock tune, with José Cid distilling anger in his vocals. “Bola de Cristal” [Crystal Ball] features vocal phasers and orchestra, and equals any psych folk tune by English band Renaissance circa “Ashes Are Burning”. “Uma Nova Maneira de Encarar o Mundo” [A New Way of Facing the World] is a beautiful and contemplative song, part spoken voice, in the manner of top Spanish band Aguaviva. A special mention should also be made to “A Rosa Que Te Dei”, which was another one of the entries into the 1974 Portuguese Song Contest, finishing in second place.
To complement, there are two big pearls here, both sung in English and recorded in the UK: "Count James" (the English version of Quarteto 1111's first song, "A Lenda de El-Rei D. Sebastião", from 1967), and "Another Time To Live, Another Time To Die", both sung by Mike Sergeant. These songs are simply amazing, as the band took profit of all the possibilities given to them in the London studios and built two tracks psych / prog rock tunes (the last one of these is almost a link between their sound in 1973 and the sound they would purvey in 1974, with “Onde, Quando, Como, Porquê, Cantamos Pessoas Vivas – Obra-Ensaio de José Cid” (the prog rock classic featured in Hans Pokora “4001 Record Collector Dreams”).