Shimmering
When I did my recent, inconsequential piece on Mr Phil Manzanera I mentioned, in passing, one of the all time "guitar-gods": Carlos Santana (well, he played long solos at Woodstock so I suppose that description fits). In point of fact, the very first LP I ever owned was "Carlos Santana / Buddy Miles Live", of all things! Now, that is obviously a complete ruination of a record, even if my young mind thought that it was just the best thing ever made. I pored over it's lengthy instrumental breaks like a mad monk covetting the Book Of Kells. Luckily my 2nd purchase was Lou Reed's "Transformer" and so, at last, I was on track for a glam teen age. All the young dudes, ahoy!
Still and all it reverberated with me so heavily at the time that, fairly soon, I also bought "Caravanserai", Santana's 4th and greatest album. So, after stomping around to Gary Glitter, The Sweet and Bowie, I could let myself down easily with a long, cool side of latin inspiration:
mp3: Look Up (To See What's Coming Down)
mp3: Song Of The Wind
mp3: Stone Flower
All of these tracks are gorgeous, funky, organ and guitar driven jams (with some passable vocals). They're obviously on the same planet as the 1st 3 Santana albums - lots of South American rhythms and chord progressions - but the influence of jazz just makes them all the more inviting. But, just as I like it, this is the kind of mutated jazz that doesn't hound my brain into a corner.
The things I like most are :
- the all-pervasive Hammond organ playing by Gregg Rolie, luscious and subtle on all the tracks
- the liquid, sinuous guitar solo in "Song of the Wind" (when I finally got a cd version of this album at the end of the 90s I sang along to every single note in this damn solo even though I hadn't heard it in 25 years: yes, every single nuanced note. It had been grafted into my brain oh so long ago and had re-appeared fully known, as if I'd memorised it only yesterday)
- the 'power' chords in "Stone Flower" (my first ever taste of Jobim too)
Santana's albums are available everywhere - buy them.
posted by Phil at
12:50 pm
3 Comments:
santana was a little bit a mystic band at the time for me. i never owned any albums but a cool friend of mine (the one with the huge che guevara drawing on the wall of his room) played them frequently. i liked them and was totally in love with the wonderful romantic samba pa ti which must have been from the mid 70s or something. unfortunately the download has to wait till tomorrow morning (band width problem). thanks for pointing out that power-chord thing. i didn't know what a power-chord was until a minute ago. wikipedia rules.
By
Alexander, at 4:56 am
song of the wind is vintage santana. i very much love his trademark guitar sound. a cliché i know but i feel his guitar has a soul. it moves like a snake (what you call sinuous) but it also has the blues. a kind of hot passionate latin blues. world music before the term was born.
stone flower is a different beast. there is a krautrock vibe to it. if only can would have sounded like this. they actualy did on animal waves my fave track by them. that was 5 years later though.
a beautiful cover btw. why did you almost cut the amazing oval sun out of it? it looks like a giant orange egg. surreally real.
By
Alexander, at 4:56 am
alex - agree with you on all this really. i do love songs of the wind quite a bit too. picwise - i just wanted something not too long.
By
Phil, at 7:39 am
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