When Santana was great!

My copy is whipped... I'm due for an upgrade. Shouldn't be hard to find but I never see it clean, whereas I have probably 5 copies of Abraxas I've picked up on the cheap or free

On unperson's recommendation, I listened to "Africa Speaks" and found it to be quite good on the whole. A little overlong- I guess he cut 40 tunes and edited down to 11 running 66 minutes. Anyway, it's really a good listen and happily is recorded well. As usual for a Santana record, the percussion sounds fantastic.

I was surprised in poking around how much music he's put out in recent years. I only just found out earlier this year that he'd done an album with the mostly-original Santana band, and hadn't been aware of his album with the Isleys at all. Anyway, I'm pretty impressed that he's out there still making new music.

was also pleasantly surprised by Africa Speaks, almost bailed at the corny spoken word at the beginning, glad I didn't

SHIT GODDAMN

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKprh6mejgg

Also want to report that through the Emitt rhodes thread of all places I discovered that Jose "Chepito" Areas put out a solo album in '74 that's on Spotify and is quite dope. A lot like early Santana, but with less guitar and more horns, plus the keyboard player utilizes an Arp from time to time.

“Yours Is the Light” from Welcome sounds like Carlos enlisted The Free Design to front the band.

Count me in the Lotus brigade. There's this great moment on it where he busts out momentarily with the melody from "My Favorite Things", ending it with a climb up to a high-pitched wail. If you need only one moment to grasp the man's essential greatness (and I pretty much did)...

FWIW, I believe the moment in question happens during "Incident At Neshabur." Count me in too - as good as those first three albums are, I think Lotus is THE Santana masterpiece, easily Carlos's greatest album, not to mention the greatest configuration of the band.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiYBWwE0EvI

Somebody points out in the comments on that video that Carlos Santana was only 26 in 1973.

In my high school art class, one of my fellow students seemed to paint nothing but portraits of Miles Davis and Carlos Santana. On our outing to the art gallery, he kept encouraging us and the teacher to take turns listening to Lotus on his Walkman.
I still haven't heard it, though, partly because I found Welcome pretty dull and so wasn't that interested in exploring his jazz phase any further.

Lotus is closer to Agharta than any kind of jazz. It'll take your head off.

Goddammit:

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/carlos-santana-anti-trans-comments-concert-1234811691/

he old. the crowd seems to be fine with it...

i tell you what, sometimes it seems like i ain't got nobody that i can depend on.

it's actually pretty fucking wild, carlos santana feels the need to get up and stage and announce his beliefs about my gender identity. carlos, i put half a sliced up chicken sausage in my leftover gluten-free spaghetti for lunch. what are your feelings about that? is it right? wrong? please, carlos, the world is waiting to hear your opinion about this pressing issue!

shutting up is so utterly free and these dudes still gotta say "I'm weighing in!" fuckin', awful.

I've noticed this thing with many boomers who are generally/generically progressive is do not get them started on Trans issues or pronouns.

The free love generation

this guy has always been a pseudo spiritual nitwit

like what is this horseshit supposed to mean?

“Here is my personal goal that I strive to achieve every day. I want to honor and respect all person’s ideals and beliefs whether they are LGBTQ or not,” he wrote. “This is the planet of free will and we have all been given this gift. I will now pursue this goal to be happy and have fun, and for everyone to believe what they want and follow in your hearts without fear. It takes courage to grow and glow in the light that you are and to be true, genuine, and authentic. We grow and learn to shine our light with Love and compliments. Have a glorious existence. Peace.”

"please remember me for how much my triple live album _lotus_ shreds and not for the colossally dumb shit i said towards the end of my life. thank you."

Devadipshit Carlos Santana

okay lol

On the big 1999 album he wrote shit like "Dave Matthews! My soul brother! May our souls dance through the cosmos!" or some shit -- the sort of thing that Woody Allen would make fun of in 1977. These hippies are more dangerous than the GOP because they support a kind of inclusion that looks and talks like them

"please remember me for how much my triple live album _lotus_ shreds and not for the colossally dumb shit i said towards the end of my life. thank you."

I'm trying very hard to do exactly this.

I actually did like Santana and Lotus is a great live album, but I'm not sure he ever made a truly great studio album - I have reservations about even the best of them, and after 1975, I'm not sure he ever put out another track that I'd want to listen to again, let alone a whole album. He could still be a great guitarist - in late 1980, on three consecutive nights, Bob Dylan had three different guitarists sit in on "The Groom’s Still Waiting at the Altar" and Santana came out on top - but it also means he's no longer anything more than a good show on the nostalgia circuit. And now that's been ruined by his transphobia.

I'm not sure he ever made a truly great studio album - I have reservations about even the best of them, and after 1975, I'm not sure he ever put out another track that I'd want to listen to again, let alone a whole album.

I don't want to have the conversation in any more depth than this, I really don't, but I'll rep for everything from the debut through Borboletta, which was 1974, and then it was pretty much 45 years of pandering swill until Africa Speaks, which came out in 2019. (That was when I interviewed him.)

So I guess he’s not great anymore.

people live too long now.

if he had choked on his own vomit and died when he was 30 we would all have santana tattoos. well, i wouldn't but more people would. you gotta think of these things when you are young. remembering to die that is.

(i will always love pretty much everything he did in the 70s - like, ALL of it - but that plane crash in january of 1981 - so soon after brother lennon - i'll never forget where i was. hardees. waterbury, connecticut.)

people live too long now.

This is really going to interfere with my enjoyment of The Grammy-Award Winning 1999 Hit Smooth By Santana Feat. Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty Off The Multi-Platinum Album Supernatural

I've noticed this thing with many boomers who are generally/generically progressive is do not get them started on Trans issues or pronouns.

― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain), Thursday, 24 August 2023 22:32 (yesterday) link

makes me glad Jerry Garcia isn't around because i always have this fear he would've said some stupid shit like this as well.

otm

ALL of them will say stupid shit if you ask them!

i dunno, i say stupid shit too. not in front of a packed concert crowd though. if i were rich i would shut up so hard!

yah idk. Garcia didn't really volunteer a lot of opinions. Weir does interviews all the time, I think he's like 80, he doesn't pull this shit.

true, neither does Fogerty, Neil, etc

or Dylan, Joni, Mick or Keith (afaik...)

#notallboomers

Also possible to be progressive on these issues and still a Boomer, for ex Deborah Harry and Chris Stein of Blondie (Harry being older than Santana or Alice Cooper).

I think Neil Young learned his lesson after coming out for Reagan in the early 80s.

xp or vocally hostile to trans folks and not a Boomer (like several prominent names that immediately come to mind)

santana's a boomer but none of the others are

I know but the term Boomer is regularly used as a catchall when generalizing about older ppl (including on here) and without slicing & dicing exactly when they were born in relation to 1946 (so I take the term in that spirit).

i am also a boomer and i appreciate a more meticulous precision (including on here)

Well that's certainly fair (I'd prefer fewer age-based generalizations at all...)

yoo no boomah yoo a sinkah

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8pRL2ot2J58/UmjlfwfGFFI/AAAAAAAAOd8/do0NRAr-hmY/s1600/both.gif

okay sorry i don't want to be anti-boomer in honor of my good friend sang froid he doesn't like it when i boomerbait. i think lots of people say dumb stuff about sex and gender all the time. no age is immune really. its a hard subject for a lot of people to wrap their heads around. especially if they grew up with religion. it can be hard for me! but i keep reading and learning and i talk to my kids about it all the time because they are experts. and i read the ilx.

and jesus yeah i just can't imagine saying the shit that carlos said. in public. to people! so damaging. just let people enjoy the show, stupido!