When Santana was great!

"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!

The one time I saw Santana in concert, in 1988, I feel like they only played two or three songs that even had vocals. The rest of the time they shut the fuck up and jammed. He should go back to that.

Yeah it's (not)funny this week at least three big terfy bs bombs from music icons (iswis) but all offered up in v different ways (Roisin on social media somewhat uncoaxed, Alice Cooper in an interview response where he just started digging a hole out of practically nothing and Santana on stage).

look i have no interest in trying to defend any boomers out there that will probably end up disappointing me far too soon, but i was heartened to see Dead & Co. including trans flags and imagery in some of their screen projections over the past two summers. small beans, to be sure, but given what we heard from Santana and Cooper this week, i'll take some small solace in knowing there are other boomers that aren't terrible.

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

― ROSE, W. AXL UNITED STATES INDIVIDUAL (morrisp)

roger waters supports trans rights but he also supports putin so, uh.

to me boomer is a state of mind, maaaaan. i've known boomers who were like 20, you'd tell a joke and they'd say "i don't get it" like you were supposed to explain it to them. that's peak boomer imo!

That's just people, IMO

(I don't think it's great to use a generation name as a put-down, but this is probably a discussion for a different place)

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.

"When Jim Morrison died, his record sales just took a dramatic rise! Now conversely Peter Frampton, by NOT dying..." (sketch begins at 10:00)

look i have no interest in trying to defend any boomers out there that will probably end up disappointing me far too soon, but i was heartened to see Dead & Co. including trans flags and imagery in some of their screen projections over the past two summers. small beans, to be sure, but given what we heard from Santana and Cooper this week, i'll take some small solace in knowing there are other boomers that aren't terrible.

― Maxmillion D. Boosted (jon /via/ chi 2.0)

ok fwiw some celebrity who doesn't really have a stake in things either way coming out publicly in support of trans people means way more to me than someone coming out publicly in opposition to trans people. i'm not sure why i feel that way. maybe it's like... i feel like the threat to trans people comes from institutions of power. i mean what am i gonna say, oh shit carlos santana has spoken, i guess that settles The Trans Debate, time for me to detransition, hey carlos wanna help me sew this thing back on?

whereas support of trans people... i see that as an act of solidarity, of people power, though if the person supporting trans rights is also supporting vladimir putin i might perhaps have less than full confidence as to the depth of their commitment.

i also do think that i see trans rights as being a fundamentally feminist issue... men don't face threats to their bodily autonomy the way cis women and all trans people do. the opinions of radicals and feminists mean more to me than the opinions of cis dudes, no matter how much they supported radical politics in the 70s (i don't have any reason to believe that santana's support of angela davis _wasn't_ genuine).

of the three, the ones i think is the... most disappointing is roisin, even though i honestly have no fucking clue who she is. women's rights and trans rights are inextricably linked, imo.

i also do think that i see trans rights as being a fundamentally feminist issue... me

interestingly enough, someone in the Dead camp seems to think along these lines. i saw them live on June 24, 2022, the same day as the Roe decision and they opened with "Man Smart, Woman Smarter" (i know, a terrible song) with a lot of imagery of pro-choice protests, the women's march and, iirc, that's the song where they started incorporating the trans flag as well.

in honor of my good friend sang froid he doesn't like it when i boomerbait

thanks scott!! (as i stare down 65 which happens at the stroke of midnight.) yeah, i dunno. i think people can even say what santana said and still be good, decent, moral people. not everybody gets it at the same time. i find the kneejerk invective harder to deal with than what he said. being an old person i sort of preferred old liberalism where commonalities were emphasized. like putting down "human" for race, har har. now it's all about differences, which i'm not sure is a turn for the better. tear down the fences. maaaan.

whoops i can't even do italics right at my advanced age.

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

Joni “I went to Halloween party in blackface and then put it on an album cover” Mitchell? That Joni?

And then did a whole interview babbling about how she really felt like a Black man and started shucking and jiving Joni? Do you mean her?

lmao

Re; Alice Cooper, is that really a surprise? Guy was a thoroughly conservative Republican even before the '80s happened. He was always a George W. Bush supporter and blasted Springsteen, R.E.M., Fogerty, Mellencamp, Raitt, etc for openly opposing him, claiming that was treasonous and even (get this) a betrayal of rock n' roll. There's like a dozen and a half classic Alice Cooper cuts from the early '70s that I'll always love, but the guy himself has always been a complete tool.

OTM. Guy is classic white-knuckle cleaned-up addict who saw the light and is now just kind of a hater.

It's sad because I used to see him on e.g. Room 101, Never Mind on the Buzzcocks, probably other panel show type things here in the UK and always thought he was affable and quite charming as a person (unlike, say, Zappa or Rundgren or other oddball peers of his). Ah well.

Yeah, I've said this before, but he created a great character in the '60s called Alice Cooper, but it's as if ever since Alice's success he's been trying to backtrack and diminish everything Alice ever stood for.

And he's an extreme Christian and that colors EVERYTHING