Mysterious F (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
iron_and_silver) wrote2001-10-06 03:34 pm
iron_and_silver) wrote2001-10-06 03:34 pm
man. audiogalaxy has the BEST music articles. They are the Music addicts haven for mp3's and articl
Tainting the memory is a regular feature on audiogalaxy.
Tainting the Memory: Santana
Santana opens his mouth wide to suckle the sagging man-teat of Clive Davis.
Carlos Santana knew, and, although recent evidence points to the contrary, may still know, a thing or two about transcendence. He once--under the influence of Sri Chinmoy, a spiritual guru, world class athlete and creator of the monumental "Oneness Happiness Song"--changed his name to Devadip, a word that means, "the eye, the lamp and light of God." Santana even has a song called "Transcendence" (okay, it's actually called "Transcendance," but nobody ever accused Carlos of not being cheesy) on the excellent Moonflower album, the one with the lovely panoramic photo of the Himalayas on the cover. And what self-respecting imbiber of mind-expanding substances hasn't had at least one transcendent musical moment listening to Santana? Whether it be the pure ecstatic joy of psychedelic Latin jams like "Oye Como Va," the wide-eyed wonder (and again, joy) of "Everything is Coming Our Way," or the smooth soul-jazz funkiness of lesser known tunes like "I'll Be Waiting," Santana has so many great songs that at least one of them must have done it for you at some point.
Santana's power to transcend is not just musical though, it is cultural and generational and racial as well. I played basketball in high school, and the van rides home from games were always a rowdy experience, with a bunch of smelly, sweaty guys acting stupid and listening to the latest musical offerings from the Bad Boy or Death Row camps at best and Boyz II Men and Jodeci at worst. That was all well and good, but my musical horizons had been newly expanded, and I would often struggle to get my own, less broadly appealing music, heard over the van sound system. These musical interjections would most often be met with indifference if not outright derision: 16 year old sports-frenzied boys do not as a rule appreciate the drug fueled humor and existentialism of Country Joe and the Fish, nor can they be counted on to get past the abrasive vocals of David Yow in order to dig on the cathartic effects of the Jesus Lizard's insane noise funk.
So, one post-game evening as we were cruising home from some podunk school's gymnasium, eager to get back to town where our friends were busy getting on with actual lives that included such things as girls and Mad Dog and gravity bongs, I slipped in a tape of Santana's III, the one with the cover featuring the crazy inside-out guy holding the universe in his palm while Carlos, sword in hand, rides atop a winged horse. In order to effect my ruse I was sitting shotgun next to our assistant coach, a giant black man known as "Truck." As the opening percussion of "Batuka" began to build to a groove, joined shortly by its evil guitar riff and bassline, then its swirling organ, Truck--who was typically as vocally adverse to my music as were my teammates--looked over at me with a gleam of pure mischief in his eye.
"Santana!" he growled, the word rolling off his tongue as if its very utterance took him higher, "We used to get down to this back in the day."
He turned his massive head back to the road and proceeded to get into the music in that subtle, smooth way only an enormous middle aged black man driving an Econoline can, evoking images in my mind of a younger, slimmer, Truck--Jimi Hendrix-style headband on his afro-ed head--amongst a sea of paisleys and leather fringe and bell-bottoms and nubile young lasses of all races and persuasions, shaking his ample trunk to the soundtrack of Santana's afro-latin grooves. It was a beautiful vision.
For a long time, until just a few years ago in fact, that was the image that leapt to mind whenever the name of Santana was invoked. No matter how many New Agey, synthesizer-laced odes to oneness he might crank out. No matter how often he might repeat the same 3 note high-pitched guitar solo, no matter how many half-baked babblings he might utter to an outer-space angel named "Metatron," I didn't care. Santana was cool, and at least he'd never sold out. Just the opposite in fact. Back in the late '70s when his commercial appeal was first on the wane, instead of rehashing the hits and reuniting with his former bandmates (two of whom had already Tainted the Memory by then, forming schlock-rock powerhouse Journey), Carlos was committing commercial suicide, recording duets with artistic eccentrics like Alice Coltrane, John Mclaughlin, and the aforementioned Sri Chinmoy. The results of these collaborations, while often sickeningly saccharine if not chaotic and unlistenable, were anything but commercial, and always felt honest. Sometimes, as on "Transcendance" when his velvet-voiced vocalist sang, "Hello, I'm back again to share with you my heart and soul," (one of only two lines of vocals in the song), you not only knew Santana meant it, it was so heartfelt that its cliched cheesiness was out and out obliterated by its sheer ebullient musical rapture.
Then he made a comeback. At first it seemed innocuous enough. I was actually pleased when he popped up for a guitar solo on a couple of Hip Hop albums, nothing wrong with receiving his just props from the Hip Hop community, especially since he's generally classified strictly as a Classic Rocker. That was before I heard Supernatural, a huge commercial success, a phenomenon in fact, consisting entirely of collaborations with other artists, including such light-weights as Everlast, Eagle Eye Cherry, and the guy from Matchbox 20. Though hailed as a triumphant return to form, this record was little more than an elaborate industry puppet show, with monocle-sporting fatcat Clive Davis pulling the strings that made the shell of Carlos dance around on MTV and VH-1 alongside a bunch of sexy girls who probably hadn't even heard of Santana before their agents told them that there was a casting call for a video featuring that guy from Matchbox 20 who used to be fat.
What made it worse was that everyone, including Carlos, seemed to love it. The critics fawned over Supernatural's radio-friendly tripe in the same way they are now fawning over Bob Dylan's last few mediocre records, and Carlos accepted his six Grammys and hugged Clive Davis without even seeming to notice the stench of fois gras, cigar-smoke and shallow greed on the record executive's putrid breath. Santana was no longer interested in transcendence, or even in sharing his heart and soul. No the new Arista-created Santana just wants to hang a platinum record on his wall and hobnob with Wycleff in order to score a cover story in Teen People. What happened to the guy who recorded whole albums without a song shorter than twenty minutes, the guy who let Airto Moreira and Flora Purim do what they would with an entire album side? What's next, a P-Diddy remake of "Soul Sacrifice" featuring an interminable jam with Lil Bow Wow, Da Brat, and the guy from Train? He may have held out his artistic credibility (though certainly not its viability) for twenty years longer than most, but alas, Devadip no more, Carlos Santana is Tainting the Memory.
Tainting the Memory: Santana
Santana opens his mouth wide to suckle the sagging man-teat of Clive Davis.
Carlos Santana knew, and, although recent evidence points to the contrary, may still know, a thing or two about transcendence. He once--under the influence of Sri Chinmoy, a spiritual guru, world class athlete and creator of the monumental "Oneness Happiness Song"--changed his name to Devadip, a word that means, "the eye, the lamp and light of God." Santana even has a song called "Transcendence" (okay, it's actually called "Transcendance," but nobody ever accused Carlos of not being cheesy) on the excellent Moonflower album, the one with the lovely panoramic photo of the Himalayas on the cover. And what self-respecting imbiber of mind-expanding substances hasn't had at least one transcendent musical moment listening to Santana? Whether it be the pure ecstatic joy of psychedelic Latin jams like "Oye Como Va," the wide-eyed wonder (and again, joy) of "Everything is Coming Our Way," or the smooth soul-jazz funkiness of lesser known tunes like "I'll Be Waiting," Santana has so many great songs that at least one of them must have done it for you at some point.
Santana's power to transcend is not just musical though, it is cultural and generational and racial as well. I played basketball in high school, and the van rides home from games were always a rowdy experience, with a bunch of smelly, sweaty guys acting stupid and listening to the latest musical offerings from the Bad Boy or Death Row camps at best and Boyz II Men and Jodeci at worst. That was all well and good, but my musical horizons had been newly expanded, and I would often struggle to get my own, less broadly appealing music, heard over the van sound system. These musical interjections would most often be met with indifference if not outright derision: 16 year old sports-frenzied boys do not as a rule appreciate the drug fueled humor and existentialism of Country Joe and the Fish, nor can they be counted on to get past the abrasive vocals of David Yow in order to dig on the cathartic effects of the Jesus Lizard's insane noise funk.
So, one post-game evening as we were cruising home from some podunk school's gymnasium, eager to get back to town where our friends were busy getting on with actual lives that included such things as girls and Mad Dog and gravity bongs, I slipped in a tape of Santana's III, the one with the cover featuring the crazy inside-out guy holding the universe in his palm while Carlos, sword in hand, rides atop a winged horse. In order to effect my ruse I was sitting shotgun next to our assistant coach, a giant black man known as "Truck." As the opening percussion of "Batuka" began to build to a groove, joined shortly by its evil guitar riff and bassline, then its swirling organ, Truck--who was typically as vocally adverse to my music as were my teammates--looked over at me with a gleam of pure mischief in his eye.
"Santana!" he growled, the word rolling off his tongue as if its very utterance took him higher, "We used to get down to this back in the day."
He turned his massive head back to the road and proceeded to get into the music in that subtle, smooth way only an enormous middle aged black man driving an Econoline can, evoking images in my mind of a younger, slimmer, Truck--Jimi Hendrix-style headband on his afro-ed head--amongst a sea of paisleys and leather fringe and bell-bottoms and nubile young lasses of all races and persuasions, shaking his ample trunk to the soundtrack of Santana's afro-latin grooves. It was a beautiful vision.
For a long time, until just a few years ago in fact, that was the image that leapt to mind whenever the name of Santana was invoked. No matter how many New Agey, synthesizer-laced odes to oneness he might crank out. No matter how often he might repeat the same 3 note high-pitched guitar solo, no matter how many half-baked babblings he might utter to an outer-space angel named "Metatron," I didn't care. Santana was cool, and at least he'd never sold out. Just the opposite in fact. Back in the late '70s when his commercial appeal was first on the wane, instead of rehashing the hits and reuniting with his former bandmates (two of whom had already Tainted the Memory by then, forming schlock-rock powerhouse Journey), Carlos was committing commercial suicide, recording duets with artistic eccentrics like Alice Coltrane, John Mclaughlin, and the aforementioned Sri Chinmoy. The results of these collaborations, while often sickeningly saccharine if not chaotic and unlistenable, were anything but commercial, and always felt honest. Sometimes, as on "Transcendance" when his velvet-voiced vocalist sang, "Hello, I'm back again to share with you my heart and soul," (one of only two lines of vocals in the song), you not only knew Santana meant it, it was so heartfelt that its cliched cheesiness was out and out obliterated by its sheer ebullient musical rapture.
Then he made a comeback. At first it seemed innocuous enough. I was actually pleased when he popped up for a guitar solo on a couple of Hip Hop albums, nothing wrong with receiving his just props from the Hip Hop community, especially since he's generally classified strictly as a Classic Rocker. That was before I heard Supernatural, a huge commercial success, a phenomenon in fact, consisting entirely of collaborations with other artists, including such light-weights as Everlast, Eagle Eye Cherry, and the guy from Matchbox 20. Though hailed as a triumphant return to form, this record was little more than an elaborate industry puppet show, with monocle-sporting fatcat Clive Davis pulling the strings that made the shell of Carlos dance around on MTV and VH-1 alongside a bunch of sexy girls who probably hadn't even heard of Santana before their agents told them that there was a casting call for a video featuring that guy from Matchbox 20 who used to be fat.
What made it worse was that everyone, including Carlos, seemed to love it. The critics fawned over Supernatural's radio-friendly tripe in the same way they are now fawning over Bob Dylan's last few mediocre records, and Carlos accepted his six Grammys and hugged Clive Davis without even seeming to notice the stench of fois gras, cigar-smoke and shallow greed on the record executive's putrid breath. Santana was no longer interested in transcendence, or even in sharing his heart and soul. No the new Arista-created Santana just wants to hang a platinum record on his wall and hobnob with Wycleff in order to score a cover story in Teen People. What happened to the guy who recorded whole albums without a song shorter than twenty minutes, the guy who let Airto Moreira and Flora Purim do what they would with an entire album side? What's next, a P-Diddy remake of "Soul Sacrifice" featuring an interminable jam with Lil Bow Wow, Da Brat, and the guy from Train? He may have held out his artistic credibility (though certainly not its viability) for twenty years longer than most, but alas, Devadip no more, Carlos Santana is Tainting the Memory.