Review of Santana : CARLOS SANTANA & WAYNE SHORTER/LIVE @ MONTREUX JAZZ FEST/CD

It began almost as a lark when Carlos Santana encountered his longtime friend and hero Wayne Shorter on the concert trail in Atlanta, GA, in 1987. Carlos said, "Let's start a rumor that we're putting a band together."Wayne's eyes got bigger and brighter as he smiled and then responded: "Yeah, Carlos, let's start a rumor."

A few months later the Carlos Santana/Wayne Shorter Band performed its debut concert at The Fillmore in San Francisco, the beginning of a 26-concert tour throughout the U.S. and Europe. The performance of this magnificent band was recorded at Montreux, Switzerland, on July 14, 1988, and includes interviews with Carlos Santana, Wayne Shorter and festival creator Claude Nobs.

DISC 1: Spiritual - Peraza - Shhh - Incident at Neshabur - Elegant People - Goodness & Mercy - Sanctuary

DISC 2: For Those Who Chant - Blues for Salvador - FIreball 2000 - Ballroom in the Sky - Once It's Gotcha - Mandela - Deeper, Dig Deeper - Europa.

Musicians: Carlos Santana - guitar / Wayne Shorter - saxophone / Chester Thompson - keyboards / Patrice Rushen - keyboards / Alphonso Johnson - bass / Armando Peraza - congas / Jose Chepito Areas - timbales / Leon "Ndugu" Chancler - drums

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Your latest reviews - Santana : 4.5 stars - Santana's classic debut album
Santana (1969.) Santana's first album.

In 1969, a number of new rock and roll bands were fast coming onto the musical scene, changing the face of rock and roll forever. Among the new bands that came onto the musical scene in 1969 was Santana. The group was formed by a Mexican-American guitarist named Carlos Santana. Joining forces with organist/vocalist Gregg Rollie (who would later go onto form the band Journey) and many other excellent musicians, Carlos and the boys got mass exposure at the classic Woodstock music festival. Following their performance there, the band released its first full-length, studio album. Read on for my review of Santana's 1969 self-titled debut album.

I had some pretty high expectations for this album, and not surprisingly I was impressed. I had been meaning to buy a Santana album for quite some time but kept putting it off, and finally decided on the self-titled debut (I usually buy an artist's debut first.) It was an excellent choice. Carlos Santana beautifully proves himself a musical genius on this album, combining rock and roll with elements of blues and latin rhythms. Combine this with the organ skills and vocals of fellow music legend, Gregg Rollie, and you know you've got one hell of an album on your hands. The band's first big hit, Evil Ways, can be found on this album. This was the song that launched the group's mainstream popularity, and it's not hard to see why it still gets played on the radio on a regular basis. No other song on the album reached the same type of popularity, but at the same time, every other song on here is excellent. If you're a fan of rock and roll from the late sixties and early seventies, it's very unlikely that you would dislike this album. Where Santana succeeds on their debut, they succeed beautifully. It's a pretty short album, but it's flawless (the only reason I didn't give it a perfect score is because it's not the band's best work overall.) No classic rock collection is complete without this musical masterpiece.

There are two major versions of this album available - the single-disc remaster, and the two-CD Legacy Edition remaster. The single-disc version is the cheaper of the two, and you get three bonus tracks the band performed live at Woodstock. The more pricey Legacy Edition features a whole second disc of bonus materal, as well as THE ENTIRE WOODSTOCK PERFORMANCE. I personally recommend the Legacy Edition since the Woodstock perfomance is one of the most important rock and roll performances of all time, but if you're on a budget, you can't go wrong with the single-disc one, either.

With Santana's debut, Carlos beautifully demonstrated just how excellent a musician he could be. And future albums would be improvements still, showing that he truly was a musical genius. I had high expectations for the band's debut album, and all of them were met. If you're looking to start a Santana collection and would rather get an album than a hits compilation, the group's 1969 self-titled debut is highly recommended. It deserves a place in everyone's classic rock collection.