Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells A Story
Rod the Mod finds his solo footing, headed for stardom, with the Faces in his wake.
6:00 AM GMT 22/06/2011
Features Disc of the day
Santana
Santana (Legacy Edition)
(Columbia, 2004)
MOJO messageboarder finds a latinbluesjazzrock classic agreeably swollen...
It's too easy, almost four decades after its original release, to forget just how distinctive Santana's debut LP sounded to most music fans in 1969. Yet the intervening years have done nothing to dilute the album's explosive power, or its revolutionary blend of musical styles, so often copied by later bands but seldom matched. Recorded over a matter of weeks in May '69 and released in late August, the album was an instant hit, but while the infectious first single Evil Ways (brought to the band by their ever-chart-savvy manager Bill Graham) was clearly a stab at the pop market, the rest of the album represents an audacious and inspired mix of blues-rock (Persuasion, You Just Don't Care), Jazz Fusion (Treat) and Afro-Latin stompers (Jingo, Savor) that astounded heads everywhere. As special as the first album is, though, the material on the second CD arguably constitutes the brightest jewels in the Legacy Edition crown - Santana's entire live set at a little affair called the Woodstock Music & Arts Festival, officially released in its entirety for the first time here. The band's scene-stealing appearance in front of the 250,000-plus crowd of stoned, barely-clad hippies, and the inclusion of their incendiary performance of Soul Sacrifice in the 1970 Woodstock film and albums, transformed them from a little-known Bay Area jam band (without a record to their name, in fact, as Santana was released shortly after the event), into platinum-selling stars before the year was out. The intensity of those live cuts contrasts markedly with several tracks taken from aborted album sessions in January, which seem timid compared to the music the group would be producing just a few months later. Together they paint a compelling portrait of just how far, and how quickly, the band had developed by the time they hit that famous stage on Max Yasgur's dairy farm, and cemented their place in musical history. Perhaps it was the effects of those whirlwind days that prompted a slightly confused Gregg Rolie to announce to the masses - "It's nice to be here in New York... are we... we are in New York?" after their opener Waiting. Or maybe it was just the brown acid.
Ange Tsibogiannis
Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 6:00 AM GMT 24/03/2009
Further Listening
Santana – Abraxas (Columbia, 1970)
Mandrill – Mandrill Is (Polydor, 1972)
War – War (United Artists/1971)
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