VIVA SANTANA!

Santana

Jazz Rock/Fusion

3.55 | 20 ratings

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ZowieZiggy
Prog Reviewer

In those sad days for the Santana fan, each album reminding "the good old days" was very welcome.

This double CD features a combination of existing studio tracks (some being average ones like "Everybody's Everything") in an alternate version, some demo ones, a lot of live numbers of which "Persuasion" in its Woodstock version. From Woodstock as well, their inmense "Soul Sacrifice" is released here, but not in its long format (just the soundtrack number starting with the "Crowd Rain Chant" and clocking at 8'49"). The live ones are the most appealing to my ears.

A few new songs : "Ballin" which is a slow intrumental featuring great organ and good background guitar work. The track then kicks really off during the last two minutes. It turns into a frenetic number reminiscent of "Batuka". My preferred unreleased track.

"Bambara" is a tribal chant that sould have been left unreleased (but it only last for eighty- seven seconds). "Angel Negro" is a good-latin piece of music. Not complex, great rythm, poor Spanish lyrics. Average backing vocals. Not bad but not great. "Just Let The Music Speak" is a rythmy one : pop and not bad at all, it seems that it comes out of the Hall & Oates repertoire. "Daughter Of The Night" is a bit in the vein of "Angel Negro" : a good latin-rock song (with vocals in English, this time).

There are unfortunately a few useless tracks as well (as if Santana has not enough good live stuff to release!) : both "Peraza", "Abi Cama", Vilato", "Paris Finale" and "Bambele". All those ones are rather short (around fifteen minutes in total), which is not too much on almost two hours and a half of music, right ?

Except those, I must say that this effort is quite good. Three stars.

ZowieZiggy | 3/5 | 2007-2-12

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