BEYOND APPEARANCES

Items ordered by ending time | Showing all 67 items

Visit eBay search:'prog rock' for items
Sell your SANTANA items on eBay !

No release results - showing artist results instead

Sort: Recent best-seller | Results cached

Visit Amazon tag:'Progressive Rock' for more prog rock

If you must avoid one record from this otherwise great group, this woulmd be the one. Apart from another great artwork sleeve, this album has nothing to go for itself.

I mean, very few albums by artistes with Santana's ethics (or aesthetics) come to such a disaster. Obviously Santana was also losing itself in the changing music business and trying to adapt its sound to common FM airplay. And the least we can say that they managed it brilliantly, quite unfortunately for music lovers. The real sad fact is that this metamorphosis was due to the old groups members rather than the arrival of newer and younger musicians in the line-up.

Musucally we have a real awful 80's funk between Miiiiichael and his sister Janet crossed over with Hall & Oates and Journey-type of AOR. Hell some tracks are close Genesis Invisible Touch with Litgerwood's vocal timbre fairly close to the hateful Phil Collins solo vocals. The lest lower-depth tracks being Brother Hood, Spirit and the closing instrumental Touchdown Raiders, but all three would've been fillers on the preceding Shango.

You see where I'm getting at? Well, don't say I didn't warned you.

This poor record is not an error in their production. It is only one out many very poor releases of the band starting already in 1978 with "Inner Secrets". At this date, no one can say when they (or should I say) he'll put an end to this.

This once fantastic and so different band has jumped in the middle of an indescriptible desert of creativity and originality trying to convert into a cameleon and adapt to the ambient mood. I have no clue who really could cope with these consecutive reconversions but for sure, I couldn't.

I had never anticiated that Santana would ever turn into a funk/soul/disco uninspired band. At least, on the previous last works there were usually two or three average to good tracks. On this album we'll get three minutes of good music with the closing number (this one reaching the three star status, not more but it should have lasted for ten minutes to make this effort more bearable).

The worse here is probably "Say It Again" : a sort of Barry White insipid stuff. But "Brotherhood" or "Two Points Of View" are of the same caliber. Just pick-up a track at random and you'll get the global picture. By the way, the Collins one is "How Long" : quite a discovery, believe me.

They probably put all their energy and creativity in the sleeve design (although I highly suspected that it was sub-contracted).

I guess that you know the verdict already, right ? One star (but the zero one would have been more appropriate).

Santana: Beyond Appearances [1985]

Rating: 1/10

Most serious music fans have either an ambivalent or contentious relationship with overtly-commercial radio-friendly pop music. If music is a large part of a person's life, they are likely to dismiss most mainstream pop; after all, the majority of it is designed for people who don't really like real music very much. However, even a pompous progressive-rock fan such as me is able to recognize a decent pop song when it comes around. For the most part, though, I maintain a fragile apathy towards commercial music. Albums like Beyond Appearances shake that apathy. It's quite tragic to witness a band that was once progressive and sophisticated turn into an utter creative wasteland.

"Band" is a rather unfair term to use, though, considering that Carlos is the only link between this album and the previous Santana releases. After listening to these eleven painful tracks, it's quite easy for me to understand why the previous lineups chose to jump ship. Beyond Appearances shows Carlos fully and lovingly embracing the commercial forces of the 1980s music industry. This album is completely devoid of any sort of artistic integrity or musical creativity. It is a farcical cash-in that bears no resemblance whatsoever to the incredible music that Carlos was once involved with.

The music itself is bland radio pop "rock" with preprogrammed drum beats and lifeless synth lines galore. I am unable to comment on the musicianship, because there isn't any. Everything sounds like it came out of a computer. These songs are artificial, bland, lifeless, sterile? I need no more synonyms. This is a disgraceful album that I hardly even want to write about. I simply want to add another one-star review in order to further reinforce what a pile of trite garbage it is.