ZEBOP

On "Zebop!" SANTANA tried to resurrect the sound of the 1970 but with not so successful results. First of all, a presence of too many covers (R. Ballard, J.J. Cale) tells about creativity crisis, at least as far as composing is concerned. Furthermore, these covers are bad, very bad, in a horrible AOR style. As the matter of fact, all vocal tracks are bad and you simply want to skip them right away. Still, there are several good (but not excellent) moments, mostly instrumental ones - Latino rock "E Papa Re", very good standard jazz- rock in "Primera Invasion" and "American Gypsy", while only "Tales of Kilimanjaro" stands out and ranks among the best compositions in SANTANA's catalogue. Overall, this is largely negligable effort, and these few good moments cannot earn it full 3 stars.