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Santana - Moonflower CD (album) cover

MOONFLOWER

Santana

 

Jazz Rock/Fusion

3.82 | 131 ratings

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ZowieZiggy
Prog Reviewer
3 stars It is very strange than their record company decided to include some studio tracks in what was supposed to be a live album.

I do not really understand why they did so. At this moment of their career, Santana got plenty of material to be able to deliver a solid double live album. Anyway. What is also annoying is that studio and live tracks are mixed all together. I think is should have been wiser to separate the studio ones (like Yes did with "Keys To Ascension" for instance: three sides live and a studio one).

Most of the live tracks are played in the accelerated mode (specially "Black Magic Woman" and "Dance Sister Dance"). This gives of course lots of rythm but at times it is too much. Same applies to "Toussaint" and the trilogy "Carnaval-Let The Children Play-Jugando".

Some of the studio tracks are very good. The cover of "She's Not There" for instance. This track will be featured even in some compilation works. "I'll Be Waiting" has very poor vocals and is the weakest track. "Zulu" and "Bahía" are kind of too jazzy for me and are not my favorite either.

The best tracks are "Flor Di Luna" : even if it is cha-cha-cha oriented, it has some very nice guitar work (it's the sixth of this genre so far, you know the samba one...) and "Transcendance" (starts like a mellow soul tune but ends in a beautiful clone of "Samba Pa'Ti". The best trak and the most classical Santana song is definitely "El Morocco". Very melodious intro, great rythm and a fabulous and rageous guitar to follow. Santana as we all love. I will rate this album with three stars.

The sad side here is that both "Chepito" Areas and Dave Brown have left the band. Although they were not the most prolific in terms of input, they were members from the early days.

PS : I usually do not read other members review before writing mines (let's say 8 times out of 10). It was also the case with this one. I incidently read some before posting and I noticed some similarities with the one of my fellow countryman Hughes. Sorry, but this was not intentional and demonstrates that what we are telling must be the truth, right ?

ZowieZiggy | 3/5 |

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