Santana - Essential Santana

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Music reviews of Essential Santana

Music Review: Content is Great - CD needs to bring more to table
Rating: 3 Stars

The collection arranges the songs into 2 CDs and the songs are in a chronological order. What you will notice is how Santana has evolved over the years. We think of today's Santana with a great focus around Carlos' incredible guitar. But if you listen to the early material, you will hear an incredible focus on percussion as well. The first CD will give you plenty of the percussion in the form of congas and drums. The first CD has the bulk of what I call "Santana's Mexican Roots" - it covers a period from 1969 to 1976 (from the album 'Santana' through Festival). The combination of guitar and percussions give this a distinct Latin/Mexican Rock feel that really has defined the classic Santana sound. The first CD features such hits as "Jingo", "Evil Ways", and Oyo Como Va" Much of the material from this CD features lead singer Gregg Rolie who would later go with Santana "project" member Neal Schon to found the legendary band "Journey". Even in this early period Santana shows great diversity in the music. 1971's "Everybody's Everything" has a distinct Motown flavor to it.

The second CD we pick up in 1977 and go to 1989 (starting with the album "Moonflower" through "Chameleon"). On this CD we see a change in the direction. Although there still is a good Mexican influence, you will hear how the music catches up with the times. There will be much less Latin Percussion and congos as the 80s approach. It is on this CD that contains some tunes that were popular from the 80s including "Winning", "Hold On", and "Nowhere to Run". These three songs feature the vocals of Alex Ligertwood who gave the Santana project a "British Invasion" influence with his Scottish roots. These three songs also have a distinct 80s pop feel. I find a lot of influences on this CD - on "Europa" we hear some classic Carlos Santana guitar a-la Jimi Hendrix style, "Stormy" has a real R&B flair , "Well All Right" kind of has an Eric Clapton Blues feel to it, and "Say It Again" has - yes a disco feel to it. The latter three songs listed have much to do with Greg Walker's outstanding vocals. It is also worth noting that you'll hear signs of "Supernatural"'s Smooth throughout this collection - most noteably on "Blues for Salvador" - it seems like Carlos likes playing in that similar key.

The liner notes are good. You do get the songs and the corresponding songwriters, albums, producers, and release dates. What is really disappointing is the lack of lyrics AND that the band members aren't included. Santana has such a dynamic changing band lineup and it would be nice to know who is credited with what song. It is hard to say whether this album will be for everyone. If you like the diversity, then you will enjoy this album because you will see so many influences and continue to hear the incredible guitar of Carlos Santana. This would have been a complete collection if some of the material from "Supernatural" and "Shaman" were on here. It would also have been nice if more live cuts were included as well. If you like a particular focus of Santana, you may want to go deeper and actually pick up the studio album. This is really more of a 3 1/2 star collection. The quality of the music is there - it's just I felt the CD could have been more.

Description of Essential Santana

Classic Rock CDs

• Music > Styles
• Pop
• Rock