Santana - Caravanserai (Mega Blowout Sale)
SKU
28-SBMK787750.2
While Santana made some great albums before Caravanerai (heard "Abraxas" lately? You should! It's still great!), this was the album where he lost some of the personnel that made the early band great, as Neil Schon and Gregg Rolle went to Journey and a couple of the others went to drugs and then Carlos embraced his inner jazzbo and along with drummer Michael Shrieve, began his and the band's foray into the then-new waters of jazz/rock. Some just beautiful stuff here!
Customer Reviews
Average Rating
This is a great album.....BUT you have to forget your pre-conceptions of what Santana sounded like before it.
While there are a few cuts from the Greg Rollie voiced band here,.....the really wild stuff comes as "spiritual jazz" on a sort of Pharoah Sanders or Coltrane level! The first cut is beautifully stunning,....and if the whole album carried through like it,I think people could have adapted to the "new sound".
But what you get (and the record label,I'd bet,insisted on...)is a mix-n-match album of "old style" Santana songs(that are pretty cool),and "new style" sly jazz pieces that are sitting uncomfortably next to their "rock" cousins.
Now that we are past all of our "preconceptions"(or are we?). Maybe you can listen with open hearts and ,....even better, separate the "rock" songs from the beautiful Jazz sounds also found here? In any case ....you get two sides of the musical mind of Carlos Santana on this one.
I sure wish someone would have had the courage to keep the jazz cuts separate...and have released the "rock" sides as singles ...or have added them to some "greatest hits" release. But ,you know about retrospective foresight....it's just too late.
Borboletta came next ,and is nice,but seems a bit broken hearted on some cuts. Get both albums and make a best of the Jazz sides and see where Santana wanted to go.
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