Santana

On Wednesday afternoon I made the snap, last minute decision to see Santana in concert at Jiffy Lube Live in Bristow, Virginia.  Despite having been aware of, and a fan of, this band since college (1886-1890) I had never gotten around to seeing them in concert. 

If you have finite time and money, do you exclusively attend concerts of bands you’ve already seen before, or do you seek out some new experiences?   For my part, 60% of the bands I saw in 2019 were ones I’d seen before, and 40% were new bands.   DesertFest NYC featured The Skull, Monolord, and Windhand – who I’d seen before – but also Elder, ASG, Danava and Weedeater, who I hadn’t.   As it was, Elder, the final headliner on Sunday night, was the band I was most interested in seeing.  This Boston, MA band wasn’t scheduled to tour anywhere close to DC, so I had to traipse all the way up to NJ/NY to see these shows.  Well worth it, as Elder were as satisfying as their studio albums would indicate. 

For that matter, have I ever NOT enjoyed a concert?  Does this happen often enough to dissuade me from seeing a band I’d never seen before?  It happened ONCE.   

The Mars Volta.   Those of us familiar with Pink Floyd’s Live at Pompeii movie know that the band interviews during the Dark Side of the Moon sessions, interrupting the prior jams of much earlier material at Pompeii, are oddly as entertaining as the musical performances themselves.   Gilmour’s denial of drug use on the part of the band is amusing, of course, but so is Roger’s bold but true assertion that “if people go to a show and they don’t like it, they don’t come again.”  That was the case with the only concert I really disliked and left early:  The Mars Volta, at the Ram’s Head Live in Baltimore, September 21, 2008.   Normally the band’s material is 1/3 nonstop aggression and 2/3 prog and psychedelic, an acceptable mix.  But live, the band seemed to be nonstop nonstop aggression, which I did not like.  (Even guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez admitted that no one wants to be punched in the face nonstop for 90 minutes).  Bye bye!

Here I went as a last minute decision to see a band I’d never seen before.   I got the cheapest lawn tickets they had and made no effort to reiterate my prior solicitations of companionship.    With the TV screens we could see much of what was going on stage anyway.   The grooves were infectious and the overall experience highly enjoyable.  

Che Guevara.   Before the right had Trump to idolize and ignore his numerous deficiencies, the Left had Che Guevara.   In Exposing The True Che Guevara:  And The Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him, Humberto Fontova, a Cuban immigrant who is clearly NOT a fan of his, described encountering Carlos Santana and giving him grief for wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt as so many people do, citing the man’s many atrocities under Castro’s regime.  Santana’s reaction – imagine this in Tommy Chong’s voice – “you’re getting hung up on the facts, man!”

Broken SG.   Nowadays it seems Santana plays exclusively Paul Reed Smith guitars.  But back in the day, he had a cherry red Gibson SG Special with dot inlays and P90 pickups, which he played at Woodstock.  For some reason – most likely the guitar wouldn’t stay in tune – he wanted a replacement, but wasn’t actually running the band (!), so it vetoed his demand.  So he smashed the guitar, destroying it, and then said, “THERE.  Now you have to buy me a new guitar.”

Jam Band.   If you listen to the Fillmore show from 1968, or the Woodstock performance, or the first album, it’s clear that early Santana is very similar to the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers – definitely a jam band.   In fact, Gregg Rolie and Neil Schon, better known from Journey, were in his band early on (Rolie from the beginning).   Not only that, if you listen to Journey’s first album, they’re more like a prog band and don’t sound much, if anything, like the band that gave us “Don’t Stop Believing” and “Open Arms” with later singer Steve Perry. 

This is why I needed to see him in concert.  I checked Setlist.fm and verified that live, he’s still playing his classic tunes.  Of the rest, fairly recent album Supernatural gets the most coverage, 6 songs, including “Smooth”.  The later tunes are shorter.   Live, he’s still giving some good jams. 

I’m ambivalent about otherwise talented guitarists who bury their decent guitar solos in music I really don’t care for:  Prince comes to mind, plus late model Don Felder.   His two songs on the Heavy Metal soundtrack, recorded exclusively for that album, are far superior (in my humble opinion) to any of his solo work since leaving the Eagles. 

With Santana there’s a ton of African rhythms, latin and jazz stuff which can tax my tolerance for jam band material.   But then I was hearing a strong Ray Manzarek influence with the keyboardist – and then Santana himself started off the distinctive and instantly recognizable solo intro for “Light My Fire”, followed by snippets of Stones material, and even a bit of “Day Tripper”, giving us some classic rock material amidst all the worldbeat stuff we might get from Mickey Hart.   Suffice to say he’s all over the place.  And for a guy born in 1947, he can still play guitar.  If he has any health issues I couldn’t see them from where I was in the audience. 

College Park (Origins).   Along with early Scorpions – Lonesome Crow and Fly to the Rainbow – Santana, in particular Viva Santana, was another learning experience of College Park.  Eventually that led me to Peter Green era Fleetwood Mac to seek out the original “Black Magic Woman”, and check out Live in Boston Vol 1, which also has “Green Manalishi” – better known from Judas Priest’s cover of it.  Of course, PG era FM are also a jam band – and Green was a big fan of the Dead.  “Oh Well” is probably the go-to jam song for his era of ‘Mac.

WTF?   As I expected, Santana made one “speech” exhorting the crowd to get crazy.  It was couched in metaphysical language guaranteed to confuse everyone.  I think he tries it out beforehand with the band members and roadies and if anyone can figure out what he’s trying to say, he scratches it out and starts over. 

Concessions.   By now I’ve seen enough shows that I’m not compelled to buy a t-shirt as a matter of principle.  My preference is for a shirt with tour dates on the back.   A blank back t-shirt doesn’t tell the world I purchased it at a concert.  Sadly, the best front design is not always the one with tour dates on the back, and the latter shirt may well have a dull or suboptimal design.  Sadly, that was the case here. Santana did have guitar-shaped magnet/bottle openers which were nice enough.   It won’t go any further than my fridge, which I don’t take around in public with me, but it will open bottles and stay on the fridge.  Just as well.

Parking Lot.   I had to leave early, before hearing “Smooth”, to avoid being trapped in the parking lot for eternity.  The venue, originally Nissan Pavilion, has been here since May 1997, but to date they still do not have a legitimate system to allow the parking lot to empty at the end of the show (though I did see an Uber/Lyft pickup location identified, which might actually work for people who live somewhere close to Bristow).  The only way to avoid idling with everyone else for an hour after the show is to leave before the encore.   With Alice in Chains a few weeks before, my problem was solved by Alice in Chains going on first and KORN being the final band, who I didn’t care to see, least of all to endure the parking issue. 

 

In any case, here is the Jiffy Lube Live set.  My favorites are “Evil Ways”, “Oye Como Va”, “Black Magic Woman”, and “Smooth” – though I didn’t get to hear that last tune.

https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/santana/2019/jiffy-lube-live-bristow-va-739ff601.html

Kyle MacLachlan

I recently finished watching “Twin Peaks”, and then re-watched “The Doors”.   I have “Dune” and “Blue Velvet” on DVD.  I thought I’d seen the last of Kyle MacLachlan until I started watching “Portlandia” and discovered that he plays the Mayor, just as clueless as everyone else.   Fortunately.

He must have the same idea as Shatner, who told his agent, “put me in as many shows and movies as you can.  I’ll do anything if they pay me.”  Here are what I consider his most memorable roles; for the complete list, consult IMDB.

Dune (Paul Atreides).  For some reason this film gets lots of flak, but I like it.  David Lynch really makes it strange and compelling with his “Twin Peaks” touch.  Another group took a shot at doing “Dune” as a sci-fi miniseries much later and I couldn’t endure more than 5 seconds of it.   To me, this is the definitive version, never mind what Frank Herbert says.   In addition to KM’s first role, this also has Jurgen Prochnow, Patrick Stewart, Sean Young, Max von Sydow, and STING (!!!) as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen.

 

Blue Velvet (Jeffrey Beaumont).  Another weird film by David Lynch.  Laura Dern, Isabella Rossellini, and the incomparable Dennis Hopper as the psycho bad-ass.  This was the first film I ever saw him in, so I had to adjust to seeing him in “Easy Rider”.  The odd thing about this film is that I couldn’t figure out if it took place in the 50s or in a small town so backwards and stunted that it was in the present but looked like it was in the 50s.  Anyhow.  Messed up, but worth seeing once.  I think I first saw this as a midnight movie at the Hoff Theater at University of Maryland, College Park.

Twin Peaks (Agent Dale Cooper).  If he does nothing else, he’ll be known for this role.  And it’s back for another season (#3) on Showtime.  I could do without his incessant coffee compliments, but hopefully we’ll see what really happened to Cooper.

The Doors (Ray Manzarek).  This time it’s Oliver Stone instead of David Lynch – imagine what the latter would have done with this subject.  With Val Kilmer being over the top as Morrison, everyone else is in his shadow (i.e. Frank Whaley as Robby Krieger, Kevin Dillon as John Dennsmore, and Meg Ryan as Pamela Courson).  I’d say he did a decent job without being superlative or particularly memorable:  Manzarek as the anchor of stability and wisdom to Morrison’s chaos and pathos, better able to do so than Krieger or Dennsmore.  The Doors could not work without Manzarek, regardless of how much they relied upon Morrison for the substance of their music – Apollo to Morrison’s Dionysus, Spock to Morrison’s Kirk.  I still haven’t seen any evidence that Morrison was anything but a conceited, self-centered jerk – however, with the notable exception that he resisted offers to establish a solo band and remained faithful to his comrades.  Arguably that balances out his excesses. (Discuss.)

Sex & the City AND Desperate Housewives.   Remarkably, he was in BOTH of these.  In “Sex” he was Charlotte’s (Kim Davis) quasi-impotent husband.  I say “quasi” because it seems they lifted David Cassidy’s preferences to use here.  When Cassidy was asked why he never dated Susan Dey (who played Laurie Partridge), he responded that “she was too innocent: she lacked that slutty quality I was looking for in girls at the time.”  In “DH”, he was Bree’s second husband, Orson Hodge, which was a whole different mess.

Portlandia. Mayor of Portland.  Just as clueless and dippy as any of Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein’s characters.  Here his context is to constantly be in competition with Seattle.  Imagine Agent Cooper retired and became mayor of Portland.

To be honest, I don’t see an amazing range in his acting or roles, but it’s clear he can switch between straight roles with no quirks or eccentricity, and those which require some touch of those elements.  Whatever role he’s in, you’re drawn into his character without losing sight of the story itself, which is how an actor should be.  I look forward to Season 3 of Twin Peaks, however I might be able to see it.