When Caravanserai came out, nothing had prepared me for it. Not the first three Santana albums, anyway. I thought it was the Everest of albums - pure, bright, majestic, thrilling, powerful, and beautiful. I still do. That, and the following couple which make up some kind of "spiritual trilogy" - Welcome, and Borboletta - saw me through some pretty tricky times. Washing back sleeping tablets with cheap wine, waking up crying - you know the deal. But there was very special medicine in those three albums, and when nothing else worked, they did.
Singing about universal truths and so on (or worse - Jesus) is a recipe for disaster. You end up singing shit about nothing. So it's best not to listen too close. Luckily this is mostly instrumental. Just let the feeling that inspired it do its work - what goes in, comes out. I know the stories about Carlos, how he's less of a human being than you and I, with our lofty standards, but I don't care. Sometimes music shows just how damn great people can be, how wonderful human life can be, and why it's worth fighting for.
These are dark times, maybe darker than we realize (being new to this end-of-the-world thing), and anything that ignites the flame of beauty in our souls should be fiercely guarded. Sometimes it can even be a record album.
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| ©FMF Art Department Dept. |
I still play the first two Santana albums. There's only so many rock guitar solos I can listen to before I want to drive icepicks through my eardrums, though.
ReplyDeleteDo you play guitar, Mr. Mac? I have an old beat-up Burns hanging on the wall that a bar-band player in Viet Nam gave me before he went back to the States. I still get it down and dust off a few Rock Solos, because one day this, like, famous band is going to pull me up on stage because their guitarist has, like, passed out backstage an' I get up and plug in and, like, all the broads are screamin' for me an' ... *pop*
Delete"Vietnam" - I know, I know.
DeleteI used to play, but its been decades. I'm actually wanting to get an archtop acoustic or a National Steel and start playing again. My son has put the bug in me, but there is no way I ever was/or will be as good as he has gotten with it. Maybe I could play happy hour at the Foam Bar & Grill
DeleteDear Mr Throckmorton III
ReplyDeleteI absolutely agree with you about this album. So much so that it has prompted me to make contact and tell you that I wear spectacles and I’ve therefore been able to enjoy reading your blog (including some splendid comments sections) for several months now. I also sometimes smoke a funny-shaped pipe. I have found myself wishing that I could submit a piece for inclusion on your blog, but I couldn’t hope to match you and your current contributors. I’m no rockin racoonteur. I am however a semi-imaginary psychedelic-comedy-blues type guitarist of advanced age with a recently begun and already abandoned blog of my own. Of course you might suspect that my contacting you about Caravanserai is in part motivated by a desire to spread awareness of my oeuf (that’s French for ‘work’) beyond the 2 or 3 guys who know me. And you’d be right. But regardless of any negative opinion of me you may now or in the future hold, and despite the fact that I don’t fully exist, I intend to remain a faithful Farq follower and Foamfan forever.
Cheers!
Delta Del
Welcome to Three Or Four Guyhood©, Delta Del. We'll print whatever you write, because our standards are proudly and demonstrably lower than any other music-related blog that thinks it's funny.
DeleteThanks for the welcome Farquhar. Too few music type blogs out there that seek to raise a smile as yours does. I dont know any others that think they’re funny and are, or even any that try to be funny and dont make it. I do know that I had enough of serious in these too damn serious times. So your angle is appreciated and I’m glad to have made contact.
DeleteThe shop didn't have headphones to sample your music with, but two seperate pieces that you had to manually hold to your ears, probably because they didn't want you to listen to complete albums. Those pieces started to weigh on you after a while. But that is how I remember listening to Caravanserai at my local record shop and being frustratingly unable to afford it. I liked how it differed from the earlier Santana albums. Now I like most of the early Santana records, after refusing to listen to any Santana for many years. Lotus is among the best live albums ever made and it had one of the most luscious covers ever.
ReplyDeleteI am all with you concerning Monk: I didn't do a top tree of favorite albums, because it would be all Monk and I wouldn't even be able to decide on the three best ones, although Solo Monk would certainly feature among them.
Since this didn't come out when I was a teenager, it's automatically unlikely if not disqualified to displace anything in my top ten, but I do enjoy the instrumental bits of most applications of the Secret Carlos Santana Chord Progression. Didn't the Devadip-Mahavishnu album even have some vocals on it? Well, you make an interesting case for this, and I would be very interested in a Shut Up N Play Yer Guitar compilation from this era, as well.
ReplyDeleteLove them since the Woodstock movie was in my cinema
ReplyDeleteIn a place where being less than serious is the ordre du jour, that was a nicely heartfelt intro, Farqster. And since we shouldn't hold anyone responsible for their later crimes (see: Cocker, Joe; Wonder, Stevie; Stewart, Rod etc. etc.) I'll check this out.
ReplyDeleteI mean in the last year I even warmed up to the devil's music (soft rock) so...
Caravanserai could easily, very easily, have been in my Top 3 . . . but so too could have been 30, 40, 50 other albums. No music nerd (hello everyone) can limit the stuff that excites the ears to just three albums. Crazy suggestion. (Having said that, my No 1 is fixed, immovable and forever.)
ReplyDeleteOne thing to add tho' - much as "Song of the Wind" turned my headphones inside out when I was a 21 year old LPL, my favourite solo is on "Just in Time to See the Sun": 20 seconds that just breeze in, make their point and stop. I rarely appreciated restraint in them days but I do now.
Cheers, Peanuts Molly.
What? Who? Peanuts Molly is my favoured stalker, usually locked in a time warp and out of harm's way. Lovely gal but a bit intense.
DeleteMeanwhile, I am Peanuts Molloy and will remain so.
I'm Peanuts Molloy and so is my wife.
DeleteI was talkin' to your wife just a moment ago. "Mrs Molloy", I says, "I'll tell you another small but perfect guitar solo, Val McCallum on "Walls and Doors". He knew what he was doing" I says, as she fried some eggs.
DeleteWe respect your right to self-identify as whatever gender or non-binary fluidity you feel appropriate.
DeleteFiveGunsWest - I don't understand why you deleted your comment. Fascinating stuff. Want me to post it? (I get all comments in my email).
ReplyDeleteUh, is it me, is it stealthy or is there no such thing as the linquage du jour?
ReplyDelete(c'mon Farq, don't sell this stuff like manna from heaven and then not open heaven's gates..)
Linquage du jour of th' day:
ReplyDeletehttps://workupload.com/file/vRKgCJ3PTaC
Ok, this isn't for me.
ReplyDeleteWhich takes nothing away from the fact that it is an intriguing, adventurous and no doubt at that time unique album. I don't know, I'm not a big jazz guy, maybe that's why I couldn't get into it.
It's closer to jazz - the spirit of it - than anything, I suppose. If Miles hadn't been so fucked-up and bitter, he might have been making music like this. Don't get me wrong - I enjoy Miles, whatever mood he's in.
DeleteOkay, it starts with crickets. That's fine. Good, in fact. The sax player lubricates his reed while the engineer calibrates the tape delay. Good start. As long as there aren't too many conga drum solos, this could be quite all right.
ReplyDeleteMakes me wish I'd recorded the absurdly loud cicadas in Chicago a week or two ago, even with cell phone fidelity, assuming some "App" on this thing is capable of such a basic task.
No vocals at all at least 10 minutes into the album. At least three thumbs up!
We gots our own crickets/whatever here. Frogs, too. Glad they didn't make the cut - not the right ambience.
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