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| Lingerie courtesy Aubade© |
We axed exotic lingerie model and Insta Influencer Rholonne Deodorante [19 my ass - Ed.] to generate page hits for a subject which nobody - least of all she - gives much of a shit about. Take it away, Rholonne!
RD: Uh - I start? Okay. This is kinda hard to see? Okay - Carlos Santana gets sneered at for betraying the artistic principles of Caravanserai, Welcome, and Borboletta, but he purs- pursed? Oh! Pursued. Like follow, right? That - (yawns) - uh - Farq?
FT3: Yes, Rholonne?
RD: I'm like, boring? Boomer shit.
FT3: Take five, sweetpants! I got this! Catch you in the jacuzzi! Uh - keep that stuff on, okay? (snaps finger pistol)
(RD blows kiss, giggles)
FT3: (chuckles indulgently) Okay! Where were we ... pursued that direction on his solo albums, which were solo in name only, featuring current Santana Band members in different combinations. In a totally batshit marketing initiative - where was the focus group when he needed it? - he styled himself Devadip, which is like Retail Sales Associate to the District Sales Manager of John McLaughlin's lofty Mahavishnu.
Running a solo career concurrently with leading a band is always problematic. Another great guitar-playing bandleader Frank Zappa got over it - eventually - by crediting everything he did to his name, merging solo and band productions in a coherent, consumer-friendly package. Santana's output, in comparison, is a mess. And it's the messiest of the solo albums we're here to talk about today.
The poisonously-titled Oneness: Silver Dreams - Golden Reality [kill me now - Ed.] does everything possible to dissuade the slob in the record store from popping his chain wallet. Incredibly, "Santana" doesn't appear on the cover (although some markets clumsily rectified this with some Letraset), which is mystical puke porn kitsch like those albums bean-brained nuisances tried to press on you in the street. Like Illuminations, in fact. As if this wasn't enough - and it was already too much - the album has a confidence-sapping fifteen tracks, most with thrift-store mystic titles, some only a few seconds long.
Fuck dis, said the record-buying public, anteing up for Highway To Hell instead. The faithful who sucked it up anyway struggled with its scrappiness and its sappiness. One song, Silver Dreams Golden Smiles, brought the unwelcome taste of sick into the mouth. And Mrs. Santana intoning mystic verse ... *shudder*.
Which is a shame, a damn shame. Because hidden in the grooves, behind that awful cover, is probably his best solo album, right up there with the "serious music" albums, and containing some his most visceral, incendiary, electrifying [etc. - Ed.] playing. You can trust me because I am never wrong.
ITEM! The six (count 'em) tracks which play as a ten-minute instrumental suite have been ironed together into one. I've snipped out distracting and confusing bursts of applause, some musical detritus, and called it Transformation, a word lifted from one of the original titles.
ITEM! The mystic warbling of Silver Dreams Golden Smiles and Mrs. Santana's *cough* hauntingly evocative poesie have been savagely kicked to the curb, as a service to the listener. Boo fucking hoo. It was a long album anyways - too long by exactly this much.
ITEM! The track order has been reshuffled for better dynamics, and proper vinyl side lengths. A few small but exquisitely nuanced edits here and there.
ITEM! A drop-dead gorgeous new cover what I labored over for at least ten minutes, maybe fifteen. Santana brand front n' center, title reduced to its essence. Voilà. Frankly, I think it's wasted on youse bums, because it's a swell album, and you're like meh with Santana. Cordially, it's your loss, and I could care less, ya bum!
Encouraged by the imaginary rapture greeting my artistic triumph, I done did new covers for the first two Devadips, also. Note series coherence, "house" style, class out th' ass.
Be nice. At least make like you're interested.
ReplyDeleteI am really really super interested, Mr. T!! Please, please, wher's da stealth link, innit?
ReplyDeleteAre you in Siam, Steve? That would make three 4/5g©.
DeleteI loved the santana/mclaughlin moment. I met John once, he watched my dog while i bathed in the stream where everyone except him and i were naked. Later that night, i realized i should have washed my dog.
ReplyDeleteI have so many questions.
DeleteHere's one - is "wash your dog" a euphemism?
DeleteHere's the album, which I've been playing a lot recently. There's a related Free Bonus loaddown, too.
ReplyDeleteI met a fellow in Bondi Beach in 1973 (where I resided) who claimed he was a roadie for The Santana antipodean tour. His major role was driving a converted ice cream van to each venue in order to supply life`s little enhancers members of the ensemble required. It occurred to me that this ruse couldn`t be more conspicuous in the conservative Australia of that era.
ReplyDeleteHere we have an ice cream van that leaves a flotilla of brawling children because the van didn`t stop, freezers with nary a trace of iced comestibles & the driver is a long haired hippie accompanied by his 4 year old son whose party piece was to bellow " Fuck the pigs".
Despite the state of euphoria we were enjoying I didn`t believe a word of it, apart from his son who demonstrated his talents in our gaff whilst his proud father beamed.
The Rev Dr Baz Mania(c)
My fave Santana waxing is Caravanserai & for me when drummer left my interest drifted.
ReplyDeleteSo, when I am in receipt of my new ear horn I look forward to immersing myself in the uplifting guitarisms of Senor Santana.
Muchas gracias Senor Farq
Más apreciado
El Reverendo Dr Baz Mania(c)
Apropos of nothing apart from the artistes being of the same vintage here is a surprise offering from that grumpy old coot Neil Yung.
ReplyDelete8 tracks, mostly demos, all intruments played by Mr Yung
Good, bad or indifferent?
El Reverendo Dr Baz Mania(c)
It's ... okay. *slumps*
DeleteWhere? Here.
ReplyDeletehttps://workupload.com/archive/PaUZjCyKHere
https://workupload.com/archive/PaUZjCyK
ReplyDeleteThere's something seriously wrong with that poor girl's left arm.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations! You've reached the blessed age of selective arousal. On watching porn: "That wiring's a disgrace," "Is that rug Mexican?"
DeleteIs Phasmatodea porn a thing?
DeleteBeing a phasmatodofile doesn't make you a bad person, Babs.
DeleteThat's where you're wrong. The exploitation of Phasmids is despicable.
DeleteThere are many Phasmids who embrace the lifestyle. Far from seeing it as "exploitation" (the typically entitled viewpoint of the outsider), they see it as empowerment. Don't rush to judgement, Babs.
DeleteThere are three guitarists that I find very hard to listen to - Jerry Garcia, Steve Howe and Carlos Santana. They all seem out of tune to me. God knows I've tried - I try to like everything musical - but I just can't.
ReplyDeleteI'll try again with this Santana.
Thank you!
After a good listening session, my opinion is unchanged.
DeleteOh well...
I thank the Gods I never had a musical ear.
DeleteOh, you have a musical ear - this blog wouldn't exist if you didn't!
DeleteIt's more to do with my perception of what sounds good from a guitar point of view. A lot of rock guitar depends on microtones. Sometimes, when they don't quite hit the sweet spot - on a bend, usually - they sound a bit sour to me.
There are many who say Sinatra couldn't sing - "chronic pitch problems" is the phrase I remember.
DeleteI've never heard that, although I've heard something similar with regard to Chet Baker.
DeleteInteresting -- now that you mention it, he does seem to overbend a bit doesn't he? His playing was pretty "smooth" on his more recent mainstream pablum but there are plenty of shrill notes on his 70s classics. I still like them ok though.
DeleteI borrowed Oneness: Silver Dreams - Golden Reality from the local record library and thought it was beyond awful. However your improved version is rather good, certainly much better than I remember. Bonus loaddown great too, thank Farq.
ReplyDeleteThank 'ee. There are Santana albums beyond awful, and beyond redemption. But his successes, even qualified ones, are more than enough. "Welcome" got me through a particularly horrible time in my life - I used it to get to sleep - not because it was boring but because it was transporting. At his best he does that. I can forgive him the crap, and the crap brand marketing, the hats and neckties and whatever, because the positivism in his music is real and healing.
DeleteAnd always better than The Eagles.
DeleteHey Babs - did you get those coupons I clipped for you? You may want to check the dates before redeeming them.
Delete"Transporting" is a wonderful description; I would apply it to select moments by Messers. Howe, Garcia, and Santana. They also all have moments that fail to achieve liftoff, and I would never try to foist any of their work on someone who expressed a difference of taste. Plus, there are recorded moments of Mr. Garcia's that are too heavy on the "clam chowder" for most.
DeleteLove this blog, and thank you for the music as well as all the swell commentary & storytelling.
You're welcome, Mr, Mous.
DeleteSantana comes in for a lot of critical shit-slinging for his "spirituality" (you have to put the sneering quotes around the word), but taking that stance is never a ticket to popularity, and impossible - vocally, verbally - to pull off. That's why his lyrics stink. But the feeling behind them (that finds inadequate expression in words) is real and true, and comes out in ensemble playing, and that really can lift you up and out, and I bless him for it, for all his schtick. Accept help where you find it. If it's in rock music, it's in rock music.
Roboticos robar mi equipaje.
ReplyDeleteMia ŝvebŝipo estas plena de angiloj.
DeleteMusteloj ŝiris mian karnon.
DeleteSerpentoj sur la aviadilo
DeleteAnkoraŭ kun la fikaj angiloj???
DeleteSenfine fikaj emuoj.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeletePaĉjo tre similis al Santana. Santana multe similis al li.
DeleteĈi tiu komento estis forigita de la aŭtoro.
DeleteBack in the 70s, I spent some time in da biz...working at the oldest hippie record store in town. One of its best features for employees was that we were only a couple hundred yards away from the stage entrance for our town's 3,000 seat rock venue. Thus, it was no real surprise when I showed up for work having stopped to pick up a few cartons of LPs at a one-stop on the way, that Carlos - see my arms were full - opened the front door for me. And...proving that he'd honed the art of speech down to the essentials...Devadip spoke the following to me...(THIS IS AN EXACT QUOTE, SO PAY ATTENTION!) "Grunt grunt."
ReplyDeleteYa must admit, he hit a home run with that one....
This joins tcw3's "dog watching" story in the IoF©'s Untold History Of Rock, Pop, n' Roll™, and raises as many questions.
DeleteNotwithstanding any of the above, I can horridly admit that i once [not twice] shared a NYC cab from waverly place to white street [mudd club] with drummer michael shrieve ... and a couple south african witches [the best kind], surely he too treasures the memory
ReplyDeleteA good story, and it's under consideration for inclusion, possibly as a footnote.
DeleteI'm giving it a chance only because you said "Letraset."
ReplyDeleteI always hated fucking Letraset. That box of sticky, buckled gray sheets with only bad Scrabble tiles left. The "burnisher" that broke. The "spacing" widgets that never worked. And then using the process camera, twirling the handles trying to get it into focus. Graphic Design was hell. Coal mining was an easier life. Kids today?
DeleteWhen it came out, my Dad used to get me loads from work, where he used it to label technical drawings of foundry equipment he designed.
DeleteHe hated it - far preferred to label the designs himself.
Letraset wasn't good enough for you, was it? You had to go poncing off to Barnsley with your coal mining friends!
DeleteI spent 20+ years of my life selling Letraset, stat cameras, Rapidograph pens. Good times, good times.
DeleteI used Letraset to make gig flyers for the band. Had to hop on the 38 Geary and take a 45 minute bus ride down to Market Street to buy 'em at Flax, then 45 minutes back to Ocean Beach. I appreciate the sharp-eyed "buckled," but am scratching my head at "burnisher." A tool? There was a tool? I used the edge of a nickel, which left a scooped grey lunar crater where each letter had been.
DeleteOnce done, it was back on the bus to Van Ness Avenue to get 500 flyers printed up, distributed to the band, and flyered around San Francisco (avoiding the boys in the SFPD, who didn't like spikey haired weirdos littering the City).
At the end of which, we'd have a sparsely attended show at the Mabuhay Gardens. Five bands, an audience of three French sailors on shore leave.
We used to screenprint our gig posters on huge sheets of crackback self-adhesive paper which we stuck to bus shelters, etc. Some of them were there over 10 years later. That stuff stuck good!
DeleteDraftervoi - the burnisher was a Letraset "product" - specially designed and costing about ten times the price of a ballpoint pen, without its effectiveness. Another rip-off company with a market stranglehold was Rotring, who made the eternally clogging pens you used to draw lines on art board. You had to draw the line somewhere, but this was ridiculous.
Delete... but as Hugh says, they were fun times. Constant wise-assery in the studio, sharp threads, and stupid money.
DeleteYou were lucky to have Letraset. Our boss used to physically brand us with a red-hot poker then make us walk streets of Rotherham practically naked even in Winter, our tortured mutilated bodies turned into hideous walking placards bearing messages written in horrific rune-like red-raw welts urging onlookers to get vaccinated.
DeleteA red-hot poker? Why, we would have thought ourselves LUCKY to have a red-hot poker around which to cluster...LUXURY! Why, we practiced in an unheated garage before an audience of racoons from Golden Gate Park who'd gouge our eyes out if we hit wrong note, and anything "red-hot" in the cool, grey city of freezing-your-ass-off would have been welcome change!
DeleteGetting your eyes gouged out???? GETTING YOUR EYES GOUGED OUT??????? Luxury, mate! We used to get our bowels filled with maddened hornets through a funnel and our sphincter sealed with molten lava if we so much as fucking BREATHED. Tell that to kids today?
DeleteIt's not like I'm not going to download this but ...
ReplyDeleteHere it is New Year's Eve Eve (at least on this side of the International Date Line) and still no warbling?!?! Not only no warbling -- you've gone through the effort of "de-warbling"! I need some warped 78s of jaunty parlour music from the golden age of British Imperialism stat! I sure can't ring in the new year with this new age Aquarian fusion ... (*cough*) stuff. But I'm sure this will help soothe my hangover after we celebrate the passing of the 12th moon.
Have I got the platter for you...coming soon!
Delete"Songs the Bonzos Taught Us" - silly stuff from the UK 1920s and 30s.
DeleteThis would seem to be just what you're after!
https://workupload.com/file/VNbh3KTTUz6
Thanks Steve, much appreciated!! Sounds like a winner -- it's a New Year's Eve Eve miracle!
DeleteThere's a Viv Stanshall quote somewhere, probably on a Bonzo's track along the lines of " It may be rubbish, but at least it's British rubbish".
DeleteThis presumably influenced this
By Jingo its British Rubbish
https://www.imagenetz.de/kw8VB
Its made up of The Bonzos, Temperance Seven, The Alberts etc recordings of 20'S & 30'S novelty songs some of which are versions of stuff in Steve's selection.
Hugely enjoyable, as are the originals!
Tempted to post some George Formby...
DeleteYes please (Junior or Senior) The Oldham Tinkers coved a few of George Formby senior's songs and I've neved heard the originals.
DeleteI was tempted to post the Oh What A Lovely War soundtrack, but might be a bit off kilter. Can't think of anything else I might have.
Whenever I play a solo acoustic set - not very often these days - I often bung in a Formby song. Here's all the GF Sr you'll probably ever need.
Deletehttps://workupload.com/file/RpQNPRJHhJ7
Thank you gentlemen! Here's a warbly New Year!
DeleteSteve, very grateful for the George Formby. The Lancashire Toreador is one that The Oldham Tinkers covered, so its great to have that but not wanting to be too picky aren't these songs GF Jnr not Snr? Have you got any John Willies?
DeleteI just assumed the famous GF was the senior one. I don't have any of that earlier stuff.
DeleteThere's some on YouTube.
Just been reading up on GF senior, he was a big music hall star in his day, and has three claims to fame. He gave Charlie Chaplin his suit and wijth that and GF's routine of duck walking with a cane, he created The Tramp. He did a sketch about going on holiday to Wigan Pier, which George Orwell purloined and he coined the phrase "It's not the cough that carries you off – it's the coffin they carries you off in!"
DeleteIncidentally, I've got to ask, how do the French take to George Formby?
I have the original sheet music to "I'm Going To Bring A Watermelon To My Girl Tonight" here somewhere...I have a taste for "novelty fox-trots" that comes directly from the Bonzos. I have recently been listening to a lot of 1920s jazz. From the 30s on, I heard a lot of the popular music through movies, but the 1920s (and 10s...) are less well known. Unfortunately, there are no "master tapes" and most of the music is sourced from scratchy 78s. I heard a recent "The Rough Guide to the Roots of Jazz" that was ASTONISHING in its clarity; I'm not sure how they're processing these tracks but they were far clearer than anything else I've heard from the 20s.
DeleteIf you want to go a bit further back - check out George Chirgwin, music hall star. My great grandfather.
DeleteHow do the French take to George Formby?
DeleteLike a duck to neat bleach.
I must be more French than I thought ...
DeleteFor French lovers everywhere, I give you Kenneth Williams
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfKGoP6KEpw
Saw KW do something akin to a stand-up gig in a large dining-room at the Atlantic Tower Hotel, Liverpool, 1986. Very good indeed. A couple of blue moments eg "Idi Amin...he was so dark they had to roll him in talcum powder to find out where his arsehole was".
DeleteThe Atlantic Towers - brings back memories of my one and only ligging experience. Blagged my way in there to an Elvis Costello after gig bash from The Royal Iris. All I can remember of it was a discussion with Steve Nieve about our respective dinner jackets (de rigeur in those punky times) and Pete Thomas warning me off approaching Elvis!!
DeleteHardly grounds for an illuminating auto biography of "My Life with the Stars"!
Watched a tv programme on Kenneth Williams the other night, I think he was a genius with language and nuance and very underrated.
Has my original joke been used?
ReplyDeleteThe skit has a TV reporter on the scene [flashing police lights, sirens distantly]
of a tragic mass murder/crash of some sort.
The reporter picks a witness to query who finishes by saying "It was all so surreal---well maybe more Bauhaus or de Stijl actually..."
haha
Haven't you heard, all uses of the word surreal in it's original sense are all banned. It literally makes my blood boil.
ReplyDelete-very Fauve of you....
DeleteAllthebestforthefuturismymotto.
DeleteI recently digitized the promo cassette of Santana, Live From Electric Ladyland
ReplyDeleterecorded August 4, 1990 (broadcast date in September 1990), if anyone is interested...it's at https://mega.nz/file/zNYjAQra#oDfjmmBqAem7MWlEsRsEg1_cdTStiHE2XFpB0usdn2A
Color me appreciative.
DeleteAt risk of staying too long at the party...I also digitized a Santana "King Biscuit Flower Hour": https://mega.nz/file/TYBQgSoI#tJU0Qw-cSPlcrhPtKB1fZSlehmZIKS-S7BJfXTWI7zg
ReplyDeleteI think I may have this somewhere, but I'm loaddowning anyway. Thank 'ee. Listening to the Electric Ladyland tape - Spirits Dancing In The Flesh is a swell album, and this is the perfect associated material! I'll edit out the ads after I hear 'em once.
DeleteIt's a pretty good show...if you're interested, I have a couple of Westwood One shows I can pass on to you, too.
DeleteAlso...yeah, the ads USUALLY are stinkers...but when digitizing tape...or vinyl...I usually include the ads as I am taking an "archival" approach to transferring the show to the digital realm. As they're all tracked, they can be easily dropped by those who don't want 'em. Once in awhile, the ads are interesting in that they feature pop cultural references, or actors..or are by pop stars. Budweiser managed to get Bo Diddley, Joe Jackson, Johnny "Guitar" Watson, Icicle Works...and dozens of other stars... to record commercials... that stuff is ADVERTISING GOLD to me...
DeleteI like to hear it, but not multiple times. I'm currently binge-listening Jack Benny, and having to listen to Don Wilson's banal and repetitive harrangues for Lucky Strike, or Jell-O, is enough to put me off ads for life.
DeleteYeah....once is enough, but at the same time: they advertised cigarettes? Legally, on over the airwaves? I dropped a Kent cigarettes jingle into a recent mix just for the astonishment it brings. Similarly, the CONELRAD Emergency Broadcast weekly tests kept that upcoming nuclear more right in that top-of-mind awareness....
DeleteChergin is of interest... the YouTube recordings range from unlistenable (except for historical interest) to...bad, but listenable. His visual iconography is interesting...the "reverse blackface" is unusual. "Blackface" isn't appreciated these days (and it means different things in the UK vs. the USA...). As horrifying as it is to modern eyes, I try and view it in the context of history (I happen to like Pigmeat Markham, and the weird strangeness of a black American man wearing black face make up...jeez..).
ReplyDeleteHis music hasn't dated at all well. I can't listen to it. I remember listening to wax cylinders and "Winner" label 78s at my Grandpa's house. His "big hit" was the unbearably mawkish "Blind Boy" - which used to have full theatres sobbing openly. At the end, my Grandpa - as a very little boy - would run on stage, in a sailor's outfit, to show he wasn't blind, and be embraced by his Dad. Grandpa was a fund of stories, and I have some memorabilia, including The White-Eyed Kaffir's rare autobiography. He was a top of the bill millionaire, with one of the very few privately owned automobiles, complete with engineer. His widow was defrauded of his vast inheritance (including an island) by a rotten cad.
DeleteYes, there's a blatant, gross sentimentality to a lot that era, and I defintely prefer comic songs. Thanks for the tip and the story.
DeleteI'm surprised that no one picked up on the opportunities for ribald merriment that arise from the Fine Auld English Gentleman's question, "Have you got any John Willies?"
ReplyDelete- No, but I've HAD him, if ye take my meaning har har.
- No, but his cousin Fred Bollocks will be round in a bit.
- Yes! I'll trade you John Willies for some Sally Snappers.
Your snide innuendo is as subtle as the blitz"©jcc
ReplyDeleteHow dare you bring down the tone of this highly erudite discussion on the jnr&snf Formbys to that level.
You'll be telling me next that a little bit of blackpool rock is smut. Kids of today, I don't know.
Yours ever
Nobby (oo err, missus etc...)
At a local fair in the 1950s I witnessed a tremendous George Formby concert. It was many years later I realised that person was an impersonator & felt most deflated & disappointed. Of course I should have known a superstar of the likes of Mr Formby would not appear at a local fair nor would the cowboy purporting to be Roy Rogers. Many thanks to Mr Shark for this wonderful gift.
ReplyDeleteHappy Trails
El Reverendo Dr Baz Mania(c)
There were many rumours back in the early 70s Mr GrumpyBum (a.k.a. George Ivan Morrison) had recorded but then archived an album entitled "Stiff Upper Lip". The highlight of the album was reputedly an 18 minute opus called "Arthur Askey" in which The CSO riffed away whilst Van repeated the title endlessly utilising every vocal tic in his repertoire.
ReplyDeleteMr Askey was a contemporary of Mr Formby popular up until the 60s. He was about 4 foot tall, big head, receding hairline & compulsive jollification. His catchphrase was "Hello playmates", from then on it was a corny joke a minute. The grand finale of his show was Arthur mincing around singing a tune entitled "I`m A Silly Seagull". I still live in hope that Mr GrumpyBum releases this gem.
El Reverendo Dr Baz Mania(c)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUP8n9mmwa0
Delete