Cindy Blackman Santana "Give The Drummer Some" 2020***

Photos: the Santana band, featuring Cindy Blackman-Santana on drums, at Ziggo Dome Amsterdam, 24-06-2025

As I said previously, we greatly enjoyed the Santana concert at Ziggo Dome a few days back. The guitarist was of course the main draw, but his wife/drummer Cindy Blackman Santana gave an equally admirable performance, including a quite (physically) demanding drum solo, which came more than two hours after the start of the concert. My girlfriend and I were both so impressed we that we decided to buy her CD even though we had no idea what it would sound like - based on what I had read about her, I thought it'd be pure jazz but as it turns out that was only one of the colours she had in her palette.

Talking of Cindy Blackman as being the drummer of Santana band, or the wife of the guitarist, is of course reductive, as she is quite well-known in her own right. I, like most pop and rock fans, first became aware of her as that hot female drummer who appeared in Lenny Kravitz videos but, in reality, when she joined Kravitz's band she was already a well-respected jazz musician whose recordings as band leader went all the way back to 1987. Give The Drummer Some is her 11th solo album - as well as her first since marrying Carlos Santana in 2010. Previously she used to record more often; probably the demanding tour schedule of Santana was too time-consuming, but she used that time well. When she entered the recording studio after a 10-year absense she had 17 songs ready, all but one her own original compositions. I haven't followed her career closely, but this CD seems to be an anomaly: she used to be a straight-up jazz artist, but this one leans more on rock, pop, and R&B. Also, where she previously mostly contained herself to drumming, this time it's her singing that comes to the fore. She possesses a fine soulful voice; not a belter like Aretha, but perfect for the lighter pop-R&B material. Her drumming on this album is, as expected, impeccable - funky on the groovier numbers, strong on the rockers, inventive in the jazzier pieces. Sometimes it's overshadowed by the guitars, which is to be expected when one has Carlos Santana on board - his contributions here are fantastic, often better than on his own recent albums. Another heavyweight guitarist is John McLaughlin (Mahavishnu Orchestra, Miles Davis Band). His solos here, especially on "We Came To Play", are of dizzying speed and complexity. Vernon Reid (Living Colour) is an old associate of Cindy's, and balances rock and jazz very well. A surprising inclusion is that of Kirk Hammett (Metallica). To be fair, after Metallica had Marianne Faithfull guest on one of their songs, made a collaborative album with Lou Reed, and given a concert with a symphony orchestra, one should stop being surprised every time they step out of the Heavy Metal field. I guess they're so good at that one thing they do, you forget they're not one-dimensional. In this case, Hammett puts his heavy riffs and shredding solos in the service of the groove, providing us with the hardest rocking moment of this record. Combine this with jazz instrumentals, R&B dance tracks, funk rockers, and rapping by Santana Band vocalist Andy Vargas, and you've got a lot -maybe too much- diversity. On the whole, this is an uneven album featuring nevertheless great musicianship. A bit poppier than I had hoped, I expected a jazzy affair with the drums more to the fore - despite the consistently strong drumming there are barely any drum solos. I'm thinking that some of these songs would work better incorporated in a Santana album, while the jazz and R&B/dance tracks could form the basis for two different CD's. But it's Cindy's album, maybe she wanted to demonstrate her expertise in different styles at the expense of consistency and flow. The cover art reminds me of Santana's Africa Speaks, not surprising since the two albums belong to the same period, while the CD is hosted in a similarly flimsy cardboard case. Usually while I listen to an album I make a few notes on each track, which I later work into my review. This time, though, I think I can present them as-is, so here's my track-to-track presentation of Give The Drummer Some:

1. "Imagine"*** funk rock remake of the classic John Lennon ballad, not entirely convincing but featuring great guitar by Carlos Santana. I don't really care for the vocals on this one, it had me (mistakenly) thinking "This gal is no singer". It's the only cover on this CD, obviously chosen because the message of the song is important to the Santanas.

2. "We Came To Play"**** funk jazz instrumental. Solid drumming but totally overshadowed by John McLaughlin's masterful guitar arpeggios. Settles into a repetitive groove for the last minute.

3 "She’s Got It Going On"**** a funky pop number that reminds you she used to be in Lenny Kravitz's band, also despells previous doubts about her singing abilities.

4 "Miles Away" *** a short atmospheric jazz number with trumpet (inspired by Miles Davis?)

5 "Everybody's Dancin'" **** a self-described "feelgood song". Superb R&B with beautiful guitar fills by Carlos Santana.

6 "Velocity" *** a pure jazz number, great interplay between the drums and electric piano (Neal Evans).

7 "I Need A Drummer" *** upbeat funk rock. The song was inspired by a jam Cindy had with Prince, his influence is all over this one.

8 "Superbad" **** The title isn't the only part of this song that's reminiscent of James Brown. John McLaughlin limits himself to just one shredding solo, this time. Now that I think of it, this sounds a bit like Funkadelic when they had Eddie Hazel on guitar.

9 "You Don’t Wanna Break My Heart" *** a ballad of the Lenny Kravitz school. Carlos' emotive guitar solo elevates this.

10 "Evolution Revolution"**** OK, guitarist Vernon Reid is an obviously good fit, but Metallica's Kirk Hammett? His familiar heavy riffs nevertheless fit this song very well, and give Cindy an excuse to bang the drums even more savagely to match the two guitarists' aural attack.

11 "Change Is In Your Hands"*** another heavy funk rocker with Vernon Reid guesting on lead guitar and Andy Vargas (current Santana Band vocalist) on rap vocal. Uplifting political message.

12 "Dance Party" *** based on an electronic loop, not my kind of thing but interesting thanks to Bill Ortiz's contribution on trumpet.

13 "Fun Party Splash" *** a much better dance party number than the previous one, with a disco beat and energizing guitar by (who else?) Carlos Santana.

14 "Social Justice"*** another "message" song by the politically attuned couple. Carlos Santana and Andy Vargas guest.

15 "Twilight Mask" *** atmospheric instrumental with prominent low bass and Carlos Santana on free jazz improvisations. Goes on for 9 minutes, which is a bit too long.

16 "Mother Earth"*** Cindy hitting pots and trash can lids, basically everything that was around when she got a musical idea she wanted to put down immediately. Sounds way better than my description lets on.

17 "Black Pearl"**** An atmospheric jazz piece with great guitar by Carlos Santana and Vernon Reid.

Santana "Sentient" 1987-2024(rec) 2025 (comp)***

Photos: Santana Live at Ziggo Dome, Amsterdam. Tuesday 24 June, 2024

We recently went to Ziggo Dome for a Santana concert. It was the second time I saw the band live - the previous one was waaay back in 1991 at Leoforos Alexandras Stadium in Athens. I was mesmerized by Carlos' guitar, and still think of it as the best guitar playing I've ever witnessed live - and I've seen a lot of concerts starring a lot of famous guitarists. At the time I had recorded the concert on my walkman, and -despite the awful sound quality- every listen would reinforce that conviction. That cassette went wherever cassettes go when you're not paying them attention, but there's a better recording of that concert out there on youtube so you can judge for yourself. This time around, Carlos' playing was a little less impressive, but what do you expect? the man is 77 years old - it's difficult to grasp that he was only 43 back then, quite younger than what I am now, but it felt like I was seeing a legendary beast from a bygone age; Woodstock was like the Jurassic period to me, but I was less removed from it then than I now am from that warm Athens night when I first saw Santana live. And if Carlos' fingers are a tad less nimble than they used to be, Tuesday's concert didn't make for an inferior experience. First of all, this time Santana have a lot more hit songs than they did then; especially the ones from multi-Grammy Award winner Supernatural (1999), they played 5 off that one on the Ziggo Dome concert. Secondly, it's a terrific band: David Mathews was impressive on keyboards throughout, bassist Benny Rietveld played a masterful solo, the vocalists, percussionists, and the rest of the band were also great. But my girlfriend and I were most impressed by wife Cindy Blackman Santana on drums. So, at the end of the show, we went to the merchandise stall and got both Santana's latest vinyl and Cindy's new(ish) CD (to be presented next week)

First of all, "Sentient" may be Santana's newest LP, but it mostly contains older, semi-forgotten, recordings and collaborations, going back as many as long as three decades. Which one can guess by taking a look on the collaborators: Miles Davis (R.I.P.)? Michael Jackson (R.I.P.)? Actually, Miles was already dead when "Get On" was included on Paolo Rustichelli's Mystic Man (1996) which means tha Carlos and the Italian keyboardist were playing along to Davis' trumpet samples. Not bad, though. It's a chillout tune with a semi-electronic Latin beat and a small funky vocal sample. So far that sounds like something you might listen at a Balearic beach bar in the 90's - but the superb playing by the musicians elevates it tremendously. The LP contains another track from the same CD, "Vers Le Soleil". No Miles here - just Carlos and Paolo, relaxed vocals and dramatic synthesized strings. Both are "Sentient versions", meaning they've been reworked for inclusion here. I wouldn't know how much, but the new versions are great, especially Carlos' guitar which is just magical. Another reworked version is "Please Don't Take Your Love" featuring Smokey Robinson, originally recorded for the soul legend's comeback LP Time Flies When You're Having Fun (2009). Smokey's ageless vocal combines with Carlos' classy blues licks to create one of the highlights here. Opener "Let the Guitar Play" was released last year as a Record Store Day single, and features veteran rapper Darryl McDaniels (of Run-DMC) on vocal. I don't know why all those old rockers think they're modernizing their sound by adding unrelated rap segments; to be honest, I find it intrusive and would have prefered the track as an instrumental. "Whatever Happens" off Michael Jackson's last album Invincible (2001) features some nice acoustic guitar and intricate production. It wouldn't have sounded out of place on Supernatural. A second MJ composition "Stranger In Moscow" is included here in a, previously unissued, instrumental version recorded live in 2007 at a small club, backed by renowned drummer Narada Michael Walden and his band. Santana's guitar literally sings, as it copies the tone of MJ's vocal on the original ballad. A great gift for the diehard fan who may already own all the other, rare but previously released, pieces. Another previously unreleased track is "Coherence", credited to Santana and wife/drummer Cindy Blackman. It's an adventurous jazz fusion piece featuring great musical interplay between the couple. The vinyl version of Sentient closes with a masterful instrumental called "Blues For Salvador" from the eponymous 1987 album - I guess its inclusion is justified by the fact that it comes from a "solo" Carlos Santana LP, and thus new in the official Santana-the-band discography. As you may have already guessed, this is a hodgepogde of different styles, even more so than Santana's (in)famous string of commercial "collaboration" albums of the early 00's. It's nevertheless nice to bring all those scattered tunes together, and Carlos' playing is inspired throughout irregardless of song style. Not essential for the casual listener, but good for diehard fans who want to collect everything from their favorite artist, as wll as those who, like me, wanted a souvenir of the Oneness tour (although I believe the band didn't play any of these tunes live). The album cover you see here is exclusive to the European market - basically, it swaps the international edition's front and back covers. The CD version of the album contains extra tracks: two more Rustichelli collaborations called "Rastafario" and "Fool Moon", as well as "I'll Be Waiting", a soul ballad from Moonflower.

**** for Please Don't Take Your Love, Get On, Blues For Salvador

*** for Let The Guitar Play, Stranger In Moscow, Whatever Happens, Vers Le Soleil, Coherence

Santana ‎"Salsa, Samba & Santana" 1971-1987(rec) 1991(comp)***

This is the hottest summer I've experienced in my 9 years in The Netherlands, and by far the longest one, too. It used to be we got 2-3 weeks per year of sun and temperatures around 25°C, but now it seems like we've been having true summer weather for the third month in a row. Could that "global warming" they've been talking about in the news be true? Donald Trump doesn't think so, and he's the chosen leader of the most powerful country in the world, so he should know. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. I enjoy the sun when I can and keep counting the days until I start my vacations. Two more weeks and I'll be lying on a Greek island beach, gazing at the sea and listening to something appropriately summer-y. Something like this CD for example.

This is one of dozens of Santana compilations around. I have a few myself, of which this certainly is the weirdest. As is evident by the title, this is an attempt to gather together Santana's most obviously "latin" dance tracks. As such it is at once a sussess and a failure. It succeeds in shining a spotlight on (often unfairly) neglected deep album tracks, especially instrumentals, but fails to include some of their best songs in this style (e.g. "Jingo", "Oye Como Va") rendering it a flawed representation of even this one particular facet of this band - or artist? seeing as Carlos Santana is obviously the band's  only constant member and undisputed leader, I'd say these are interchangeable. His guitar playing is brilliant throughout, and that's even more evident in the (many) instrumental tracks included here like the fantastic opener "Samba De Sausalito" from the live Lotus album ('74) and the "Toussaint L'Overture" from 3 ('71) the third and last album by the original line-up, which can also be heard on the afro-cuban "Para Los Rumberos" from the same disc. The latter is at the second half of the CD together with most of the "dance" tracks: "Angel Negro", "Maria Caracoles", "Bailando/Aquatic Park", and the 3 numbers from '81's Zebop ("Hannibal", "Primera Invasion" and the pop soul "E Papa Re") - which kind of highlights the absurdity of this comp: 3 songs chosen from one of Santana's less important LPs - and not even the best or most well-known tracks off the album. "Carnaval" is probably the best of the sambas here, but unfortunately it's presented in its live version (from '77's Moonflower). On that album it just segued smoothly into another song, but here it's abruptly cut short after 2 minutes. "Brotherhood" is another live track (from '85 but released as part of the '88 Viva Santana! compilation) advertising Carlos Santana's hippy-dippy utopian philosophies which nevertheless make him so endearing. Another philosophically inclined tune is the closing ballad "Free As The Morning Sun", from a '79 "spiritual" solo album released under the name Devadip Carlos Santana. It's one of the relatively subdued songs in this compilation, which is otherwise very percussion-heavy and dominated by fast latin rhythms. Another atmospheric tune is "Song Of The Wind" from Caravanserai ('72), a beautiful instrumental. The level of the soloists overall is, despite the personnel changes, consistently high for a rock band and on a par with the best jazz rock players around. The keyboards are especially good while the guitar, of course, is pure magic! A curious feature of this comp us that the silence between the tracks has been removed, supposedly to give it a better flow. It works well when one dance track follows another like in a medley or a DJ set, but not every song change is smooth. On the whole, despite some puzzling choices, this cd still contains some great music and manages to chronologically cover all of Santana's career to that point (with the exception of their first two albums). It's recommended if you want to dig deeper into the band's latin jazz and dance roots. Absolutely not recommended as a starting point, as it fails to include any bona fide classics. Oh, and the cover art is shit. 

***** for Toussaint L'Overture

**** for Samba De Sausalito (Live), Carnaval, Song Of The Wind, Angel Negro, Free As The Morning Sun 

*** for Touchdown Raiders, La Fuente Del Ritmo, Brotherhood, E Papa Re, Wham!, Flora De Canela, Para Los Rumberos, Maria Caracoles, Bailando/Aquatic Park

** for Nueva York, Primera Invasion, Hannibal

Bob Dylan "Real Live" 1984***

This is a Dylan LP you rarely hear about, apparently one his most forgettable. Granted, none of his live albums is of earth shattering importance - with the possible exception of the 1966 bootleg Royal Albert Hall Concert - which, as we learned when it was officially released with a 30-something years' delay, was actually not recorded at the Royal Albert Hall after all. But some of his live albums are, if not famous, notoriously disappointing: Hard Rain an underwhelming document of a momentous tour, Dylan & The Dead the collective nadir of two legends. Real Live, on the contrary, is completely inoffensive, thus utterly forgettable. It was recorded during his 1984 tour of UK and Ireland, and features a predominately English band [Mick Taylor (Rolling Stones) on lead guitar, Ian McLagan (The Faces) on keyboards, Colin Allen (Stone The Crows) on drums, and American Greg Sutton on bass]. The song selection and the lean, muscular arrangements are a direct reference to Dylan's Sixties heyday. Maybe his voice, never a fine instrument, here sounds more nasal and whiny than it did back then, but at least he sings like he means it.

The LP gets off to a flying start with "Highway 61 Revisited" and an incendiary "Maggie's Farm", Mick Taylor proving once again that he's the best guitarist The Stones ever had (sorry Keith!). His bluesy licks even elevate the relatively bland mid-tempo material from Dylan's latest album "Infidels" ("I and I", "License to Kill"). The acoustic solo numbers (just voice, guitar and harmonica) have a nostalgic air: On "It Ain't Me Baby" the audience joins in the chorus, while "Tangled Up In Blue" features changed lyrics which created a minor buzz with Dylanologists at the time. "Girl From The North Country" and "Ballad Of A Thin Man" stick close to the originals, while "Masters Of War" is the only track with a radically different arrangement. I like the faster tempo and cutting guitar, but I miss the original's sneering vocal delivery. It's as if Dylan disapproves of these masters of war, when in the older version he sounded like he hated their guts. Great rocking version nevertheless! The record closes with Carlos Santana from the support act joining the band for an fiery performance of "Tombstone Blues". It all adds up to a decent, enjoyable album few would object to - yet the live versions neither surpass the studio ones, nor are sufficiently different to give you something to write home about. I might have already forgotten about it if it wasn't for this nagging question: just who is the black bass player who takes pride of place in the inner sleeve photos? He's neither a member of Dylan's band, nor Santana (obviously). Does anyone know?  

**** for Maggie's Farm, Masters of War, Tombstone Blues

*** for Highway 61 Revisited, I and I, It Ain't Me, Babe, Tangled up in Blue, Ballad of a Thin Man, Girl from the North Country 

** for License to Kill