Sparkassenpark, Mönchengladbach, Germany15th August 2018
Santana - “Devination Tour 2018”
Carlos Augusto Santana Alves was born on 20 July 1947 in Autlan de Navarro, Mexico. The name SANTANA alone makes music lovers and Rock enthusiasts water in their mouths and click their tongues. He is one of the very few guitarists who can be recognized right away by a few notes, and who has pushed the boundaries of rock music to include the variant of Latin Rock.
Long before the term “World Music” even existed, it was already celebrated by SANTANA. In 1969, the debut album ‘Santana’ was recorded with the roaring lion on the cover and hits like ‘Jingo’ or ‘Evil Ways’ and released shortly after their legendary performance at the Woodstock Festival. The next top seller was ‘Abraxas’, released in 1970 and contains the classics ‘Samba Pa Ti’, ‘Oyo Como Va’ and above all ‘Black Magic Woman’. After releasing the second album, Neal Schon joined the band. In September 1971 another successful album, ‘Santana III’, was released. After that, the band split up. Carlos Santana released numerous albums with more and more guest musicians in the following years, but the great success failed to materialize. In 1999 he celebrated a worldwide comeback with ‘Supernatural’, including the single ‘Smooth’, with around 30 million copies sold and three Grammys for him in the Latin Rock category. ‘Shaman’ followed three years later and had also a great success.
Afterwards it went steadily downhill and the further success failed to materialize. At the end of 2013, Carlos rounded up his old friends and began recording his new album in 2014, which was released in April 2016 and, 45 years after the release of his third album, ‘Santna III’, was now called ‘Santana IV’. In 2018, Carlos Santana is again on a worldwide promo tour, and after performing a gig in France, the Latin rocker will also be guest in Germany at four venues, namely in Mönchengladbach, Berlin, Ulm, and Dresden, before he is going back to the States. Shortly after, he will play only shows in the House of Blues at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas until the beginning of February 2019. Today, the Sparkassenpark was also fully seated indoors and reported to be sold-out with 8,000 visitors. Carlos is accompanied by an 8-headed band. Besides the string wizard himself there are Benny Rietveld (bass), Karl Perazzo (percussion), David K. Matthews (keyboards), Tommy Anthony (guitar, vocals), his wife Cindy Blackman Santana (drums), Andy Vargas (vocals), Ray Green (vocals) and Paoli Metjas (percussion). http://www.santana.com / https://www.facebook.com/carlossantana
Music & Performance
From 7:15 pm, video sequences flickered across the screen, accompanied by ambient guitar sounds. Love, peace and happiness have always been the main driving force behind SANTANA’s music and so there were scenes from the Vietnam War, the 1969 Woodstock Festival, the hippie movement and many of his friends and companions, such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Who, Marianne Faithful, Joan Baez, Buddy Miles, Grateful Dead,... At 7:30 pm the show started and lasted 2.5 hours. SANTANA opened with the very old ‘Soul Sacrifice’ from 1969 and then added classics to classics. Whether ‘Jingo’, ‘Evil Ways’ or ‘Black Magic Woman’, you never had the feeling that only one song would be played down, but Carlos and his band turned every number into a jam session with surprising components and almost random creations with great vocals by Andy and Ray.
After ‘Qye Como Va’, there was a loud birthday song for Marc, in which the audience participated with enthusiasm. After the instrumental ‘Umi Says’ with great percussion and an ingenious solo by Carlos himself, the powerful ‘Right On’ followed with a lot of keyboard tunes and an incredibly Mister Green on the vocals. Cindy sang ‘Imagine’ by John Lennon not very well, but she is an outstanding drummer. ‘El Boogie’ followed with fattest black blues rhythm, horns and an excellent solo by Tommy Anthony. Carlos performed the show really easy-going and quite cool by wearing a typical hat, played a few brilliant licks and constantly chewed on his chewing gum. The video animations for ‘Mona Lisa’ with constantly changing faces of well-known portraits of women from the art world were simply phenomenal and the songs themselves with acoustic guitar and rap-like interludes of the shouters became a crisp number that hardly anyone kept sitting in their seats anymore.
‘Maria Maria’, the interlude to ‘Bananas’ and ‘Foo Foo’, were pure samba and fun, electrified the audience and simply invited them to dance. Also at ‘Corazon Espinado’ the fans were very happy with the outstanding vocals and clapped their hands all the time. There was a lot of groove, jagged percussion, more aggressive voices and “whoowhoo” choirs on ‘Are You Ready People’, followed by an unbelievable solo by Carlos’ great love Cindy on the drums and he was very proud to announce her as his wife. The presentation of the band followed, and every member was asked to sing or to play an instrument. Tommy, the guitar player, chose a version of Roxanne and sang this almost better than STING of POLICE himself. With ‘Love, Peace And Happiness’ by THE CHAMBER´S BROTHERS and rather fuzzy riffs of the old master a fantastic concert experience ended at 11:00 pm.
Setlist
01. Soul Sacrifice
02. Jingo (Babatunde Olaturji - Cover)
03. Evil Wayes (Willie Bobo - Cover) / A Love Supreme (John Coltrane - Cover)
04. Mama Matotoya
05. Black Magic Woman / Gypsy Queen
06. Oye Como Va (Tito Puerito - Cover)
07. Umi Says (Mos Def - Cover)
08. Right On (Marvin Gaye - Cover)
09. Imagine (John Lennon - Cover)
10. El Boogie
11. Mona Lisa
12. Maria Maria
13. Bananas
13. Foo Foo
14. Corazon Espinado
15. Toussaint L´Overture
16. Are You Ready People ? / Drum- Solo (Cindy)
17. Spanish Heart / Fever / Tequila / Bass-Solo / Roxanne / Apache with Smooth
18. Love, Peace and Happiness (The Chamber´s Brothers - Cover)
Rating
Music: 10
Performance: 9
Sound: 9
Light: 8
Total: 9 / 10
All pictures by Andreas Gey (Kommodore Johnsen)
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