(Why) Santana Should've Stopped with Abraxas

Why Santana Should've Stopped with Abraxas
by Ilana Mercer

The seductive pose the legendary Al Di Meola struck with a nude lovely on the sleeve of the superb Kiss My Axe album was probably essential marketing, as the appeal of the hot guitar player has never been so low. Di Meola-like players are rare, but it's good to see Carlos Santana basking in considerable, albeit dubious, glory. Santana is truly a great virtuoso. Amidst the cacophony of the first Woodstock, which was replete, much like its revival, with the musically inept, Carlos Santana shone. Here was this guy oblivious to all else but the Gibson, rendering a studio-perfect live performance, clearly about to take the blues scales where only Eddie Van Halen, Eric Clapton and the late great Stevie Ray Vaughan would tread, and sorry, no odes for Jimi Hendrix. A fine tunesmith and rhythm man, his picking, I'm afraid, was sloppy.

Music might be a matter of taste, but there is no relativism about technical merit. A career as a classical recitalist would be stumped were the musician's fingers not sufficiently nimble to render Bach's preludes and fugues. Or as Glenn Gould put it: "Why do I play Bach so fast? Because I can." And boy, could he. But this demand for "love of structure, clarity, complexity, nuance and imagination," in the words of the Times art critic Robert Hughes, is rare in the pop and rock genres right now, and has been for some time. Let's refrain, however, from serenading the 1960s and 1970s. While well-crafted melodies were abundant during those years, there were not many worthy axemen, Santana, Van Halen, and Clapton excepted. Incidentally, the only true headbanger of brilliance that won an indirect and posthumous Grammy this year was Igor Stravinsky for those mountains of sound: The Rite of Spring and the Firebird ballets.

Santana's Supernatural album is a collaborative horror. It doesn't hold a candle to Marathon, Abraxas or that first Santana vinyl gem showcasing the 16-year-old Mike Shrieve pounding the skins. Staging a comeback has meant losing the percussion driven Latin distinctiveness. What remain are the haunting Santana riffs imposed upon crass, jarring, pop tunes that jibe with the likes of Rob Thomas, Everlast or Lauryn Hill. This is the Zeitgeist's recipe for success.

For the reader I have endured Workers Compensation Board-worthy mental anguish by listening to the artless multitudes. Be it Limp Bizkit, Smashing Pumpkins, or Pearl Jam; the musical scaffolding is that of 3 chords shoddily executed, and, in most cases, accompanied by two-note vocal melodies.

Audaciously, Sarah McLachlan recently claimed her sound had its roots in the music of Cat Stevens. In the genre of pop music, Cat Stevens was gifted. His songs embody complex arrangements entirely absent from McLachlan's warbles which have no such melodic progression. On she drones and 6 CDs later she and her Lilith bosom buddies are still belting the equivalent of Three Blind Mice: monotonous phrases characterized by little harmonic resolution, and punctuated with a spasm of yodeling.

Listen to the Canadian band Rush and you hear great harmonic complexity including interesting chord changes, walking bass-lines, and the kind of changes in time signature that require high level musicianship and years of practice. Such sonic variety is missing from McLachlan's around-the-camp-fire singalongs, the notes of which are invariably sustained with a distortion pedal, and blended into a poorly articulated mess against the backdrop of a drumbeat devoid of fills.

Holding court with Auntie Pamela Wallin, a Canadian Oprah Winfrey aspirant, Wide Mouth Mason's percussionist recently demonstrated he can barely managed an eighth note rhythm and that with absolute zero variation. For his part, the guitarist responded with simple strumming, also shunning rhythmic variation. With the aid of deep breathing, I got down with The Tragically Hip and the song "What's to become of Us". Their audile output? The minimalist three chords, and a simple drum roll to punctuate the otherwise routine drumming: rhythmically and melodically the sum total is Bah Bah Black Sheep.

The true finger blistering, almighty Fender-benders remain in the musical closet. These are the neo-classical instrumentalists, and in particular Tony MacAlpine, Ynwie Malmsteen, Eric Johnson, Vinnie Moore, Steve Morse. Recordings of their furious licks will be missing from the stores and the airwaves, so long as consumers are willing to pay for stuff that sounds as if it was produced after 3 lessons with a bad tutor. Meantime, I'm putting in a requests for the return of the Queensrÿche lads (was there ever a metal ballad lovelier than Silent Lucidity?) and the outstanding Dann Huff who played me to pulp with "I'm a believer" on the memorable album Giant.

Published previously in the Calgary Herald