July 27th at SPAC, Second Half of the Concert that night…
Needless to say, that 2012 version of The Allmans “Whipping Post” was a tough act to follow… and we needed a little time to breathe and walk it off, before Carlos was set-up and ready to try. As we wandered back to the purveyors of liquid concession– me, dazzled, my wife more impatient for the next act– there was an acoustic version of LIttle Martha playing to cool down the crowd as a kind of post-encore letdown. That was beautiful, but like a nursery rhyme being told after an epic maelstrom had rolled through.
Another beer and some cold water (at a mere $5. a bottle, when I had some for free in the car, a half-mile away), restored my spirit and I was ready for more. The Allmans had started on time about 7 pm and it was only just getting fully dark out as the stage changed over to the large Latin aggregation of the Mexican master, Santana. This was to be a true double-headliner performance, also a throwback, but new in spirit.
Carlos had promised, in a short ROLLING STONE prelude-to-the-summer-tour article
a few months back, that he and his band were going to “tear it up,” and “knock people out” and there were only something like 7 dates per month, at very selective venues,
spread out all over the map. We were lucky to get the tour to stop upstate– this bill had performed at Jones Beach, and outside NYC, in Jersey, and Pennsylvania before heading north to us, and then went to Hartford, CT the following night.
We had brought our then-young son Miles to see Santana once before, 10 or 12 years before, when Rusted Root was the opening act, which he remembered more than
Carlos, since he’d fallen asleep by then. That had probably been sonic overload for an
8 year old,but after a dozen Dave Matthews shows, he was used to that now. Daryn, son number 2, had been to the Jazz Festival before, but had avoided rock shows till this.
Both would end up pleasantly surprised by the music they heard that night, much of which has been emanating from the CD players during their early lives. My wife had been listening to ABRAXAS in her mother’s household since she was 8 or 10 years old herself, and has followed his later career just as avidly as her mother had followed the early years. She was far more a Carlos fan than a souther blues lover.
I had seen Carlos in person back at Colgate, circa 1974, in the gymnasium there, and he was incredible then as well– five years after his youthful debut at Woodstock. What struck me then was the churning, burning, overloaded rhythm section…overseen by the Mexican maestro, graceful as a bullfighter, building the army of drummers to a frenzy and then skating skittishly, melodically, above the fray.
More than half the hits he hit during this concert were from my era back then– all fresh and sounding shiny, and embellished for the new millenium: “Oye Como Va!” with its
instantly recognizable riff, with the crowd chanting along on the chorus, even the non-Spanish speakers among us. Then came “No One to Depend On” with its
nasty, tongue-in-cheek line: I AIN’T GOTT NO-BUDDY, THAT I CAN DE-PEND ON, turned into a feverishly long jam, accented by that killer cowbell. Soon after, the mystic
meandering melody of “Black Magic Woman” brought back deep memories from the ’70’s… with the obligatory segue into “Gypsy Queen,”, another gem of a jam that had my wife and most of the women there in a dancing trance. These were the early highlights,
to make sure the 40-50+ crowd was into it to begin with, followed by more recent hits from the SHAMAN and SUPERNATURAL albums, which put him back on the cultural map for a new generation a decade ago.
The tune “SMOOTH” for instance– maybe far more familiar to anyone under 40– even
without Rob Thomas singing the catch-phrase, admonishing his woman to …”Make it REAL, or else FORGET ABOUT IT”– was still great and not a cliche… Followed by a sweet Latin lover’s croon, “Maria Maria” which Wyclef Jean had produced for Santana’s hit 1999 album Supernatural. Carlos as usual, cool enough to be romantic without devolving into mushiness– still a little sting there.
At one point Carlos stopped for a moment and chatted up the crowd a bit: “Man, it sure smells FRAGRANT in this place…” Then he gave a thoughtful little spiel I thought was interesting, quoting his countryman and friend Anthony Quinn– “Allow a little madness in your life, and then it’s easier to cut the rope…” Hmmm. Is he saying we are bound to
our mundane lives 99% of the time?? Perhaps true, which is why we need the ecstatic moments of concerts to counterbalance normalcy.
There were two distinct periods of ecstasy in the remainder of this concert, and both stayed with me a long time after. The first was when the two stellar guitarists Warren Haynes and Derek Trucks from The Allman Bros Band came out for an extended summit meeting of the masters. When Carlos led them into the opening riff of Cream’s classic
“SUNSHINE OF YOUR LOVE” I got some serious chills up my spine. I had a feeling they would take Jack Bruce’s famous tune to places that never get heard on oldies rock radio, and I was right. Since I’d never seen Clapton in his prime, 44 years ago (!) when this tune first emerged, this was a first for me, not recalling anyone else who might’ve tackled this particular chestnut. I can’t tell you how good the three solos were, each getting major minutes front and center to expound upon the original riffs like jazz sax players tearing into a familiar melody and ripping it into flaming shreds. I recall Carlos
throwing in a phrase from George Harrison– “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” in the middle of a frenzied section, and Warren Haynes seemingly doing battle not just with his stagemates but with Clapton’s signature riffs– I was blown away. I kept smacking the shoulder of my 20-year old son, grinning alongside me, telling him “This is the Real Shit!”
I told him later that we were seeing 3 of the best American rock guitarists of the moment,
all at once, in Saratoga Springs, and we were lucky this “Shape Shifter” tour had stopped in our town.
The finale was the second peak of rock ‘n roll throwback bliss– as images of 1969’s Woodstock concert flashed on both the stage screens down below, and the revamped facade screens for us lawn-lovers– there came a rumbling up through the ground which
was more like a force of nature than pure music. It sounded like an army of Latin percussionists starting an insurrection– and you could feel it in your feet and your gut as much as hearing it. I scribbled some notes: “Thunder fills the hillside…” and all of us there were treated to a 60’s flashback for an event most of us had likely not seen.
There was a long organ groove like a magic carpet and then this skinny, goateed
young Mexican guitarist with his head thrown back came into view, skittering along on top of the percussive thunder like a surfer… Here he was 43 years later, re-playing “SOUL SACRIFICE” just as ferociously as he had that day in Bethel, NY, in front of 400,000 people who did not yet know who he was, until that moment– one of the most auspicious debuts in rock history, as a 22 year old kid. It was wonderful that he could not only re-package that experience for us musically and visually, but still play the hell out of it.
I have rarely been as pumped up and uplifted after a lengthy concert as I was that night, on the way over the bridge and back to the car. I was so pleased that I had dragged the two boys with their mother and me to see this performance together. I went back to my music collection and dug out a re-mastered CD version of “Sunshine of Your Love” in the original, and played it loudly way past one in the morning. We had to get up early the next morning for a trip to Hartford, CT. for my late-Unkle’s memorial service, at which I was supposed to read the eulogy. It was hard to change gears and turn down the sound on the “Shape Shifter” experience I had just seen and heard, but it seemed to stay with me on the three hour drive the next day. As it turned out, Santana and The Allmans were playing at The Comcast Theatre in Hartford the very next night as well, and I briefly toyed with the idea of getting tickets and dragging my sisters to go see them again, but that didn’t happen. Only so much emotional ebullience is allowed in one weekend, and Carlos and his friends had pretty much guaranteed that I got my full dose that last weekend in July. Thanks for that, Mssrs. Santana and Allman, et al.– as you promised, it was a most excellent ass-kicking experience.
Wayne Perras, Saratoga Springs, NY, Summer 2012