Supernatural - Santana (Cassette 1999)

Carlos Santana, the man, the myth the legend. His sound is like no other, and that is clearly heard on this beautiful DVD-Audio. I am happy to say that this features a wonderful multi channel track that just puts you in the middle of the music. (Da Le) Yaleo starts the album with a Spanish song, which despite my 4 years of college Spanish, I have no idea what it meant. I do know this, the music is beautiful, this song starts the album on a mellow, yet lush note. I could hear Guitar (of course,its a Santana album), choruses, drums, lots of percussion in fact, horns of plenty and all coming at..

In the summer of '99, I, as did many, turned on the radio in my car, only to be caught off-guard by Santana's "Smooth". Now, allow me to make the mistake I normally do once again--I thought it was Matchbox 20. Yes, I know, no one in Matchbox 20 can play like that. However, I heard Rob Thomas' vocal, and I muttered to myself, "Another Matchbox 20 song." I proceeded to list in my head the 96 different reasons why I hate Matchbox 20--and, yes, there ARE at least 96, I hate the band that much. But moving on, I was caught off-guard by this particular tune, because, well... IT DIDN'T SUCK. Now, you.

What makes a classic? We all have our varied and unique interpretations of what makes quality music most likely, this is due to the fact that so many different factors contribute to the production of such music we rank each of these components on our own scale of importance, and then subsequently categorize the quality of music under scrutiny. Among other factors, there is instrumental prowess, quality of voice, harmonic viability of a number of singers, lyrics, melodic line and genre to consider. It is very very rare that an album should be ranked excellent in all or even most of these...

Watching the slowly-setting sun play an endless game of "peek-a-boo" with rain-filled clouds that are about to let down their burden onto the multitude, random thoughts go through my head. Thoughts dealing with such trivial subjects as my last year of HS coming up soon, the lack of job possibilities, and other useless things. Those thoughts mingle with other possibly more confusing thoughts such as thinking about the reasons why how come every time I turn on the news, another brother (or disenfranchised person if that makes you feel better) is either incarcerated, killed, or the victim of...