As a Bay Area native, it was just a given that I heard a lot of Santana on the radio. In fact, I probably heard so much I didn't feel any strong motivation to buy an album since all I had to do was turn on the radio. I'm sure the success of Supernatural about 15 years back didn't hurt matters. Suddenly Carlos Santana was rubbing shoulders with the Backstreet Boys on Top 40 radio, something I don't think anyone was thinking of back in 1970.
This got me to thinking, just how the heck did Abraxas get so rooted into classic rock heavy rotation? The album is nearly half instrumentals and more often than not if you hear words being sung, they are in Spanish. In fact there are only two original songs that fit into the model of stand-alone rock song of the period. I guess it's just the luck of the times that this album came out in the post-Woodstock glow. Frankly this is a much more honest album than a megahit like Supernatural, but without the radio-ready production and guest stars, this would have been lost in the shuffle. So I'm thankful for 1970, a time when a recording like this got the respect it deserved.
Incidentally, this album got a little bit more attention in the Coen brothers' movie A Serious Man, when somehow they were able to get this album from a mail-order service....in 1967. Knowing the Coen brothers, this was no gaffe, but that's another discussion.
No comments:
Post a Comment