Santana Lands February 21 in a Captivating Set of Greatest Hits!

New York, NY–Eagle Rock Entertainment will release Santana Live At Montreux 2011 on a 2DVD set and Blu-ray in a exhilarating set of jazz, Latin, funk, soul and rock ‘n’ roll. The 23-song show weighs heavily on the side of the songs that fans of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame guitarist (inducted in 1998) have loved over the years. [MSRP $17.98 for 2DVD, $19.98 for Blu-ray]

Filmed in high-definition and recorded in DTS-HD Master Audio, Dolby Digital 5.1 and LPCM Stereo, it’s a total jam-packed evening of percolating percussion, soaring lead guitar solos and the kind of funky bass/drum action that has kept this band in the forefront of popular music for over 40 years.

Live At Montreux 2011 is a career-spanning show that covers all the bases: from Tito Puente’s “Oye Como Va,” Fleetwood Mac’s “Black Magic Woman,” Babatunde Olatunji’s “Jingo” and Willie Bobo’s “Evil Ways” to John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme.” Carlos Santana has always had a knack for making his cover versions become spectacularly his own. His interpretive flair reached its zenith with 2010′s Guitar Heaven which contains his scintillating take on Cream’s “Sunshine Of Your Love.” Add his numerous originals, including “Smooth” and “Maria Maria,” his signature style of inspired and spiritual guitar playing and you have the kind of DVD that burns with intensity.

Extras include interviews with Carlos and Cindy Blackman Santana, and a very special peek behind-the-scenes. Guest artists include the husband/wife guitar team of Susan Tedeschi and Allman Brother Derek Trucks as well as drummer/wife Cindy Blackman Santana. Over three hours long, this is the Santana concert his fans have been waiting for!

For forty years and as many albums later, Santana has sold more than 90 million records and reached more than 100 million fans at concerts worldwide. To date, Santana has won ten Grammy® Awards, including a record-tying nine for a single project, 1999′s Supernatural (including Album of the Year and Record of the Year for “Smooth”). In 1998, the group was ushered into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, whose web page on their induction notes, “Guitarist Carlos Santana is one of rock’s true virtuosos and guiding lights.” Among many other honors, Carlos Santana has also been cited by Rolling Stone as #15 on their list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.” His last CD, Guitar Heaven… The Greatest Guitar Classics of All Time (Arista) was released in 2010. Celebrating that chart debut, Santana joined the ranks of the Rolling Stones as the only musical act in chart history to score at least one Top 10 album in every decade beginning with the 1960s. “Guitar Heaven” was Santana’s 29th Billboard Top 200 charting release, 12th Top 10 album debut and third Top 10 debut in the past 7 years.

My personal favorite is the version Carlos did of Soul Sacrafice at Woodstock. He later said that he was tripping when the band was told to go on stage. He did not think they were scheduled to go on until the next day so he dropped some acid. He did a masterful job on stage. At one point he said he was hallucinating that the neck of his guitar had turned into a snake and was winding around on him. It is Amazing he held it together, let alone have a fantastic performance. That perfomance catapulted him and his group to superstardom overnight. They were not well known at all up to that point.

An Intersting sidenote: It has been reported that at the 1969 Woodstock Festival, the total cost for all the Acts ran $250,000; now many acts are likely to make that much by themselves. Santana played the festival as the Santana Blues Band for $750 (the same fee as Melanie). The highest fee went to Jimi Hendrix ($18,000) which is only right.

I only saw santana once, in Providence where he was on a double bill with Eric Clapton. The highlight for everyone was when they came out on stage together and tore the place up with their licks. I’m looking forward to the release of his new DVD on February 21st.

Here is a list of the songs on it.
Disc 1:
1) Spark Of The Divine
2) SOCC
3) Back In Black
4) Singing Winds, Crying Beasts
5) Black Magic Woman / Gypsy Queen
6) Oye Como Va
7) Maria Maria
Foo Foo
9) Corazon Espinado / Guajira
10) Benny & Cindy Solo
11) Jingo
12) Carlos Speaks / Novus
13) Europa (Earth’s Cry, Heaven’s Smile) / I Want You
14) Batuka / No One To Depend On

Disc 2:
1) Duende / Open Invitation
2) Make Somebody Happy / Right On Be Free
3) Evil Ways / A Love Supreme
4) Sunshine Of Your Love
5) Smooth / Dame Tu Amor
6) Soul Sacrifice / Dennis Drum Solo
7) Samba Pa Ti
Into The Night
9) Love, Peace And Happiness / Freedom

Danny G

Lost The Doors recording “She Smells So Nice” is to feature on the band’s upcoming DVD documentary “Mr. Mojo Risin’: The Story Of L.A. Woman.”

The track was discovered by producer Bruce Botnick while he was reviewing the recording sessions for a remastered re-release project and it debuted on the band’s Facebook.com page earlier this month – and now it has been added to a photo montage at the end of the documentary, which chronicles the making of Jim Morrison’s final Doors album before his death in 1971.

The track features the late Morrison repeating “Mr. Mojo Risin’” – the anagram of his name which features on the album’s title track.

The new film also features exclusive interviews with Morrison’s bandmates Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger and John Densmore and producers, engineers, friends and managers who were part of the group’s last recording session together as a quartet.

The DVD package also features The Doors tour of Los Angeles – footage of places around the city which have become very much a part of the band’s myth, including Venice Beach, Santa Monica Pier and various settings along Sunset Boulevard, including fabled club the Whisky a Go Go.
Buy DVD or Blu-ray now available at Barnes & Noble. click below.

The Doors were unique as a rock group in that they only had one guitar, played by Robby Krieger. Robby along with The very talented keyboardest Ray Manzarek was able to fill in where other groups would have needed a base and another guitar. Come to think of it the Rascals actually had the same setup. At any rate when you are the only guitar, you better play clean because there isn’t another guitar to hide behind. Hats off to Robby.

Pretty interesting interview with David Lee Roth about his rejoining the band. It’s hard to stop an “old rocker”

Excerpt from Los Angeles Times Article
By Geoff Boucher

January 29, 2012

On Feb. 7, Interscope Records will release “A Different Kind of Truth”, it will represent the first Van Halen studio album featuring Roth as lead singer since “1984″ — which was released 28 years ago this month, right before Ronald Reagan announced plans to run for a second term.

Earlier this month in Pasadena, Roth, now 57, welcomed a reporter to his 20-room, Italianate mansion to talk about Van Halen past, present and future.

Roth actually rejoined the band “five summers and a million years ago” for the 2007-08 reunion tour, but it’s taken this long for the still-volatile collective to finish an album that satisfies all of their agendas.
Van Halen’s brawny brand of music has sold more than 80 million albums, but offstage the group has been a fragile alliance that has fallen apart again and again because of creative clashes, drug torpor, grudges and, more recently, health issues.

The history traces back to 1972, when the Van Halen brothers, guitarist Eddie and drummer Alex — a pair of classically trained teen musicians born in the Netherlands but raised in Pasadena — auditioned singers for a planned band. Roth didn’t make much of an impression at his tryout, but the brothers wanted to use his sound system and letting him in the band was better than renting the gear.

Fame and fortune would follow, but again and again it was the brothers Van Halen deciding who should hold the microphone. They could do that because of the stature of Eddie Van Halen, who is revered by rock fans as a sort of mad-genius guitar god, the heir of Jimi Hendrix.

Get Guitar Method: In the Style of Van Halen(1994) as well as all the other Van Halens DVD’s at Barnes & Noble click below to order

The reunited frenemies are a source of fascination, and fans are eager to see them share a spotlight when the reconstituted band (with Eddie’s son, 20-year-old Wolfgang Van Halen, who replaced longtime member Michael Anthony on bass) starts a 46-date arena tour in Louisville, Ky., on Feb. 18. The music industry, meanwhile, is watching the whole enterprise and wondering if the wheels will fly off; more than squabbles, the worry is also about the state of Eddie Van Halen, a rehab veteran who has also lost a third of his tongue to cancer and undergone hip replacement. There were postponed shows on the last tour (2007-08), which were explained only by vague promoter statements about medical procedures.

“He’s doing really well,” Roth said. “He’s lucid, he’s sober, he’s playing. You know, I don’t know if Ed has ever felt good. There’s a thin line between rage and great work. He really never enjoyed his fame or success, and that might be part of what compels him.”

In their youth, Roth and the Van Halens were clearly bonded by their love of hard rock, but Roth says they were also connected by the “immigrant energy” of their families, who were “desperate people seeking desperate fortune — with a smile.”

Roth was born in Bloomington, Ind., as the son, grandson and nephew of Jewish doctors, but the north-star figure in his youth turned out to be Manny Roth, the uncle who owned the Café Wha? in New York.

It’s one of the more illustrious dives in Greenwich Village — Bob Dylan played there, so did the Velvet Underground and Lenny Bruce — and despite the peeling paint and low ceilings it was a palace of possibility for young Roth. “I was 7 years old when I decided very specifically what I was going to be, and it was there in that room,” he said.

On Jan. 5, Roth was back in the club; the “secret show” by Van Halen was meant to stir press, rock radio and fan interest, and it did all of the above. The New York Times covered it enthusiastically, with Jon Pareles writing that Van Halen is “still one of the most limber bands in hard rock, with a higher center of gravity than most.” Even better, there was old Manny Roth, now 92, beaming at his nephew from the audience.

Throughout the album, the band has gone back and excavated pieces of unrecorded songs, lyrics from old notebooks and half-pursued concepts to build the 13-track collection.

“It’s material that Eddie and I generated, literally, in 1975, 1976 and 1977,” Roth said.

Instead, Roth said, he and the band have tried to do a sort of collaboration with their past. They can’t be the same people — too much has changed — but Roth said there’s interesting experimentation in the era-spanning synthesis of self.

The process started with Eddie Van Halen and producer John Shanks (Bon Jovi, Keith Urban) sifting through archival material, looking for the nuggets that could be mined.

“Some of it was recorded in Dave’s basement when these guys were kids, and, sitting there next to Eddie, it was pretty cool just to go through that journey,” Shanks said last week by phone from New York. “And then when the sessions started just seeing how Eddie and Alex play together — there’s such a synchronicity in their feel and rhythm and their playing. There were times, honestly, I was just moved by it, not just as a musician but as a human being. The nuances of the way they communicate is staggering.”

The fan reaction to the album’s first single, “Tattoo,” has been mixed, but Roth and company know that the tour (which includes shows in Los Angeles (June 1) and Anaheim (June 12) will be the true proving ground for them.

Roth, who has short hair now and a lean physique earned with decades of martial arts training, displayed a few of the dance moves he’s been working on for the show. In his earth-tone overalls and cap he looked more like a Venice Beach mime than a rock star, but he still has a shark smile. What exactly drives him isn’t easy to glean — does he have the same dark engines as Eddie Van Halen?

As for his old friend and rival, Roth smiled and gave the world a bit of fair warning about the reclusive guitar hero. “There’s an old Russian saying: ‘There’s no more lines in that guy’s stomach.’ It means somebody got fat and slow. There are still a lot of lines in Eddie’s stomach.”

Click below for a good learning program.
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When I first started playing the guitar, there were two ways to learn.You took lessons or you taught yourself. I took
lessons which was about as boring as it could get. I remember that most of the
songs in the lesson book where from another era entirely, most of the songs I
never even heard of. I lasted about nine months before I quit. I decided to teach
myself which was slow going.Then I made a new friend who knew how to play bar
chords. I copied what he was doing  and everything changed overnight. Suddenly I
could play just about any rock song I heard on the radio .But for some harder
songs I often had to buy the record and try to match it note for note while
constantly having to pick up the needle arm on the stereo turntable trying to
get it back to the beginning of the riff I wanted to learn. Today there are
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started this site, to help guitarist find the resources they need to keep
improving, get over the hump and ascend a plateau that has you stuck.                                                                                           

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I was channel surfing last week and stumbled on a show called “IT MIGHT GET LOUD”  It hilited The Edge, Jimmy Page and Jack White individually and then together. It was kind of a Behind the Music type show that did a pretty good job of  showcasing the three of them. Since I didn’t watch from the very beginning I didn’t know what the show was about or who was in it. I guess I was too lazy to hit the guide button on the remote. A white haired guy was playing some riffs that sounded like a Zeppelin song. Didn’t sound really clean, then I realized it was Jimmy Page and I was hooked. The Edge was like a mad scientist with all his effects equipment. I never realized how much he utilized them. As much as I like U2′s music, I am a purist at heart, so the effects can be a distraction. I was pretty impressed with Jack White. I wasn’t familiar with his music. All I knew was that he was in a group called White Stripes.It is always nice to see a younger guy that has his musical roots planted deep with the old blues masters. I got this familiar feeling watching Jimmy Page, arguably one of the best of all time. I was struck by the fact that because he can’t sing, he was portrayed as “just a guitarist”. I’ll bet a lot of guitarist get that feeling from time to time. He talked about his time as a session musician and how at the end, he was reduced to playing elevator muzak.He joined the Yardbirds right after that where he could finally express himself. In case someone was not aware, the Yardbirds eventually evolved into Led Zeppelin. The three of them did a rendition of Robbie Robertson’s “The Weight“ at the end that was pretty good. Of course Jimmy Page didn’t sing but when you are Jimmy Page, you don’t have to.

“It Might get Loud” available on DVD & Blu-ray at Barnes & Noble 
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