We'll consecrate the new month by anniversarizing a blazing collaboration between two living musical shamen that should need little introduction.
Forty-six revolutions ago, these two made a fairly beloved and legendary record around a spiritual quest in which they both were then engaged.
This record had a very heady title and the music on it sounded like the heavens ripping open and the Fusion Gods descending from the firmament unto Earth.
They booked a short tour that lasted a few weeks. Several shows were broadcast on the radio, and another may have been taped for a never-issued live record.
Along for the stride were several other luminary players, such as organ alchemist Khalid Yasin (aka Larry Young), plus percussion guru Armando Peraza from one's then-regular band as well as drum deity Billy Cobham tagging along from the other's.
The music from this tour was, well, pretty en fuego. How could it not have been? This was as star studded and chopsy and awe-inspiring a band as existed in the world at the time, and the folks that saw it likely haven't forgotten.
Lucky for us, the tapes haven't forgotten either. It's a miracle these guys didn't melt the oxide right off them with the combustion they were producing onstage.
You can hear the audience between tunes and you know there must have been people who had to be carried out, unable to stay in their bodies.
The aircheck recordings of this short sojourn are all great and there's a whole bunch of them. But it's this one, which seems like it was taped for a shelved live record, that for me takes the cake.
This has circulated for eons on any number of bootleg releases, but there's no record of the alleged broadcast they all claim to document.
But I suppose I could be wrong, and this could be the pre-FM reel of some mystery WXRT-FM airing.
Either way, it's an explosive 2 1/2 hours and it's here remastered by a well-renowned trading-community audio boffin.
Until there's a legit issue of this white-hot concert -- don't let me catch you holding your breath -- this may be the best we ever get of this show and this tour.
John McLaughlin & Carlos Santana
International Ampitheatre
Chicago, IL
9.1.1973
01 Meditation
02 The Life Divine
03 A Love Supreme
04 I'm Aware of You/Afro Blue
05 band introductions
06 Naima
07 Flame Sky
08 Taurean Matador
09 percussion solo
10 drum solo
11 Taurean Matador (reprise)
12 Let Us Go Into the House of the Lord
Total time: 2:27:52
disc break goes after Track 06
Devadip Carlos Santana - guitar, percussion & vocals
Mahavishnu John McLaughlin - guitar & vocals
Doug Rauch - bass
Billy Cobham - drums & percussion
Armando Peraza - congas, percussion & vocals
Khalid Yasin - organ & vocals
inamorata remaster of a master soundboard capture;
original tape sourced from the 2004 boot CD A Live Supreme: Brothers Of The Spirit on the Main Stream label
874 MB FLAC/September 2019 archive link
I have quite a month planned, so crank this one up on its 46th birthday here and I'll get to hammering on the details of (all in all) a September you'll remember, hopefully as passionately and as accurately as J-Mac and Carlos are hammering on those guitars in this incendiary-device of a performance.--J.
