Bonus Video of the Week: Carlos Santana

Carlos Santana’s new album is Guitar Heaven: The Greatest Guitar Classics of All Time. It’s a collection of covers of some of the most famous and familiar rock songs of the past three decades, sung by a roster of guest vocalists.  The first few spins sounded pretty good to me, after that it got to be kinda “meh.”  Guests Chris Cornell (Soundgarden), Scott Weiland (Stone Temple Pilots), Jakoby Shaddix (Papa Roach) and others take turns on songs like “Whole Lotta Love,” “Sunshine Of Your Love” and “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking.”

Here’s a promo video that gives you a flavor of what the album’s like:

Carlos Santana official website

Woodstock: The Bottom Line

Woodstock may have turned out to be just a mere music festival, but it turned into a signal moment in pop culture only by accident.  Pretty much everything that could have gone wrong that August weekend in 1969, did.  But the music was great and the crowd- which swelled to an astounding 400,000 to 500,000 people – was even better.

Originally the festival was to be a moneymaking deal – however we all know what happened when it became a “free” event as the fences fell.  You can see how promoters figured they’d make a fortune, when you take a look at what the top Woodstock performers were paid:

Jimi Hendrix (and his jammin’ buddies) – $18,000

Blood, Sweat and Tears – $15,000

Joan Baez, Creedence Clearwater Revival – $10,000

Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane – $7,500

Sly & the Family Stone – $7,000

Canned Heat – $6,500

The Who – $6,250

Richie Havens – $6,000

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Arlo Guthrie – $5,000

Ravi Shankar – $4,500

Johnny Winter – $3,750

Ten Years After – $3,250

Grateful Dead, Country Joe  & the Fish – $2,500

And the list goes all the way down to the band Quill, which earned union scale: $375.  You can take a look and wonder why someone like Canned Heat could command more than some of the others below them on the list; well, they had a couple of Top 20 singles in 1969, while CSNY at that time had yet to release its first album.

Consider, though, the impact that Woodstock made on many of the artists’ careers.  CSNY may have earned peanuts in 1969 but just five years later they were the top-grossing live act in the country, earning about $10 million for a 24-city tour.  Some of the others you don’t see on the list, those who made less than $2,500: acts like Santana and Joe Cocker, also got a huge boost from Woodstock.  In fact, for many of these people it was the defining moment of their careers … while a few others would fade away into the mists of obscurity.

Woodstock will be celebrated at the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts on the original festival grounds with the Heroes of Woodstock performance on August 15, however there are many more celebrations planned through the summer and into the fall.  Check the excellent website Woodstockstory.com for a complete lineup of events.

MP3: “Soul Sacrifice” (live at Woodstock) by Santana

MP3: “Theme For An Imaginary Western (live at Woodstock) by Mountain

Woodstock.com

Happy Birthday, Paul!

One of the greatest songwriters and singers in rock and roll, Paul McCartney turns 67 on Thursday (June 18).  With the Beatles and later as a solo performer and bandleader, McCartney created some of the best (and worst) music in rock and roll history.  He isn’t as cool today as he was in the 1960s, or in the early part of the 1970s, but even at the twilight of his career McCartney is still a formidable talent.  His album Electric Arguments, released as The Fireman late last year, was considered to be one of the year’s best and a return to form for McCartney.  A collaboration with fellow legend Bob Dylan may be in the works – if it happens, that would be another milestone in an incredible career.

In 1965 McCartney wrote “Yesterday,” which the Guinness Book of World Records says is the most covered song ever.  It has been covered more than 3,000 times and in the 20th century alone the song was performed more than 7 million times.  We thought about doing a marathon with different covers of one song (as we did a few weeks ago on Bob Dylan’s birthday) but thought it would be more fun to just dig up songs from throughout McCartney’s career.  So after the jump you have some of McCartney’s best music as performed by others, as well as a few versions of “Yesterday.”  McCartney may be rather unfairly judged by his output over recent years, but most of this shit rocks.  Happy birthday!