By Chris Carney
Our love of sound bites, headlines and SEO catchphrases has created a culture where certain words have lost their power. Few words have lost more of their luster and clout than the word legend. Today it is tossed about to describe anything from the truly great to the mildly interesting. One-hit wonders have their Auto-Tuned pop averageness dubbed legendary. Sub-standard acting performances, bland teenage vampire literature and repetitious reality TV series toss about the word legendary as if it were a cheap $10 T-shirt. The real danger, aside from information overload, is that the truly legendary will get lumped in with the latest drug-addled celebrity.
If there exists an artist who can return greatness to the word legend, then it is most certainly Carlos Santana. He has everything we deem necessary of one who is truly great: talent (he was named the 15th best guitarist of all time by Rolling Stone), longevity (he has been performing consistently since 1966), productivity (he has won 10 Grammys and released well over 30 albums) and adaptability (his musical styles have evolved consistently from his original release to the megaplatinum album Supernatural). Perhaps most convincing is his dedication to greatness. During the '80s his career was certainly deemed dead by many a critic, Santana could have gone pop or created substandard fare in an attempt to regain the spotlight. Yet he did not, perhaps believing that if you create great work people will find it.
Mexican-born and trained in rock, salsa, jazz and blues, Carlos Santana first wowed the world with 1969's Santana. An instant commercial and critical success, he and his band went on to tour with the Grateful Dead, Eric Clapton and had a star-making performance at Woodstock.
Through the '70s he remained atop the charts and earned numerous awards and legions of fans. As the '80s came to pass, his popularity waned only to surge back riding the wave of Supernatural, a 15- times platinum album that introduced Santana to an entirely new generation of fans.
While Carlos Santana has had major solo success, his primary focus has always been his self-titled band Santana. The winner of numerous Grammys, seller of millions of albums and the group that helped make Santana the man a legend, Santana the band has been wowing audiences worldwide for over 40 years.
Now he returns to the Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel for an extended residency celebrating an entire career’s work. Supernatural Santana: A Trip Through the Hits is a “mix of practical spirituality, a rebelfrom- the-street vibe and amazing music.” The song list varies, each performance is different and each night presents a new bit of evidence to further prove that though greatness can be clouded amid a haze of averageness, sometimes all it takes is a man like Santana to show us what a legend truly is.
LasVegasMagazine.com
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