Much to everyone’s surprise, The Rolling Stones decided to perform their classic track ‘Connection’ for the first time in 15 years during a recent tour date at Nashville’s Nissan Stadium. The song is taken from their 1967 album Between the Buttons and was last played in November 2006 during the band’s performance in Vancouver.
The Stones were clearly delighted to be performing again, with Keith Richards taking the time to say: “It’s great to be back. It’s great to be anywhere,” before he took over lead vocals and started ripping into ‘Connection’. “Hey, blessings on us all. Gold rings on us. I’m going to start off with something I haven’t done in years, but this should be fun,” he added.
The song, penned by Richards, hints towards the Stones’ difficult relationship with the press and the authorities as a result of their recreational drug in the 1960s. In the second verse, Richards’ sings: “My bags, they get a very close inspection / I wonder why it is that they suspect them.”
‘Connection’ was released just a few weeks before the infamous police raid that took place during a party at Richards’ home. The drug bust resulted in heavy charges for both Jagger and Richards himself. Their arrest was followed by a highly publicized trial, which saw Richards’ sentence overturned and Jagger’s amended to a conditional discharge.
The Stones’ recent set – which forms part of their No Filter tour – also included fan-favorites such as ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’, ‘Honky Tonk Women’ ‘Tumbling Dice’, and ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’. The band also took on a cover or two, including the Chi-Lites track ‘Trouble’s a-Comin” and a deep cut of their own 1971 song ‘Dead Flowers’, which was selected by fan request.
‘Brown Sugar’, however, has been omitted from the set due to its racist undertones. In a recent interview, Richards s suggested the track’s withdrawal may be related to the references to slavery in its opening lyrics. However, the guitarist said he didn’t “want to get into conflicts with all of this shit”.
Legendary Guitarist Carlos Santana Spreads Peace, Love, Light and “Joy”
on New Song with Chris Stapleton “Joy” is the fourth song off Santana’s star-studded new album, Blessings and Miracles, due out Oct. 15 on BMG
LOS ANGELES, CA (October 11, 2021) – Multi-Grammy Award-winning Rock and Roll Hall of Fame guitarist Carlos Santana has released the fourth song off his star-studded, masterful new album, Blessings and Miracles (out via BMG on October 15), a collaboration with acclaimed Grammy-winning musician Chris Stapleton, who also produced the track, on the soul-enriching “Joy.”
Spend a few minutes around Carlos Santana, and you’re bound to hear the word “joy” more than a few times, so it’s only fitting that the album’s fourth song, which teams the guitarist with Stapleton, is called “Joy.” A beautiful song, you couldn’t pick a better combination than Santana and Stapleton for this track. The two together, along with the backing singers, create a slice of true joy.
It’s a marvel that unfolds almost cinematically – one can envision mountain vistas and expansive plains – blending country, reggae, blues, and gospel with a widescreen sing-along chorus. Stapleton is in peak form, plaintive and passionate, and Santana’s guitar playing, each immaculate solo and response, rises to meet him.
“I was very intrigued to work with Chris,” Santana says. “We talked on the phone about the Covid situation and how there’s so much fear in the world, and I said, ‘We need to create music as a healing force. We must bring hope and courage and disinfect twisted minds infected with darkness.’ That gave him the ammunition to write such incredible words. Somewhere I said, ‘flying on the wings of angels,’ so it’s a collaboration. And what an incredible song it is. The choir in it – it’s like the Staple Singers.”
In addition to “Joy,” the album’s first single “Move,” featuring Rob Thomas and American Authors, Santana’s collaboration “She’s Fire” with Diane Warren and G-Eazy, and the classic “Whiter Shade of Pale” featuring Steve Winwood is available now.
Blessings and Miracles is one of the most ambitious, inspired, and magical albums of Carlos Santana’s storied career, on which the legendary guitarist aims higher than ever. “The title of this album comes from my belief that we’re born with heavenly powers that allow us to create blessings and miracles,” Santana says. “The world programs you to be unworthy of those gifts, but we have to utilize light, spirit and soul – they’re indestructible and immutable. Those are the three main elements on this album.”
In addition to the above talents, Blessings and Miracles sees Santana collaborating with a diverse host of brilliant artists, writers and producers including Chris Stapleton, Chick Corea, Rick Rubin, Corey Glover, Kirk Hammett, Ally Brooke, and Narada Michael Walden, among others, on genre-bending, hook-filled knockout musical celebrations.
The record also features bravura performances from members of Santana’s touring band (including drummer Cindy Blackman Santana, singer Tommy Anthony, bassist Benny Rietveld, percussionist Karl Perazzo, and keyboardist David K. Matthews), as well as impeccable vocals and keyboards by the guitarist’s son, Salvador Santana, and stunning lead vocals by daughter, Stella Santana.
Santana just wrapped a summer tour in the US and will continue their multi-year residency at the House of Blues at Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas with upcoming dates from November 3 thru December 11. Pre-order Blessings and Miracles Here.
By Martine Ehrenclou / https://www.rockandbluesmuse.com/
In a new interview, prolific songwriter James Taylor told Guitar World about auditioning to join the Beatles’ label, Apple Records, in the late 1960s and how, looking back, he only could have done something like that on the wings of youth.
“I had some kind of competence and the arrogance of youth, without which nobody would ever do anything, because you’d hedge your bets,” said Taylor in the interview. At the time, he auditioned for Paul McCartney and George Harrison.
Taylor added, “There’s a stage in our development where you’re allowed to do impossible things, which is why the military looks to people about that age. You can talk people into doing things that if you were asked when you were 35, you’d say, ‘No thanks, I’ll pass on that.’
“I also knew that it was somehow good. It worked for me, and I was a music connoisseur. I thought, ‘This stuff could go somewhere. I want somebody to hear this.’ I’ve had that feeling a few times, at different points in my life.”
In 1968, the Boston, Massachusetts-born Taylor released his debut self-titled LP on Apple Records, a feat he still says he’s practically flabbergasted by.
“It was just otherworldly,” the 73-year-old Taylor told Guitar World, “because I was a huge Beatles fan. And they were at the very height of their powers. They just kept going, kept growing. So, to be in London, the first person signed to their label in 1968, was really like catching the big wave. It was unbelievable.”
In the interview, Taylor was also asked about Harrison borrowing one of Taylor’s lines in “Something in the Way She Moves” for the Beatles’ song, “Something.” The Boston artist said it tickled him.
“I felt hugely flattered,” Taylor said. “I had played this song for George and Paul as my audition, and I think it had just sort of stuck in his mind. But he didn’t realize that. I think all music is reiteration. I think we just pick stuff up and use it again. I mean, there are just 12 notes.”
In 2020, Taylor released his most recent LP, American Standard, and the artist is set to tour the U.K. in 2022, beginning in January. Check below for dates.
James Taylor 2022 Tour Dates
Jan. 27 – Leeds, First Direct Arena
Jan. 29 – Manchester, O2 Apollo
Jan. 30 – Glasgow, SEC Armadillo
Feb. 1 – Brighton, Centre
Feb. 2 – Birmingham, Resorts World Arena
Feb. 4 – London, Hammersmith Apollo
Feb. 5 – London, Hammersmith Apollo
American Songwriter – Jacob UITTI – https://americansongwriter.com/
“I go through my record collection and just start playing songs, trying to find the personality of the movie, find the spirit of the movie” — Quentin Tarantino
The only thing in the world more immediately transformative than music is that imagined extra step at the top of the stairs; everything else comes in waves. No matter how dramatic the onscreen moment, it is the synergized jolt of music and action in unison that stirs up the reticently stored reserves of adrenalized emotional response.
Certain directors harness the embalming emotional catalyst of music more readily and profusely than others. Quentin Tarantino is one of those directors.
“One of the things I do when I am starting a movie, when I’m writing a movie, or when I have an idea for a film,” Tarantino writes for the liner notes of his soundtrack compilation, “Is I go through my record collection and just start playing songs, trying to find the personality of the movie, find the spirit of the movie. Then, ‘boom,’ eventually I’ll hit one, two or three songs, or one song in particular, ‘Oh, this will be a great opening credit song.’”
With that in mind, is there a more immediately memorable title sequence in movie history than that great Dick Dale bass insanity, ‘Miserlou’, that blasts off Pulp Fiction to a sonic blitzkrieg of excitement?
The anticipation of action is in place before the opening credits have even faded, as Tarantino explains: “Having ‘Miserlou’ as your opening credit is just so intense. It just says, ‘You are watching an epic, you are watching this big old movie just sit back.’ It’s so loud and blearing at you, a gauntlet is thrown down that the movie has to live up to.” He is undeniably right too; the song offers a first impression that is branded on the viewer’s sensibility throughout.
It is a firm introductory handshake that reveals a lot about the person the hand is attached to. Pulp Fiction then goes on to impart many more iconic movie music moments, in twisting dance scenes backed by the perfectly curated ‘You Never Can Tell’ by the rock music luminary Chuck Berry, or the hi-fi sexy tension punctuator ‘Girl You’ll Be a Woman Soon’ by Urge Overkill.
Tarantino dabbles in the realms of musical foreshadowing, action enhancement, stirring coalescences of drama and sound and sometimes the simple and reliable movie embellishment of a great song being preferable to silence between scenes. If you can afford Al Green’s sumptuous soul sensation ‘Let’s Stay Together’ then why not toss it in the mix?
Such poignant deployment of soundtrack moments is however, a fine art. Tarantino illustrates how these scintillating scores that transport ‘edge-of-your-seat-stuff’ from tired cliché to tangible reality, don’t come without due forethought, “When you do it right and you hit it right then the effect is you can never really hear this song again without thinking about that image from the movie.”
That is a notion that could certainly be applied to ‘Stuck In The Middle With You’ by Stealers Wheel, a song that is now forever tethered to the grisly image of ear slicing for anyone who has ever seen Reservoir Dogs or tuned into the golden oldies on the fictional K-Billy radio station.
Tarantino describes the monumental importance and craft of the soundtrack as “just about as cinematic a thing as you can do. You are really doing what movies do better than any other art form; it really works in this visceral, emotional, cinematic way that’s just really special.”
Throughout Tarantino’s career, the soundtrack choices seem so on the money that it can lull you to believe the science is simple, but such blood-pumping marriages between sound and scene are rare in other movies. The Godfather of Gore has the well-practiced knack of fine-tuning scenes to their most viscerally affecting potential and audiences simply have to lap up the symphonic results.
Credits: Tom Taylor – https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/
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