The intensity of joy is directly correlated with the magnitude of disappointment. Happiness and dissatisfaction are a pair, not each other's opposites.
When you live a live of peaks and troughs, you will experience music (and other thinks like friendships) in peaks and troughs also. Caravanserai is a true live changer, All That I Am is a true disappointment.
Mediocracy irritates, particularly when it rules. Power of the ignorance is a danger, not a value. People clapping at Carlos' overly simplistic political speeches frighten me, not enlighten me.
People here can't stomach criticism because of what? Unconditional love for Carlos? That's dangerous... You act like soccer hooligans or even worse, like religious or political extremists.
And who are you to judge? What makes you believe you can corner people with a different opinion? If you don't get it you don't need to fight it, right?
How many of you listen to Meditations from John Coltrane and really get it? How many of you think that music is going nowhere and rather listen to pop music on the radio instead?
I met Pharoah Sanders a few times, I cleaned Gabor Szabo's grave in Budapest a few times, I visited John Coltrane's house on Long Island, and I made love on Kind of Blue. I cried when I heard Apache fr Carlos for the first time. Also when the band started Jingo after three hours in the rain in Japan. I was at all the relevant Montreux concerts. I'll never forget the collaboration with Narada from a few years back. I was at both shows, the recording that circulate are probably coming from me. I visited the Fillmore concerts also. As well as shows in Dubai, Portugal or Italy.
But... Guitar Heaven, Santana IV or All that I Am. I'm sorry... Simply can't love it because it is not good enough and not honest music. It's just a commercial product. There will be no long-term relevance to it.
Now, if you happen to enjoy it: great. I can't grasp that, but go for it. At least I hope you understand that for people who experience higer peaks with more intensity, this can be considered a trough that comes with great disappointments too.
And yes, those disappointments get articulated and find its way here on this forum. Doesn't mean I live a sad live. I am happy and grateful for what I have: I have severe health issues but I am fit now, I travel all over the world and meet wonderful people, have an incredible wonderful wife who loves me as much as I love her more than anything else in this world, then I have a job where make more money than I need and... I can listen to the music I want. That means I put on Festival and not IV. That means I put on Brothers and not Shaman. I'm free to choose.
I'm sure I get a shitload of criticism again because I speak up. Before you shoot me: look in the mirror please. Are you really in a position to judge?
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