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Santana - Caravanserai

List price:	~~$11.98~~
Our price:	$9.99 that is 17% off!
Media:	Audio CD
Record label:	Sony
Release date:	30 September, 2003

Average user rating: Average user rating: 3.5

Great Album

Besides Santana's "Welcome" and "Illuminations," this has to be another one of his brilliant albums. If you ever listen to this album you will probably like the last four songs. The best track which happens to be the very last song on the album 'Every Step of the Way' played with Neil Schone is extremely charismatic and energetic. This song deserves some type of recognition of a tour de force of tunes that has an impact on the music circuit. The other song which is played with a lot of percussions is 'Future Primitive' with a neat and mellow synthesizer background that carries out through the rest of the album. If you like Santana's music you will miss out what a great artist he is if you don't take a look at this album, including Welcome as mentioned above, Barboletta and Illuminations.

Carlos at his furious best !!!

When Santana recorded Caravanserai in 1972, he was inspired by The Mahavishnu Orchestra that had made its mark earlier in 1971 with their debut album Inner Mounting Flame. Carlos & drummer Michael Shrieve who were largely responsible for the production & composition of most tracks draw heavy influences from Elvin Jones,Gabor Szabo,John Coltrane,Miles Davis & Pharoah Sanders. The result is an extremly satisfying album that again ear-marked Santana to superstardom. Starting with the number Eternal Caravan of Reincarnation Carlos creates an eerie atmospheric effect by using just sax, double bass, piano & guitar, all the way to great rocking numbers like Waves Within, Song of the Universe, Just in time to see the sun etc. Neal Schon's sensitive guitar playing highlights one of the album's best compositions - Song of the Wind. There is a version of Jobim's Stone Flower as well as the exceptional La Fuente Del Ritmo featuring mind-blowing percussion work from James Mingo Lewis & keyboardist Tom Coster who debuts on this song. Remastered in 2003 for better sound, Caravanserai is worth the money. One major disappointment was that there are no bonus tracks in 2003 remastered version. Wonder why ? considering Columbia have an archive of Carlos live material from 1972 which could have been added as a bonus.

BRILLIANT music, worthless "remaster"

I waited years for a remastered version of "Caravanserai". I honestly think it is one of the greatest pieces of music of the 20th century - right up there with works by Miles Davis, Aaron Copland, the Beatles, etc.

So what do we finally get? A mix with little bass, little clarity and no dynamics. It looks like the only way anyone will be able to fully enjoy this music from now on is if they can find an old vinyl copy. As other reviewers have pointed out, Sony didn't even bother to put much effort into the liner notes - nope, just cranking out another McCD for the masses. Very sad.