ODE TO COLTRANE (Pt.1): John McLaughlin & Santana 1973

John McLaughlin & Carlos Santana
Live in Chicago
1973 (Oh Boy)

Love Supreme

Let's Go Into the House of the Lord

My anticipation is intesifying for this week's McCoy Tyner with Pharoah Sanders shows at the Blue Note. Tyner takes me where no other pianist does and Pharoah's work often derives from a similarly, unspeakably beautiful harmonic ground. Well, it does after his work with John Coltrane, at least. And since this series of shows is meant as a commemoration of Coltrane's 80th, all bets are off. Ascension will happen. It's just more of a question whether it will be done through exapansion or obliteration. Here's to hoping for the former, but the pre-game excitement can't tell the difference.

Jazz came to me from John McLaughlin. I was never exposed to any jazz growing up and would have no idea who John Coltrane if not for the constant devotion paid to him by McLaughlin (as well as by Christian Vander, perhaps my favorite musician). While perhaps more associated with Miles Davis for his work on Bitches Brew, Jack Johnson and In a Silent Way, McLaughlin always had a bit more of Coltrane's drive for spiritual supernova and sonic meltdown intensity than with Miles' more restrained (if still very intense) urbanity. McLaughlin, for me, was the harnessing of maximal technique towards the solar sublimation of the soul, all done in a way that a kid who group up on Hendrix, Floyd and Purple could feel in every cell. So, I had every Mahavishnu tape I could find and even Shakti's Best Of, not to mention the all-time great Friday Night in San Francisco. But it was around my 17th brithday that I was flipping through one of my favorite NYC record stores, before the major bootleg busts of the 90s, that I came upon this 2-disc set: John McLaughlin & Carlos Santana Live in Chicago. 6 tracks, over 2 hours total! Line-up: I only recognized John & Carlos, as well as Mahavishnu drummer-spectaculaire, Billy Cobham. The percussionist, Armando Peraza, I assumed was part of Santana's band. Some guy named Larry Young on keyboard? Who's that? Doesn't matter. Recorded 1973. $44.99. It was my b-day and I was doing it, no matter what (just three weeks more than 15 years ago today). I didn't even have a CD player yet.

A few thousand CDs later, it's still one of my most revered discs. The guitar blast-offs get so high and seems to hold the peak forever, with the non-stop freight train percussion stampeding everything forward and with Young's spacy keys providing texture and counterpoint. I've posted here their 20-minute "cover" of Coltrane's "Love Supreme" in celebration of Coltrane on his 80th birthday, as well as their 25-minute take on Pharoah Sanders' "Let's Go Into the House of the Lord," to celebrate his celebration of Coltrane. Sorry there's no McCoy Tyner piece. These are staggering pieces of jazz-rock group improvisation and, also staggering, they might be only the third and fourth best tracks of the set!