Santana at AsiaWorld Expo, Hong Kong – Friday 7th March 2008

Last night I attended the Santana concert in Hong Kong with some of my friends and about 20,000 other folk. I am a long time Santana fan and was looking forward to some trademark playing.

The show began with a bang, quite literally, as the percussion section — made up of Dennis Chambers, Raul Rekow and Karl Perazzo pounded the intro to the opening volley of Peace.

Carlos Santana then strode centrestage to cheers, and splashed his trademark spitfire melodies over the rhythmic canvas provided by the band. Wearing his trademark hat to hide his now-balding head Santana showed that despite being over the retirement age, he still has a few surprises up his sleeves. Not satisfied to just play his hits (Into The Night, Smooth, Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen, Oye Como Va), he often injected snippets of other songs into his own works. No One To Depend On, for example, merged into an instrumental take of Bob Dylan's A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall while Evil Ways melded into John Coltrane's A Love Supreme.

Throughout the rest of the gig, he peppered his songs with riffs that ranged from classical music (Beethoven's Fur Elise) to reggae (Bob Marley's Could This Be Love) and jazz (Herbie Hancock's Bring Down The Birds) and everything else in between. Now for the bad stuff. Despite of some great playing, my musical friends and I that attended the concert ended up feeling very bored. Even after we tried to infuse ourselves with the experience and the music, participate, and be one with the infectious rhythms, the melodies, the sonic textures and layers that the band weaves through the course of the gig, the whole show just didn’t seem to connect with the audience.

Sure, the band said hello to the audience once or twice and Carlos gave his traditional “love your brothers and sisters” message out to the crowd, the whole show just seemed to be disconnected from the spectators.The fans and "sightseers" (mainly Chinese people who aren't really fans but went to the concert because it's a brand-name artiste and Hong Kong people love idol worship) found themselves listening to a “wall of sound” with little music separation between instruments.

One other thing that marred my appreciation was the fact that someone decided that Santana's guitar amp had to go down to 3, making him sit level in the mix with the rest of the band every time he played. Even during the louder moments, he was quiet. He never seemed to cut through the mix. When I attend concerts I often sit near the mixing desk if its in the middle of the hall to try to get the best sound, but It still didn't cut it.

Although I never said so to my friends, I felt that I was watching a band rehearsal with no audience. The players related to each other but not the audience. At times Carlos would sit on a low stool at the side of the stage to play his solos. If you missed him walking over and sitting down you could end up thinking "where's he gone?". At other times he kept standing side on to the audience and performing for a camera operator ( perhaps a concert DVD?) and ignored the crowd. There seemed to be an invisible barrier between the performance and the spectators, “You can watch but you can’t participate” seemed to be the order of the night. It just never connected. I wonder if this was the case in Melbourne for anyone that went to Santana’s concert there?

Still, would I pay the top-tier price go see him again? Maybe not. Considering that the last time I saw him was in Melbourne in around 1977, if I wait that long again I think I’ll meet Carlos in the next life instead of at a concert hall.