Tag: Carlos Santana

Frida’s Theme Music

Ashlandia remains in a stable weather pattern for today, June 27, 2025, Frida in our reality. Like yesterday, our highs will encroach on the mid 80s while we enjoy 62 F at the mo.

Ashlandia’s current problem are aggressive deer. This has been an off and on thing and doesn’t usually get as much press as other animals, like cougars and bears. The cougars haven’t been in the news much. The bears have just bee Yogi-ing trash cans. The deer, with new fawns being born, have declared war on dogs and people coming too close. Some of them are bold and forthright, imitating Gandalf in Lord of the Rings, insisting, “You shall not pass.” The dog-walking people, dog leashed, respond to the deer, “But I live there.” It’s a challenge. A city committee studied the issue in 2008 but no effective solutions were found. With four aggressive does finding the NextDoor spotlight in different city areas, it’s recycled into our awareness. That cycle itself is a product of drought; the deer were out of the area when we were parched and conserving water for more than a decade. Now that we’re water rich with thick greenery, the deer are enticed back into the area. Humans (with leashed dogs) and deer are getting acquainted anew.

A pause for silent reflection for Bill Moyer, journalist, press secretary, writer, 1934-2025. Watching him and reading his commentary and essays informed me and shaped my thinking.

Thinking that I wanted to break my current dark cycle, I asked The Neurons to please come up with some chill music for the morning mental music stream. They delivered Carlos Santana with Michelle Branch from 2002 and the “Game of Love”. Wikipedia provided some background to the song that I didn’t know.

The song had originally been recorded with New Radicals frontman Gregg Alexander, but album producer Clive Davis felt a female voice would maximize the song’s appeal and a recording of Santana performing “The Game of Love” with Tina Turner as vocalist was completed. When Turner declined to participate in making a video for the track, Davis recruited Macy Gray to record a replacement vocal. When Davis was not satisfied with that version, Michelle Branch was asked to record the song,[2][better source needed] with Branch’s rhythm guitar playing also added to the track. Branch said, “It was the first time for me to sing somebody else’s song. Usually I’m like: ‘Oh I want it this way’ and I’m in charge…I didn’t meet [Carlos Santana at the recording session], I didn’t know what was going on…It felt to me like wow it seems like there’s so much at stake, I’m going to go in there and just sing my heart out and just cross my fingers.”[3]

Coffee is arriving at my major internal waypoints. Time to rock up again. Hope you have a great one. Cheers

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Monday’s Theme Music

Monday found me. It wasn’t a hard search, apparently; Monday found me in bed, still in dreams up to my head. Told me she’d come back in a while, but I just closed my eyes and slumbered.

It’s January 17, 2022, which means there’s only about nine months until the holiday seasons begin for 2022. It is also Martin Luther King Day in most parts of the U.S. Labeling it a holiday seems misguided, given his spirit of service and change, and his assassination. Many reference it as a day of service, an opportunity to meditate on equal rights and justice, and how to help one another. Meanwhile, the sun rose as expected, striking my sliver of existence with sunshine at about 7:36 AM. Temperatures were hovering around 30 F then. They’ve jumped up as the sun scaled the sky. The temperature is now 47. We expect to feel 57 before sunset closes the sunshine down at 5:06 PM.

I awoke with a Santana medley swimming through the morning mental music stream. Carlos has been around a few years as a talent and has given us some impressive tunes. After sorting through them and singing one to a cat, I’m going with “Evil Ways” from 1969. I was singing it to Tucker in a joking manner — “You’ve got to change your goofy ways, kitty, before I stop petting you.” Just a little give and take between two loving animals, me and the feline.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the jabs when you can. Meanwhile, I’ll get some coffee when I can; I feel a bit sad that I’m dependent on this brew that’s dependent on such energy waste and ill treatment. Sigh. Here’s the music. Take care.

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Friday’s Theme Music

This was an instant favorite when it came out in 1999. I wasn’t alone; it became a number one song and a radio regular. This is another one of those, crank it up, sing along, and move songs.

I’ve posted about it before. It was streaming in my mind for some reason this morning, so, why not post about it again? This is a recording of a live version. I enjoy the band’s energy, and Carlos’ expression.

Here’s Rob Thomas and Carlos Santana with “Smooth”. It’s a good song to start a cool summer day, which is what it’s like here, in southern Oregon this morning.

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Today’s Theme Music

Pulling one out of the memory cloud, I came up with a classic. ‘Black Magic Woman’ was written by Peter Green and performed by Fleetwood Mac.

I did not much care for that song and rarely heard it.

Two years later, Carlos Santana put it on ‘Abraxas’. I think that’s the one most people know. Most people think Santana wrote ‘Black Magic Woman’, and are unaware of Fleetwood Mac’s version. I’m speaking of the people I know in America. Other peoples in other countries, or or other ages and persuasions, may know differently.

The differences, IMO, is that Green came up with the lyrics but he and his band couldn’t provide it with the musical structure needed. Carlos, on the other hand, with his powerful licks set against that soft, mysterious organ, a steady bass that sings the lyrics at times, a Latin beat, and Gregg Rolie’s vocals, seems like a much more fully realized vision.

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