Music: Great Remakes...cont.

I can't believe I forgot one. This is especially troublesome to me since the original was by one of my all time favorite bands:


"Black Magic Woman" by Santana"
I'm admittedly not the biggest Santana fan. I'm not a fan of excessive guitar solos...or any kind of instrument solos for that matter. I like songs. I like when they have a beginning, middle and an end. I like music that serves the purpose of telling the story or emotion the lyrics are trying to convey. So if a solo or extended musical sequence does that in a song, I'm all for it. But if they're just there to show what a great musician you are...dude, I get it. I usually get it within the first few notes. Please stop.

"Black Magic Woman" is one of those songs in which the remake has completely obliterated the general public's knowledge of the original. Of course, most people don't have public knowledge of Fleetwood Mac before 1975. In the late 60s they were a blues band led by one of the greatest guitarist of that era, Peter Green. He wrote this song, eventually went insane, and pretty much left music altogether to the benefit of Santana fans around the world.

Here's the original. Had Peter Green not gone nuts you would hear his name mentioned with the likes of Clapton, Hendrix and, well, Carlos Santana.