Santana – 1981-07-04 – Cape Cod, MA (FM)

Santana

1981-07-04

Cape Cod Coliseum

Cape Cod, MA

FM Broadcast (WBCN-FM)

256 kbps

Artwork Included

01. Radio Introduction (Scott Muni)

02. All I Ever Wanted

03. Primera Invasion Searchin'

04. Tales Of The Kiliminjaro

05. Black Magic Woman

06. Gypsy Queen

07. Well All Right

08. Europa (Dedicated To John McEnroe)

09. E Papa Re

10. Savor

11. Jingo

12. Winning

13. Incident At Neshabur

14. Bass Jam

15. Soul Sacrifice

16. Open Invitation

17. She's Not There

18. Dragon Song

19. The Sensitive Kind

20. American Gypsy

Santana – 1981-07-04 – Cape Cod, MA (FM)

As mentioned in my Allman Brothers post, I saw Carlos Sanatan live at the Crackdown on Crack Concert on October 31, 1986.  The first time I saw Carlos, however, was on July 7, 1981, I saw Carlos Santana in concert for the first time. I was about a month removed from college graduation, and enjoying a summer off before starting business school in the fall. My buddies and I were going to see Carlos at a new outdoor concert venue that John Scher had opened, the South Mountain Arena in West Orange NJ. When we arrived, we found out that it wasn’t quite an Arena. In fact, it wasn’t quite an Amphitheater or Hall or an Arts Center or anything quite so fancy. It was…. THE SIDE OF A HILL. Yep, Mr. Scher, who above all knew how to make a buck, rented space in a large park, put a stage at the bottom of a hill, put up fences to keep out anyone without a ticket, and created a concert venue. I guess it’s a little late for me to complain, especially since I bought to tickets to several other shows at South Mountain that summer. All issues with the venue were forgotten once Carlos hit the stage. He played a blistering set, featuring songs from his latest album Zebop, as well as a host of classics. We had gone hoping that Carlos would play Open Invitation, and he delivered. You, see, when I was in college, a cover band called Yasgur’s Farm usually played Open Invitation to close their shows, which in a beer induced haze, probably sounded way better than it really was. In any event, that sort of became a theme song for my group of friends. Finally hearing Carlos play it was one of the highlights of my concert “career”.

While I couldn’t find a bootleg of the South Mountain show, I did find this FM Broadcast from a few days earlier, July 4, 1981, 35 years ago this very day. from Cape Cod. The set list is about the same as the show I attended.