2008 reissue housed in a deluxe cardboard slipcase. This single disc anthology brings the legendary guitarist's best recordings of his Arista Records era together with his greatest classics from the Columbia Records years on a single compact disc. Among the 18 tracks are the chart toppers 'Smooth', 'Maria Maria', 'Black Magic Woman', 'The Game Of Love' (with both Michelle Branch and Tina Turner), 'Oye Como Va' and many more. Sony/BMG.Customer Review: big mistake
YUK! I just recently started downloading mp3s and really screwed up when I bought this thinking it would be the Carlos Santana music I knew in the 60s. What else would "Ulitmate Santana" mean? Instead most of the album is just Santana accompanying some bozo singing stupid disco type songs. My bad. Remember, when it says "featuring so-and-so" it usually means you better like so-and-so and not care too much about who the titled performer is.
Customer Review: Great songs, but...
Carlos Santana has very few bad albums, or even bad songs. (Stay away from his collaboration with John McLaughlin though.) If you're looking for a one-disk compilation and are familiar with his later songs plus his late 60's hits, the songs here will be familiar. But... try Caravanserai, Borboletta, or some of his other unbelievable albums from "in between". If this is all you know of Carlos Santana, you have a lot to discover! What you hear on this disk is just an introduction. I give this review 4 stars rather than 5 not because there are bad songs on this CD (there aren't), but because you, as a Santana listener, deserve more.
Community and educational theaters looking for an inexpensive play that will captivate their audience and stretch their actors skills have a hard time finding plays that can be produced for the entire family. Most of the good ones have been done over and over and it doesn't seem that many new ones have quite the fun-factor family audiences desire.
In 1975, an energetic young actress named Jane VanBoskirk discovered an 80 year-old play by Joaquin Miller. Miller, a poet of the late 19th Century, was designated "The Shakespeare of the Sierras" and wrote much about the gold rush. VanBoskirk scrounged a core of local actors and technicians and on a shoe-string budget produced and directed the smash hit of the Pacific Northwest. Touring the play to over 29 locations over a seven month period in 1976, the play was written up locally as "Beats the Freedom Train", and as the best good time in local theater in decades. Newspaper articles appeared as far away as the London Times where the English have long held Miller in high esteem. The play eventually secured grants from the American Revolution Bicentennial Commission of Oregon, and the Oregon Arts Commission.
Twenty years later, one of the original actors in VanBoskirk's production produced the play as an educational experience for local teens in Vidalia, GA. A minor grassroots arts grant helped fund the production. In addition to being a first acting experience for most of the young actors, it was the first look at American literature from that theatrical period. The most amazing experience was watching the young actors build, paint, create the scene settings, and discover that they could act on a stage with people watching.
The success of the productions is based on a solid script with a melodramatic ending, the inclusion of period music played well by local musicians on guitar, piano, and violin, and foot-stomping dance numbers. Period songs used as olios help set the mood. One line guaranteed to light up the audience is given when the villain is giving advice on winning the hand of the heroine to the young hero. He says, "Woo her, win her, wed her. Wear plenty of perfumery for few women can reason, but all women can smell."
Reviews of the VanBoskirk production were titled "Thar's Gold in this Show" and "Melodramas' Opening Night Beats the Freedom Train". Excerpts include "An assortment of colorful characters complicate the plot. A kindly, broken-down prospector, a total wreck of a drunk, and raucous barmaids had the audience stomping and hissing on opening night." "The cast dishes up a hearty helping of ham-n-corn, but the play is well adapted to this sort of excess. The actors have as much fun as the audience."
To sum it up, if you are needing a great play with loads of potential fun and appreciative audiences, "49" may be that nugget you've been digging for.
90's dance music
