Hit Love

Latin rock legend’s late ’70s solo albums remastered. Liner notes feature new interviews with Jorge Santana and Richard Bean. Features the hit “Love The Way.” Latin rock pioneer Jorge Santana’s musical journey began right after high school when he joined the popular San Francisco nine-piece, horn-driven band, the Malibus. The Malibus added the 17-year-old guitarist and morphed into Malo by 1971. Their self-titled debut album was issued in 1972, yielding the Top Twenty hit, “Sauvecito.” Malo continued to evolve over the course of their four albums for Warner Bros. with a changing cast of members passing through their ranks including keyboardist Richard Kermode formerly of Janis Joplin’s Kozmic Blues Band, singer/founders Arcelio Garcia and Richard Bean, and three members of the band, Naked Lunch, among others. After Malo’s fourth Warner Bros. album Ascención was released, Santana performed with the Fania All-Stars at Madison Square Garden, then appeared on their 1974 album, Latin-Soul-Rock, and after that took a break. In 1978, the first Jorge Santana solo album emerged as a self-titled affair with most of the songs co-written with Malo-alum, Richard Bean who also handled lead vocal duties.

Latin rock legend’s late ’70s solo albums remastered. Liner notes feature new interviews with Jorge Santana and Richard Bean. Features the hit “Love The Way.” Latin rock pioneer Jorge Santana’s musical journey began right after high school when he joined the popular San Francisco nine-piece, horn-driven band, the Malibus. The Malibus added the 17-year-old guitarist and morphed into Malo by 1971. Their self-titled debut album was issued in 1972, yielding the Top Twenty hit, “Sauvecito.” Malo continued to evolve over the course of their four albums for Warner Bros. with a changing cast of members passing through their ranks including keyboardist Richard Kermode formerly of Janis Joplin’s Kozmic Blues Band, singer/founders Arcelio Garcia and Richard Bean, and three members of the band, Naked Lunch, among others. After Malo’s fourth Warner Bros. album Ascención was released, Santana performed with the Fania All-Stars at Madison Square Garden, then appeared on their 1974 album, Latin-Soul-Rock, and after that took a break. In 1978, the first Jorge Santana solo album emerged as a self-titled affair with most of the songs co-written with Malo-alum, Richard Bean who also handled lead vocal duties.

Latin rock legend’s late ’70s solo albums remastered. Liner notes feature new interviews with Jorge Santana and Richard Bean. Features the hit “Love The Way.” Latin rock pioneer Jorge Santana’s musical journey began right after high school when he joined the popular San Francisco nine-piece, horn-driven band, the Malibus. The Malibus added the 17-year-old guitarist and morphed into Malo by 1971. Their self-titled debut album was issued in 1972, yielding the Top Twenty hit, “Sauvecito.” Malo continued to evolve over the course of their four albums for Warner Bros. with a changing cast of members passing through their ranks including keyboardist Richard Kermode formerly of Janis Joplin’s Kozmic Blues Band, singer/founders Arcelio Garcia and Richard Bean, and three members of the band, Naked Lunch, among others. After Malo’s fourth Warner Bros. album Ascención was released, Santana performed with the Fania All-Stars at Madison Square Garden, then appeared on their 1974 album, Latin-Soul-Rock, and after that took a break. In 1978, the first Jorge Santana solo album emerged as a self-titled affair with most of the songs co-written with Malo-alum, Richard Bean who also handled lead vocal duties. The song “Love The Way” was the breakout single, and the album made it onto the Black Album charts. The following year the Allen Toussaint-produced, It’s All About Love was released and featured songs mostly from the pen of either Toussaint or Santana. Now for the first time, the two Jorge Santana albums are combined on a single disc, remastered, with liners notes by Bill Kopp featuring new interviews with both Jorge Santana and Richard Bean about these post-Malo solo efforts.

In its matching up of Andy Williams titles for a two-fer release, Collectables Records has opted to combine Williams' spring 1972 album Love Theme From "The Godfather" with his spring 1974 album The Way We Were, skipping over his fall 1972 album Alone Again (Naturally) and his fall 1973 album Solitaire. (Those two are together on another disc.) The theory may have been that these two both had something to do with the movies while the two in between did not, but in fact all of these albums take the same approach, more or less. That approach is to have Williams present his interpretations of songs from the pop charts of the period. As it happens, these two albums mark significant milestones for the singer, albeit of opposite sorts.

On March 17, 2023, '80s hair metallers John Diva & The Rockets Of Love will release their third album, "The Big Easy." While the band on the band explored the boundaries of glam metal on their second record "American Amadeus", the five musicians return to what they do best on album number three what they do best: straightforward, refreshing rock with striking riffs, hard beats, multi-layered lyrics and a frontman in top form in top form. No frills, no bullshit, but stadium anthems for the very big stage. We've been waiting for this and finally it's here: John Diva is back! "Remember 80-something - we never seemed to miss a thing".