Santana, O2 Arena, London, 22 June 2008

SETLIST: Pease/Jingo - Life Is For Living - Incident at Neshabur - Batuka/No One To Depend On - Curacion - Concerto/Maria Maria - Foo Foo - Corazon Espinado - Happy/Right On Be Free (with Beverly Knight) - Historia* _ Africians and Antillais* - Lord's Prayer/Sun Ra - Yaleo/Drum Solo - Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen - Oye Como Va - Spartacus/Blues Jam/Smooth/Dame - ENCORES: Woodstock Chant/Soul Sacrifice - Angel Chant/Into The Night

*With Idrissa Diop

A quick survey of the Santana crowd made me think that the geriatric wards of every hospital in England must have been empty that night. For a split second I couldn't help but wonder why we were going to see Santana and I secretly envied the crowd queueing up to see Queensryche at the O2 Indigo. But shame on me for being all ageist! Santana reminded me that good music is timeless and I was grateful and humbled by the fact that I was witnessing one of the greatest guitarists of all time (and his band of utterly amazing musicians and singers), and not to mention a very kind and rather funny humanitarian (check out The Milagro Foundation, Carlos & Deborah Santana's charity for underpriviliged children around the world). And for the sake of sounding melodramatic, there were times during the concert, especially during the guitar solos, when I felt myself welling up as Santana's playing was so passionate, powerful and genuine. The other nice surprise was that Carlos played all of his hits off his 1999 Supernatural album (Maria Maria and of course, Smooth, which got the biggest reaction). Amazing night.