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Herbie Hancock Memoir


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Headhunters went Gold or even more, so there must have been a number of people buying that record. I was almost twenty thirty when it came out, so I did count as young people? But I was already thinking of myself as a jazz player and thought his treatment of funk was hip - I'm pretty sure the diehard funk audience did not. Herbie' band with all the jazzy impro was much too sophisticated for a large audience, methinks. Do we really know who it was that bought the Hancock albums after Headhunters? I didn't, and I don't know. How many copies were sold?

Herbie was clever as he never lost his jazz audience. We here on the board are not the mass audience we are talking about, we are a small elite.

p.s. edited because I miscalculated my age at the time this was released - seems I'm really getting old and senile ...:w

Edited by mikeweil
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Interrupting the discussion with tangential on topic discussion... Bennie Maupin's free jazzisms on "Sly" immediately diffuse any fears the "outcat" in me may have that Headhunters was counterrevolutionary music. Which is not to say that this is "part of the revolution" per se, but I do hear it as creatively sophisticated middlebrow music. You can't treat that soprano solo as either a co-optation or misappropriation of late Coltrane--it just sort of is that, recontextualized in sort of an unlikely way.

I guess I hadn't really listened to Headhunters in a while, because the whole process was like rediscovering a misremembered movie. The history books or all the "classic of jazz fusion" appellations don't totally square; with some minor adjustments, "Sly" and "Vein Melter" could fit onto the second half of a Mwandishi album. All this goes to show that artistic development isn't all about exploding into the next big concept--it's actually often about incremental development and connecting the dots between plateaus.

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Headhunters went Gold or even more, so there must have been a number of people buying that record. I was almost thirty when it came out, so did I still count as young people? But I was already thinking of myself as a jazz player and thought his treatment of funk was hip - I'm pretty sure the diehard funk audience did not. Herbie' band with all the jazzy impro was much too sophisticated for a large audience, methinks. Do we really know who it was that bought the Hancock albums after Headhunters? I didn't, and I don't know. How many copies were sold?

I was 17 or 18 when it came out, and many of the white kids and all the black kids my age really dug it. Then I went to college, got involved in the black frat-party band circuit, and everybody on that scene all dug it - and were the ones buying the Sunlight/Secrets type stuff as well.

You didn't work a black fat party back then without playing looooooonnnnggggg jams on Mister Magic, Chameleon, Summer Madness, etc. People liked to find that groove and ride it for 15 minutes on up to....whenever it ran out. Still is like that - you play in a band that plays for black dancing, you better be ready to go long on the real jams. None of this three minutes and out crap. No. I could tell you stories...

At the same time as that, I had a good buddy, an uber-whiteguy from Overland Park, Kansas, who transcribed Spank-A-Lee and orchestrated it for the 1:00 lab band. He was quite enthusiastic about scoring the clavinet parts for the sax section.

That music captured a lot of imaginations and filled a lot of dancefloors in its time. I was there and I do not lie.

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The more I read this the the more I see how jazzniks aren't happy unless their musicians are unsuccessful, obscure musically (to all-naturally-except the oh-so-clever jazzer) and generally on crutches. It's kind of sickening and I had the right idea months ago to mostly retire from these boards unless I or someone else really has something to say. And gig announcements like everybody else-you know, the ones that start so, um, sincerely with 'dear friends'-not that anyone comes anyway. It's my fault for being so sensitive. But it's too easy for otherwise nice people to slam people who-let's be real-have contributed more than they ever have or will. Unless you consider Web palaver a contribution. On this board-by far the best-I've seen George Benson called a 'sellout' (not that he cares or reads such idiocy), the Marsalis clan have targets on their backs, oh and can't forget that classy and courageous foray into the sex lives of the dead. And NOBODY ELSE CARES. Time to move on. At least from threads like these.

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and Val - it's really not becoming to simply indulge in personal attacks because you disagree so strongly with me. Not once on this thread have I attacked you in any way, your motivation or your reason for holding your opinion, I simply disagreed, and I was only respectful toward you in our disagreement. You cannot say the same, sadly.

all i'm saying, Allen, is that your needle is stuck on the '78!!! do you really think that's a "personal attack"?!? i thought i was actually holding back!! LOL! :rolleyes:

Edited by ValerieB
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"it's not the pop dream but what you make of that dream that's important." - Stanley Kaufman

read the above quote (I'm addressing everyone who thinks Herbie's pop music sounds better than drek). And then go read writers like Peter Handke, or check out filmmakers like Wim Wenders - all ARTISTS who loved American pop culture, but who synthesized it into something personal and deep. We might also say the same of Burt Bacharach, though in a different way. Or of course the Beatles, in a different realm. Herbie just took a market survey and then tried (with market success) to play to it. But it's awful stuff, and sounds like an old guy's idea of young music.

There's some truth in the point your driving home, but Hancock, up until the Rock-it/Laswell years at least, seems the 'least' deserving of this kind of targeting. Laswell was in his late 20's at the time of Rock-it, Hancock in his early 40's. Who else could Laswell have used at that time to complete his commercial/hip-hop vision in 1983? Compared to Deborah Harry's Rapture and McClaren's Buffalo Gals, Rock-it sounds the most 'inside' of that emerging culture of the time. Catching the zeitgeist or jumping on the bandwagon. The underlying quote is pulled from wikipedia.

'A chance meeting between Laswell and Herbie Hancock at Elektra Records, in which the latter expressed interest in making music in the vein of Malcolm McLaren's "Buffalo Gals" lead to a collaboration that brought forth the Future Shock album and the hit single "Rockit"'.

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Jim, I hate to break it to you. But SEINFELD WAS CANCELLED.

But Herbie Hancock still makes records. And has a book deal. And can improvise rather than riff.

Win, Herbie Hancock.

I actually don't mind Rockit at all. Don't really like it, but I've got no problem with Gadget Geeks playing with their new toys, nor with making unabashedly commercial music, not if you're upfront about it and do it like you mean for it to be done.

In retrospect it might be Laswell's most successful project, and I don't just mean commercially.

The element of bringing together disparate styles in Laswell's other projects (when he is not merely being a 'producer' for others 'styles') often ends at the idea alone.

Rock-it actually sounds like it was meant to be. Everyone was in the right place at the right time.

Re-Allen Lowe's point about the middle class not being able to produce anything truly innovative, I don't think it's middle class so much as middle age, or post middle age as such. Which innovative musicians (who made it past mid-career) have been able to make music that had a real impact on the music around them, after a certain point in their lives. Beyond just making certain advances or changes within their own personal idioms. After Prime Time Ornette certainly didn't. Herbie Hancock after Rock-it? Laswell? Archie Shepp? Sonny Rollins? Armstrong? Miles Davis perhaps?

If you count Last Exit and Massacre as Laswell projects (and the latter has definitely always been a collaboration, to varying degrees, with Fred Frith), then I'd say that those are more successful than any of the grab bag/synthesis projects. Material is no one project, but its best moments (a lot of Memory Serves, that Archie Shepp/Whitney Houston track) have been musically fantastic. Last Exit actually has that sort of vibe--American free jazz guitar pioneer, iconic German enfant terrible, free rock legend/early Prime Time drummer, and a dub/experimental bassist--but it was a longtime touring group and much more cohesive than any of the shorter-term things I can remember.

As far as innovative guys having an impact on the music around them at a later stage in life--a lot of the AACM and Euro free improv guys, especially in their older years, have maintained these sort of musical apprenticeships that ensures that their current music has an impact (by virtue of osmosis) on current, "developing" music. Evan Parker is one example, and his work with both younger musicians (Peter Evans and our own Alexander Hawkins come to mind) and more "leftish" improv (his EAI experiments in more recent years, even though he was already sort of doing this with the Music Improvisation Company in the 70's) ensures his continued relevance. Fred Frith is a different example; the changes in his own music may not always been immediately audible, but the man is deep into looking for new things and nurtures this interest, actively, via his teaching at Mills (where I met him) and his very public work with younger generations of composers/improvisers. There's a whole generation of younger/current American improvisers, I think, that bears at least some connection to Fred's work in various fields.

Then there are guys like Braxton who tend not to sit with their own idioms very long before drastically mutating them into something else. There's plenty of personal development in Braxton's music, but I know that, at least in terms of the younger musicians he's worked with and the sheer ambition of his trying to produce something completely new every number of months, his music has a continued resonance. I've actually gleaned more off of studying both the 80's quartet and Ghost Trance music than I have looking at the more broadly celebrated 60's/70's music, and Braxton's creative wanderlust makes me think he'll never turn into someone who merely "coasts." Threadgill is similar, Roscoe too (although a lot of his hardcore experimentalism tends to go relatively unnoticed/unrecorded--my judgment is based in main on my time at Mills, where Roscoe seems to write a new, boundary pushing chamber piece on a pretty regular basis).

Also, I wouldn't want to disservice a guy like Ornette whose music post-Prime Time may have not had a visceral impact but whose idiom most definitely continues to evolve. The primary reason his latter day music has not had as shattering an impact is because there's nothing to hang the hysteria on--like you said, it's a matter of personal advances or changes, not the invention, wholesale, of a new style. I think that Ornette's incremental evolution in the past ten years or so has been much more interesting than people often give it credit for, and many of these ideas (the reinstitution of a regular harmonic form with measures/beats spontaneously added or removed, the end of the formal "horns play the melody" thing with the melody traded freely between horns and basses, the superimposition of completely contrasting rhythmic feels on top of one another) parallel certain developments in the supposed "cutting edge" of contemporary jazz/improvised music.

Well said. And very diplomatic :g

I do feel that I agree with Melvin Gibbs re-Last Exit. The fact that it was a band existing only for festivals, with no aim beyond turning up and playing, limited the potential of the music. It probably couldn't have been any other way, given that the main interests of the players existed outside of that project. I think you can argue for the Rock-it collaboration being the most successful of Laswell's projects for bringing the mainstream and the adventurous together, because it caught the wave of an emerging culture. Whereas the Material projects (despite making some unique music, and bringing marginalised players into different contexts), never really did that as well. With regard to the real-time and legacy relevance of post middle age players, I take your points, and am informed by what you say. However I wasn't thinking exclusively towards the European (speculative?) Improv movements and the ongoing influence of the old masters (both black and white), but more towards the directions American jazz players are moving, as the recent threads discuss here, to find relevance and connections between commercial pop, hip hop and jazz improv. And how it is very much a younger person's game. Because the social/cultural possibilities are more organic for younger people and their communities. Works like Shepp's Attica Blues, Gary Bartz's early 70's work's and Herbie Hancock come to mind, as music that made similar statements for the times they were made. But at a micro level, perhaps what you are saying re- more recent Ornette and Threadgill etc. has had, and will continue to have an influence that is more than meets the eye (or ear).

Edited by freelancer
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The more I read this the the more I see how jazzniks aren't happy unless their musicians are unsuccessful, obscure musically (to all-naturally-except the oh-so-clever jazzer) and generally on crutches.

The more he reads the bbs the less he comprehends the world and all its capers and how it all will end.

By the way, my 3 favorite Laswell productions are Ask The Ages (Sharrock), Too Much Sugar for a Dime (Threadgill), and Bahia Black Ritual Beating System (VA).

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I do feel that I agree with Melvin Gibbs re-Last Exit. The fact that it was a band existing only for festivals, with no aim beyond turning up and playing, limited the potential of the music. It probably couldn't have been any other way, given that the main interests of the players existed outside of that project.

Last Exit was a Laswell band, not a Melvin Gibbs band.

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Maybe I went a little overboard. I like Allen. He's been nice to me personally. And you can't direct traffic on the Web. It just adds more negativity--what I was pointing out. (As in: who died and made THIS MF God?) It's also like butting into a fight between a guy and his wife. They'll both tell you to fuck off. Oh, you meant well? I got your well-meaning RIGHT HERE.... :crazy:

I do find the tone on a lot of these threads knocking the big shots sort of useless and the motivation suspect. But I'm repeating myself.

I think I have a lot of things to pay attention to in my own life and this is an escape I can only spend so much time/energy on. If people care about me on here they'd do well to remind me of this.

The people on here not only have pulses and brains, but CARE. A good thing. We're not our brothers' keepers, though. The 'brothers', especially the one herein discussed, are doing just fine in all cases. I think my philosophy---especially after someone I respected put medown the other day, in a hurtful way too---and the way to 'pay that forward' is to echo Joe Pass's sentiments. Someone was goasing him to say something about someone, or maybe he started himself and caught it. He said 'I don't want to put anyone down. I just want to do my own thing'.

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I do feel that I agree with Melvin Gibbs re-Last Exit. The fact that it was a band existing only for festivals, with no aim beyond turning up and playing, limited the potential of the music. It probably couldn't have been any other way, given that the main interests of the players existed outside of that project.

Last Exit was a Laswell band, not a Melvin Gibbs band.

No I was referring to this interview with Gibbs from another thread here is the link. Really interesting and expansive interview.

My link

Gibbs mentions how he feels Last Exit needed more direction, which I equate with the band really not having anymore ambition than coming together at festivals to play. Which is what they did.

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I only listen to Last Exit when I need soothing music to go to sleep by.

Last Exit must have got their market research right. You and I were the intended audience. Although I find I still have to dip my pacifier in whiskey to finally get off.

Here's a quote I read from a Laswell interview where he talks about trying to get Tony Williams involved in a rock project. Kind of sums up the approach at the time,

"I made a big proposal with Bruce Lundvall once; I went with Tony and we put together this weird band we wanted to develop, and it was with Jeff Beck. It was crazy: Wally Badarou, and people like that. Laurie Anderson was involved. Of course Bruce was like, “I’d love to hear a demo,” and we were like, “Fuck off,” and that was that. It never happened. I did send Tony to play with Jeff Beck, though, and it didn’t work. I missed the thing by one day; I was a day behind him, and he flew to London and they played. Then he came back and said it didn’t work. I mean, Jeff Beck’s obviously not the brightest guy in the world, but I thought it would be interesting musically at the time. This would’ve been late ’80s."

Edited by freelancer
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"I made a big proposal with Bruce Lundvall once; I went with Tony and we put together this weird band we wanted to develop, and it was with Jeff Beck. It was crazy: Wally Badarou, and people like that. Laurie Anderson was involved. Of course Bruce was like, “I’d love to hear a demo,” and we were like, “Fuck off,” and that was that. It never happened. I did send Tony to play with Jeff Beck, though, and it didn’t work. I missed the thing by one day; I was a day behind him, and he flew to London and they played. Then he came back and said it didn’t work. I mean, Jeff Beck’s obviously not the brightest guy in the world, but I thought it would be interesting musically at the time. This would’ve been late ’80s."

Why did Bill have to say that?

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"I made a big proposal with Bruce Lundvall once; I went with Tony and we put together this weird band we wanted to develop, and it was with Jeff Beck. It was crazy: Wally Badarou, and people like that. Laurie Anderson was involved. Of course Bruce was like, “I’d love to hear a demo,” and we were like, “Fuck off,” and that was that. It never happened. I did send Tony to play with Jeff Beck, though, and it didn’t work. I missed the thing by one day; I was a day behind him, and he flew to London and they played. Then he came back and said it didn’t work. I mean, Jeff Beck’s obviously not the brightest guy in the world, but I thought it would be interesting musically at the time. This would’ve been late ’80s."

Why did Bill have to say that?

Cos it's true?

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Tony Williams isn't really the kind of drummer that would work with El Becko anyway. I could imagine Billy Cobham, because Beck's played with a bunch of drummers influenced by him.

I head Tony at the Bottom Line on a mini-tour with Jan Hammer once.

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Pete - Lundvall is a typical jazz guy, in that respect; you'd be surprised (or not) how many of his generation never heard of Beck. And I'm willing to bet this is true because Lundvall is also a market-type guy; if he knew how big Beck was he would have been all over this.

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