Most interesting/favorite 'Herbie Hancock' BN

[Teasing the Korean]

13 minutes ago, JSngry said:

We're getting new flooring sometimes in the near future. I have a cloud of dread enveloping me about the logistics that are going to start happening.

Be prepared for the massive indentation where the LPs were! 

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

We're getting new flooring sometimes in the near future. I have a cloud of dread enveloping me about the logistics that are going to start happening.

I've got a cloud of dread about that, too. Seeing Chuck's photos of his office made me realise what a BIG mistake I'd made (that he didn't) putting my CD shelves in AFTER the carpet was laid up to the wall, and getting them screwed into the wall.

MG

[danasgoodstuff]

On 4/15/2018 at 7:59 PM, mjzee said:

I never liked the second quintet.  Never.  Consistently never*.  Never saw the attraction.  And I've tried: I have the studio box, the two "Bootleg Live" releases, and a one-disc compilation of the Plugged Nickel box.  Unattractive melodies, rushed tempos, Tony's grandstanding cluttering up the beat (give me Billy Higgins any day!), and when it comes time to solo, Herbie's a gooey soft marshmallow who seems to be saying "what am I doing here?"  I've been listening to a lot of the second quintet recently, courtesy of the shuffle functions on my iPod and iTunes.  Just yesterday I heard Madness (from Nefertiti).  A head that's barely a head, Miles noodles, Wayne cobbles together an interesting solo (an achievement, considering the dearth of melodic materials he has to work with), then Herbie comes in with...what?  The beat stops, the tune goes out the window...Teo could've spliced this solo in from an entirely different song.  Or how about Prince Of Darkness (from Sorcerer)?  It's not that the band is tight, it's that the tune is constructed to accommodate when the bearespect, that'st disappears and Tony gets lost in his drums (like for about 10 seconds beginning around 45 seconds into the tune, and again around 1:50 into the tune), then Wayne gives a strong solo, and Herbie's solo is somewhere between playing scales and a bore.  It's not basic physics, it's just personal taste, and this doesn't do it for me.  (Ornette Coleman doesn't do it for me either, and all the spit takes in the world won't change that.)

It's interesting that I start to like Miles again with Filles De Kilimanjaro, where he's moving on from the second quintet.

*with two exceptions: Freedom Jazz Dance and Gingerbread Boy (both from Miles Smiles).  But even there, I much prefer the Eddie Harris and Jimmy Heath versions.

With all due respect, that's your loss.  Your perogies, but still your loss.  I get that people think the 2nd Quintet is a step back from Ornette/Ayler/Cecil, but to me it totally makes sense as the next step - we can be as free as we want to be and the tune's still there, just as much as the AACM being the next step.  The 2nd Q is some pretty abstract stuff: it is to most jazz as most jazz is to square music.  Herbie is the right player for that band and that band let him find full Herbie.  As a more straight forward groove player, no he's no better than any number of other guys in that bag, although no worse than many either.  And Filles and what came after came from the 2nd Q, one step at a time - not the only way 'it' could've gone, so there is something to explore there even if mostly not well explored by those who came after.  And was any band picking up on their ques before the Kenny Cox Q?

[mjzee]

Weird that people get so twisted out of shape because I said I don't like the 2nd quintet.  Not my loss at all; I don't hear anything there to lose.  I think here's a key sentence:

18 minutes ago, danasgoodstuff said:

we can be as free as we want to be and the tune's still there

Not true (just my point of view, but I'm discussing what I find appealing in music).  You can play the tune, but then, if you play free, you're no longer playing the tune.  You can come back to the tune after you play free, but document it as it happened.  The Grateful Dead did that as follows: Playing In The Band>Jam>Not Fade Away>Playing In The Band.  When they jam, it begins as a flow from the tune before, but they're not playing the tune anymore.  If they jam within a tune, it's pretty apparent they're playing within the tune.

When Miles transitioned to more riff-based music (Filles and after), it seems he considered the tune (composition) as a vehicle for improvisation to be problematic.  Why get stuck with a tune, chord-structure and such, especially if you're just going to wind up ignoring it?  Instead, just go with a riff and improvise over it all you want.  There's your freedom, but it's also tonal and enjoyable - yes, it's got a good beat and you can dance to it.  More power to him.

But if you're going to improvise within a tune, I think it's important (for a performance that's coherent to the listener) to respect the chord structure and stay within the tune.  Otherwise, you're just doing whatever the hell you want, and who's to say it's enjoyable and successful?  In fact, why bother with the tune if you're just going to discard it?  Just do whatever the hell you want and see if you get an audience.

A really good example of this tension is on Albert Ayler's First Recordings (I heard it on GNP-Crescendo many years ago).  As I recall, the band starts an innocuous standard ("I'll Remember April"), Ayler gets up and immediately starts farting all over the tune.  He's not even pretending that what he's playing has a congruence with the tune.  I hear it as a simple act of aggression - against the tune, against tonality, against melodicism, and maybe against bourgeois society.  He's making the point he intends.  I don't want to hear it again.

But hey, enjoy the music you like.  The 2nd quintet's music has been consistently in print since first released, with more seemingly added every few years ("Bootleg Series" and such).  So there are lots of people who enjoy what you enjoy.  I was just presenting my point of view, pointing out the qualities I don't like in the music. 

[Simon Weil]

3 minutes ago, mjzee said:

A really good example of this tension is on Albert Ayler's First Recordings (I heard it on GNP-Crescendo many years ago).  As I recall, the band starts an innocuous standard ("I'll Remember April"), Ayler gets up and immediately starts farting all over the tune.  He's not even pretending that what he's playing has a congruence with the tune.  I hear it as a simple act of aggression - against the tune, against tonality, against melodicism, and maybe against bourgeois society.  He's making the point he intends.  I don't want to hear it again.

This is a wonderful piece of  "I know I'm right, so I don't have to bother with listening again". You even say it: "I don't want to hear it again."

[Big Beat Steve]

32 minutes ago, Simon Weil said:

This is a wonderful piece of  "I know I'm right, so I don't have to bother with listening again". You even say it: "I don't want to hear it again."

Or replies to what Mjzee said (needless to say I understand his point), then, might just as well be considered a case of "I know I am right so if they don't listen to what i feel they ought to listen to then they are nowhere". However, it all boils to down to "YMMV" or "one man's meat is another man's poison". And "your loss" arguments usually doesn't hold water either. There isn't that much mandatory listening for EVERYONE in such an IMMENSELY wide field of music and just about anyone can come up with a dozen recordings from one's personal and reasonably wide tastes or favorites that "others" (who admit they don't go for that music because they, in turn, have different priorities and favorites and won't listen to EVERYTHING in DEPTH either) would have to listen to by all means. Not so, though. It's all a matter of taste, and tastes differ, and if it's outside of what you feel like exploring in your tastes then it's no loss to you.

Edited April 16, 2018 by Big Beat Steve

[JSngry]

22 minutes ago, mjzee said:

You can play the tune, but then, if you play free, you're no longer playing the tune.  You can come back to the tune after you play free, but document it as it happened.

Well....that band very rarely played free on standards (once Chick replaced Herbie, things opened up even further, lines got really blurred). What they did was a lot of harmonic and rhythmic extrapolations from the "home base", but when they played "tunes", the form was always there, somewhere, some how. You can do the math (to use that phrase) and link it all back up.

They started before Wayne was in the band, check out what they do on "Stella" from the MFV album. Once the tempo doubles up, there's a different set of changes going on. Different, but related, you can - literally - do the math as to where those new chords came from, build it back down to the original changes. Harmony can withstand all the pummeling you give it, even "free" playing will have a logic, because even if all 12 tones have equal gravity, they still go somewhere, there are still relationships, shapes are still formed, there is no such thing as random harmony, there's just random minds. Look out for them. But geesh, the WayneHerbieRonTony Show was anything but random. Spontaneous as hell, yes, that's the thrill, but they always knew where they were, and that's the more of the thrill.

Past playing tunes, you can play free and still play "the tune". It happens in "classical" music all the time, it's called "variation", and there's no reason on earth whatsoever for any musician not to do that. There's every reason to know what you're doing, though, but that should hold true for life in general.

Yeah, I know, shouldn't have to be a mathematician to keep up with all that, keep mine simple, or, I don't care how legit the math is, I don't like how it sounds. Well, ok, fair enough.  But dislike spoken in terms that are just not accurate, personal taste in the guise of scientific fact, that furthers no cause or discussion.

As for Ayler, hearing him play April once is enough for me. But hearing him play, say, "Ghosts", that's something I'll never here enough.

[JSngry]

25 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

Or replies to what Mjzee said (needless to say I understand his point), then, might just as well be considered a case of "I know I am right so if they don't listen to what i feel they ought to listen to then they are nowhere". However, it all boils to down to "YMMV" or "one man's meat is another man's poison". And "your loss" arguments usually doesn't hold water either. There isn't that much mandatory listening for EVERYONE in such an IMMENSELY wide field of music and just about anyone can come up with a dozen recordings from one's personal and reasonably wide tastes or favorites that "others" (who admit they don't go for that music because they, in turn, have different priorities and favorites and won't listen to EVERYTHING in DEPTH either) would have to listen to by all means. Not so, though. It's all a matter of taste, and tastes differ, and if it's outside of what you feel like exploring in your tastes then it's no loss to you.

That's all well and good, but it's got nothing to do with music itself.

Nobody should like what they don't like, but dammit, an attempt at justifying a dislike by stating assumptions that just are not true, that will get called. It's like that hardbob guy on the old board krypton kept yammering about late Trane had no structure, Cecil's music had no structure on and on, and it was all bullshit, because ALL of that music had structure. If you don't like it, just say so. If you can't hear it, just say so. If you don't want to hear it because you don't like it, just say so. Stick to what you know, don't confuse how you hear it with what is actually happening. A subjective reaction is not an objective analysis, and just because something does make sense logivcally doesn't mean you have to like it esthetically. But by god, math is math.

[danasgoodstuff]

Albert may not have remembered April (whoever she was) very well, but IMHO he played the shit out of Summertime - remembered things there that most would rather forget.

[JSngry]

Hell, Albert was a golfer. He knew how to read the green.

[danasgoodstuff]

...and he played with Little Walter, so he knew greens and blues!

[Dan Gould]

I was told there would be no math.

That's not just a jokey reference to classic early SNL. It's an honest statement that I do not intend to think about math in order to determine if someone is playing free, outside, inside or whatever-the-fuck-they-want to.

I don't doubt Jim's assertion about the "math" but it doesn't make it make anymore sense to those who don't hear in math terms anyway.  

I know that the music in this genre I enjoy has a structure that simple people can hear.  That math don't lie.

[Steve Reynolds]

Fwiw the Dead are playing “Playing in the Band” even when it goes way way out just as when they play 35 minute versions of “Dark Star” or “The Other One”, they are still playing “Dark Star” or “The Other One”.

there are many many compositions on the jazz/free jazz vein that steer far from the thematic or harmonic materials - this does NOT mean they have “discarded” the tune. Some of the most interesting modern compositional approaches blur these issues. Gerry Hemingway, Mary Halvorson, Tony Malaby, Mats Gustafsson, Ken Vandermark, Ingrid Laubrock, Tyshawn Sorey, May Maneri, Andrew Drury, Tim Berne and many other modern composers have developed very intriguing and viable compositions that meld improvisation and composition in ways that we sometimes “think” that the composition has went the way of the wind when maybe the connection is just a bit more subtle than we might have ears for.

Edited April 16, 2018 by Steve Reynolds

[JSngry]

7 minutes ago, Dan Gould said:

I was told there would be no math.

I don't doubt Jim's assertion about the "math" but it doesn't make it make anymore sense to those who don't hear in math terms anyway.  

 

Sorry dude, there's always math. They didn't ask me what I wanted, I'd have preferred fleecewear and boxer shorts.

but...what is this hearing in "math terms"? I don't hear in equations, and I certainly feel whatever theory is or is not going on before I bother to figure out what it is. And sometimes, as with Ellington, I seldom bother to do the math, usually because it's just too damn hard!

Nevertheless, it strikes me as a crime of ignorant aggression to make bold assertions that something is or isn't something that it isn't or is. As it pertains to this thread, a lot of people hear shit that makes no sense to them and assume it's "free", when in fact it's anything but. And then get pissy about being called to distinguish between their opinion and a subjective set of facts.

Hell, there are as many opinions in this world as there are people, but there are no "alternative facts". There might be incomplete understanding of existing facts, there might be applications of existing facts that are unpleasant to some, hell, there might be facts that disturb a person's very sense of who they are, but still, those are facts, unless and until disproven. I mean there might come a time where vibrational ratios are proven to be a collective auditory hallucination, but...I'll leave that for the horror movies.

I seriously doubt that most people really factually understand all the music they hear and/or all of the music they like. I know I sure as hell don't. But I do know what I do know, and it only occasionally has a bearing on whether or not I like it or not. "Like" is an emotion, "fact" is science (and to expect for a musician not to engage in science is just...evil, think about what that would truly mean, no more focus on sound or tone or time or color or anything that any of us enjoy out any of our musics). I can do both dammit, so should anybody be able to, that's part of being a rational, intelligent adult (or used to be). Let's all stop making excuses, just stop it.

4 minutes ago, Steve Reynolds said:

there are many many compositions on the jazz/free jazz vein that steer far from the thematic or harmonic materials - this does NOT mean they have “discarded” the tune. Some of the most interesting modern compositional approaches blur these issues. Gerry Hemingway, Mary Halvorson, Tony Malaby, Mats Gustafsson, Ken Vandermark, Ingrid Laubrock, Tyshawn Sorey, May Maneri, Andrew Drury, Tim Berne and many other modern composers have developed very intriguing and viable compositions that meld improvisation and composition in ways that we sometimes “think” that the composition has went the way of the wind when maybe the connection is just a bit more subtle than we might have ears for.

Well, you know, if it's written into the chart, it is part of the composition, right? This ongoing obsession with symmetrical,l evenly balanced song forms is ok I guess...), but it's not all that music is, has been, or can be. A "song" is just one thing that music can be.

[JSngry]

I mean, everybody, musicians, fans, journalists, plumbers, dogs, waterfalls, everybody should just shut up about this notion of "free" music - there's no such thing. It's an emotional construct, and a very appealing one, but as a practice, no. It's an illusion. There is freedom, yes, absolutely, but freedom is not luck or a divine blessing or an artistic splendor or any of that bullshit. Freedom is clarity of thought, a full consideration of possibilities, and assertive choices being made on the basis thereof - and a willingness to stand behind the outcomes. People who claim that you can play wrong notes in Schoenberg and nobody can tell the difference, well, ok, maybe you can't. But there are players who can, and if they couldn't, they couldn't play it like they do. There's all the beedroppers who can play all the notes and none of the meaning, how is that any different than playing wrong notes on purpose in Schoenberg just to laugh at the dolts who supposedly can't tell a difference. People are cruel fuckers sometimes, they don't care if you know or not, they count on you not knowing, usually. There is no love in those hearts for you.

"Freedom" is now a politically charged word that is used by all kinds of people for all kinds of reasons, only some of them not misanthropic, so why don't, instead of freedom we start looking at facts, options, awareness of fact-based options, and fact/option-centric decisions made. Yeah, that's a deal I make right now - take away all my "freedom", just let me have all the options I can get to, real fact-options, not imaginary word-options, and let me see what I can do with them. I don't care if you like them or not, just get out of my way and let me discover and decide and not get hung up in saying shit with words that have been mongrelized into meaninglessness.

[Simon Weil]

2 hours ago, Big Beat Steve said:

Or replies to what Mjzee said (needless to say I understand his point),

One of my rules of thumb is that the real substance of a post is often the stuff in the brackets.

[Dan Gould]

So where does it leave the dolts who can't hear?

In a related issue, can I just stop calling anything 'free' and just go with "noise"?  Or does noise have its own rules which are there for those who can hear properly?

[CJ Shearn]

34 minutes ago, JSngry said:

I mean, everybody, musicians, fans, journalists, plumbers, dogs, waterfalls, everybody should just shut up about this notion of "free" music - there's no such thing. It's an emotional construct, and a very appealing one, but as a practice, no. It's an illusion. There is freedom, yes, absolutely, but freedom is not luck or a divine blessing or an artistic splendor or any of that bullshit. Freedom is clarity of thought, a full consideration of possibilities, and assertive choices being made on the basis thereof - and a willingness to stand behind the outcomes. People who claim that you can play wrong notes in Schoenberg and nobody can tell the difference, well, ok, maybe you can't. But there are players who can, and if they couldn't, they couldn't play it like they do. There's all the beedroppers who can play all the notes and none of the meaning, how is that any different than playing wrong notes on purpose in Schoenberg just to laugh at the dolts who supposedly can't tell a difference. People are cruel fuckers sometimes, they don't care if you know or not, they count on you not knowing, usually. There is no love in those hearts for you.

"Freedom" is now a politically charged word that is used by all kinds of people for all kinds of reasons, only some of them not misanthropic, so why don't, instead of freedom we start looking at facts, options, awareness of fact-based options, and fact/option-centric decisions made. Yeah, that's a deal I make right now - take away all my "freedom", just let me have all the options I can get to, real fact-options, not imaginary word-options, and let me see what I can do with them. I don't care if you like them or not, just get out of my way and let me discover and decide and not get hung up in saying shit with words that have been mongrelized into meaninglessness.

Love this famous quote from Cecil Taylor.   "Well, I love to practice, simply because that's preparation, part of the process of planning... There's nothing "free" about any of this; it's the construction of cantilevers and inclined pylons. I'm a great fan of Santiago Calatrava, the Spanish structural engineer. If you look at the plans for many of his constructions, they look like animals, or plants...Bridges. He's done other things, railroad stations... Because you see, we're dealing with space. And if you look at a bridge, you cannot ignore the spacial, rhythmic connotations, particularly when you look at cable-stay box girder bridges, and to me the most outstanding proponent of the cable-stay box girder bridge is Calatrava. I don't believe we have one of his cable-stay box girder bridges in this country. He's been in competition in Boston, which he did not get; in Frisco they got a poor imitation. They were first done I believe in Germany, after the second World War."
~~ Cecil Taylor"  

 

What helps me personally in approaching so called "free" music is recognizing the structures are not conventional in regards to my basic knowledge of song form, but there is still a form, and I can listen for what it is.  As for the Miles stuff the form is always there no matter how out the Lost Quintet stuff got, or late Trane there is always a semblance of structure.

[JSngry]

22 minutes ago, Dan Gould said:

So where does it leave the dolts who can't hear?

In a related issue, can I just stop calling anything 'free' and just go with "noise"?  Or does noise have its own rules which are there for those who can hear properly?

It leaves those dolts right there with us dolts who can hear. Hi! C'mon in and sit a spell!

As for what you call it...

 

26 minutes ago, CJ Shearn said:

What helps me personally in approaching so called "free" music is recognizing the structures are not conventional in regards to my basic knowledge of song form, but there is still a form, and I can listen for what it is.  As for the Miles stuff the form is always there no matter how out the Lost Quintet stuff got, or late Trane there is always a semblance of structure.

It's just sounds. You can put them in any order you want. You can make them into any notes or sorta notes you want to. If you know what you want to do, figure out how to do it and then do it. Just be ready to not get it exactly how you thought you had it, and if not, keep trying. And if you do get it it the way you want it and then want it different, do learn/do that. Just remember - it's nobody's responsibility how you sound and what you make but your own.

Seriously, I don't see why that notion, when put into practice, causes such friction. I mean, if you don't like listening to it, don't listen to it, and if you think that's not how it should go, make it go your own damn way, this is not complicated, really. It's not like there's an exact value for Pi, right? But WHOOPS there it is, infinity is man's best friend after all!

[CJ Shearn]

3 hours ago, JSngry said:

It leaves those dolts right there with us dolts who can hear. Hi! C'mon in and sit a spell!

As for what you call it...

 

It's just sounds. You can put them in any order you want. You can make them into any notes or sorta notes you want to. If you know what you want to do, figure out how to do it and then do it. Just be ready to not get it exactly how you thought you had it, and if not, keep trying. And if you do get it it the way you want it and then want it different, do learn/do that. Just remember - it's nobody's responsibility how you sound and what you make but your own.

Seriously, I don't see why that notion, when put into practice, causes such friction. I mean, if you don't like listening to it, don't listen to it, and if you think that's not how it should go, make it go your own damn way, this is not complicated, really. It's not like there's an exact value for Pi, right? But WHOOPS there it is, infinity is man's best friend after all!

The putting things in any order you want reminds me of what Herbie talked about about Miles making his "wrong" note, "right".

[JSngry]

My wife, god bless her, can't handle Bach. Too busy, too distracting, etc. Well...I'm getting into that Suzana Ruzikova box, and now we have, not just Bach, but Bach on harpsichord, an instrument to whose timbre she seems to have a rather severe-ish aversion, no matter what it's playing. I've played the Lurch card, Lurch for crissakes, LURCH! But I might as well be talking to a three-legged dog with twenty five ears. Nope, she just ain't hearing that, not going to try to hear that, this is something i do on my own time, and i'm perfectly happy to have that time and to do it.

It's not that I'm unsympathetic, because jesus h. kristofferson, Bach can get really, really devious sometimes, I find myself getting disoriented and/or loopzidoopled by the time that those lines get going among themselves. And harpsichord, I wasn't sure how I would take to a whole lot of, but it's the perfect instrument for Bach, at least in these hands. Piano gives people too many places and ways to hide, but with harpsichord, hey, there it is. You think it gets relentless, there it is. You think it gets looped around itself, hey, there it is, no mercy. You think it's a little water-torture-y pingy? Sorry, there it is. Bach has nothing to hide, and harpsichord allows no hiding. A perfect match.

So when she says I can't follow that, it's too busy, it loses me almost as soon as it starts, I'm like, well, ok, I'm sure that I do believe you, but that's not Bach's fault, right? It doesn't make you defective as a human, but it does show that some shit you are going to be wrong about. You and me and everybody else. Because, you know, Bach ain't wrong. If a world comes where Bach is "proven" wrong, hey, that's some kind of demon drug-devil world that eats its babies and then sodomizes them once they're digested. THAT kind of evil, Hollywood Illuminati shit that Prince warned us about. I hope that nobody I care about lives to be in that kind of world, because you know it's out there.

[Holy Ghost]

On 7/18/2011 at 7:59 PM, Shawn said:

That Thigpen disc is BRILLIANT! The shorter songs don't matter, the arrangements are amazing and Clark Terry really leaps out. A fantastic album, I just wish they had done a couple more with that same lineup.

Maybe some of the best and wildest playing I've ever heard from Burrell.

On 7/12/2011 at 7:44 AM, jazzbo said:

Inventions&Dimensions for me. I play this one not as much, but it's the most interesting.

Yeah, for me too. I don't play this one much either, but when I do, I forget how hypnotic it is. Paul and Willie Bobo especially make this record a total sonic trip for me. 

[Simon Weil]

6 hours ago, JSngry said:

that's some kind of demon drug-devil world that eats its babies and then sodomizes them once they're digested. THAT kind of evil, Hollywood Illuminati shit that Prince warned us about. I hope that nobody I care about lives to be in that kind of world, because you know it's out there.

Ginsberg's Howl is not un-akin to this.

[HutchFan]

On 4/13/2018 at 0:42 PM, Rooster_Ties said:

Not a whole lot of other albums quite like it either, that I can think of (certainly not back then).  I sure wish Herbie's "Gil Evans" phase was an album or two longer -- he really had a knack for that kind of writing.  In fact, has ANYONE ever attempted anything specifically like Herbie's smaller-group "Gil"-esque writing?  The economy/complexity of the results -- much like Gil's own economical writing - was really something special.

Rooster, I think you could make a good argument that Mwandishi and Crossings represent a extension of the "Evans-ish" musical ideas on Speak Like a Child and The Prisoner.  Of course, by the time of the Mwandishi band, Herbie had "gone electric," so the connection isn't as obvious as it might've been. But listen to a tune like "You'll Know When You Get There" off Mwandishi.  With a few changes in instrumentation, it could have easily been on Speak Like a Child or The Prisoner.

It's no coincidence that Herbie's Mwandishi band was a sextet -- more instruments for those Evans-like textures and harmonies. 

OTOH, by the time of Sextant with Patrick Gleeson's increasing role in the group, I think that Evan-ish harmony thing became less evident.  To me, that record feels very different than the two albums that preceded it.  That's where I would mark Herbie's big stylistic break -- after Crossings but before Sextant.  

Just my 2 cents.  

 

On 4/14/2018 at 2:14 PM, JSngry said:

I get the feeling that there are those who would probably like to file Herbie in the "Overrated" bin, but other than his early sponsorship of Wynton Marsalis, he has nothing to be outright ashamed of, and has more than most to be quite proud of, particularly/especially , especially as accompanist, but also as soloist, composer, and bandleader.

Overexposed, probably, but overrated, nah, that's bullshit. Not that it's been said yet, but I notice every time Herbie Hancock comes up there's a chorus of reticent sneers hanging around. It's funny.

I would never regard Herbie's music as over-rated.  As a performer, he can be frustrating -- and I think I understand what people are saying about his perfectionism. His music sometimes feels dry, as if he's holding back.  But, to this listener's ear, Herbie's music at its best -- and that's what we should always judge an artist by, right? -- is indelible, unique, transfixing. I love it.

 

Edited April 18, 2018 by HutchFan

[Guy Berger]

On 4/16/2018 at 10:29 AM, JSngry said:

Well....that band very rarely played free on standards (once Chick replaced Herbie, things opened up even further, lines got really blurred). What they did was a lot of harmonic and rhythmic extrapolations from the "home base", but when they played "tunes", the form was always there, somewhere, some how. You can do the math (to use that phrase) and link it all back up.

Also, as this book describes in detail, improvisation on the quintet's studio recordings were almost universally form-based.  So the claim that the quintet was discarding tunes on albums like MILES SMILES, SORCERER, and NEFERTITI isn't a matter of taste - it's *factually incorrect*.