Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Herbie Hancock - VSOP


The album cover is so joyous. It's like a freeze frame shot of Herbie doing that thing at the end of the breakfast club:

Herbie deserved to be pumped up. This double record features some of Herbie's best ensembles of then recent time (circa 1976). This includes the Miles Davis Quintet, The Mwandishi group, and "Return of the Son of The Headhunters" (That last name is not the official name, but my own monster movie type name for the group.

So I just got this album with Elvin Jones Live at the Lighthouse and the David Murray record, which is why these recent entries are somewhat out of order. In listening to the record, I was thinking what is up with Herbie's piano? It sounds like it has a tremolo effect going on. In the liner notes he is credited as playing the Yamaha Electric Grand Piano. My wikipedia brown internet sleuthing has lead me to believe that Herbie was performing on a Yamaha CB70. I guess my biggest question is why? Wouldn't the venue (this is live at the Newport Jazz Festival, arguably the biggest Jazz Festival) have a nice acoustic Grand Piano for Herbie to use? 


But, as you can see in the above image, maybe the answer is that Herbie wanted to be able to stack all of his synths so he could have his keyboard world (What a great idea for an amusement park...)

Anyways, I definitely prefer the sound of Herbie on the Rhodes. I wish he would have had a chance to use the Rhodes more with Miles quintet (I think he uses it on "Stuff" from Miles in The Sky).

Time to relax and enjoy the music, and finish up my laundry too!


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