Tag Archives: herbie hancock

MTH-V: Herbie’s “Actual Proof”

The weekly video series/curation is back again after a lengthy hiatus. And back with a bang.

This is the first time I’ve explicitly featured Herbie Hancock in this series, though he’s come up on occasion (you can see him with Michael Brecker here). Below is one of my favorite songs of his, “Actual Proof,” which was originally released on 1974’s Thrust. (It’s my favorite of the Headhunters albums.) Herbie has long been one of my all-time favorite musicians. Even though he’ll be 73 next month, he remains one of the most forward-thinking figures in music of any genre, and he’s always progressing and experimenting. Attempting a brief career overview here is silly, but suffice it to say he’s just about done it all. From his groundbreaking early work with Miles (both acoustic and electric), to his various funk explorations, to crossover success with “Rockit” and later a Grammy for Album of the Year for a wonderfully original Joni Mitchell tribute, to his exploring the ends of both jazz and pop music, he’s a force to be reckoned with. (And to top it off, he seems to be a sweetheart by all accounts.) I have about twenty of his solo albums – which barely scratches the surface! – as well as just about everything he did with Miles. It’s such an eclectic collection, as just about everything he does is great. I’ve seen him in concert four times (five if you count an interview in which he played a couple tunes), and he blew me away each time in a different capacity. (One performance included a 55-minute “Dauphin Dance” that was from another planet…)

The band in the below video is a slightly amended version of his Headhunter’s ’05 band that was assembled for his featured set at Bonnaroo 2005. (I attended Bonnaroo ’05, and the Headhunters set remains one of the best shows I’ve ever seen of any style.) This particular lineup played later that year, with this performance taking place in Tokyo. The personnel features many powerhouses – most of which are well-known bandleaders in their own right:

Herbie Hancock – piano
Terri Lyne Carrington – drums
Roy Hargrove – trumpet
Munyungo Jackson – percussion
Lionel Loueke – guitar
Marcus Miller – bass
Wah Wah Watson – guitar

(Simply trade John Mayer for Watson and add Kenny Garrett and you have the lineup I saw at Bonnaroo…)

This is a great rendition of Herbie classic. Hancock, Hargrove, and Loueke all get some solo space, and the unparalleled rhythm section of Carrington/Miller/Jackson/Watson holds the groove down while weaving in and out of various feels. Just ignore Hargrove’s early entrance on the head. 🙂

Style & Canon

Style is much larger than a happy mix of canon and jargon. In fact, it can be downright incendiary.


(Photography by Jillian Hakala)

The week before last, my partner Matt Borghi and I – together known as Teag & PK – had a couple local radio spots. The first was a part of 89.7’s Coffee Break and featured a brief interview, during which we were asked the dreaded question: what type of music do you play? We offered a lengthier-than-necessary non-answer (telling the host what styles we don’t play as opposed to those we do), hopefully hiding our annoyance – not with the host, but with the question. We abhor discussing it. As I touched upon in this post, our collaboration features many different musical avenues: one night we’ll feature electronic ambience and improvisation, the next it’ll be completely acoustic and Matt will improvise vocal blues a la Son House (and well, might I add). Simply saying “folk” does more to exclude a large chunk of what we do than cast a wide net. We’re not bluesy enough for the blues-ers, not folky enough for the folkies, and not jazz enough for the jazzers. Instead we are what we are and quite happy with that. (Although it does present an ongoing PR problem.)

I mention this because “style” in general has been a personal nuisance for many years. A label, on paper, may just be a single word – folk – or handful of words (post-hardcore [huh?]), but in context it presents a multitude of problems. If something is “folk,” then what kind? Appalachian? Woody Guthrie? Hungarian? Ani DiFranco? If none of those, does the label then somehow do a disservice to those disparate forbears? If it’s completely different, why use the label at all? Simply because it’s acoustic and not on commercial radio?

A few weeks ago I finally watched Jazz In The Present Tense: Icons Among Us, the 2009 documentary that “answered” (to put it lightly) Ken Burns‘s Jazz. Now, I know that people love to complain about the Ken Burns behemoth, and I’ll be the first to jump all over it. After all, it spent ~19 hours exhaustively discussing everything jazz from 19th-century roots music through hard bop, but then gave ~45 minutes of lip service to the 1960s avant-garde and highlighting Young Lions of whom Wynton Marsalis approves. Cute. But for all its sins, Burns admittedly did a lot of good – the archival material alone is worth the time and money. And it does a wonderful job of presenting jazz and its beginnings as a product of African American culture, and (rightly) how the music fits into the context of US race relations. However, perhaps the biggest fault (or virtue, depending on your viewpoint) is that the whole documentary is based upon a particular canonical view of jazz and its stylistic definition. It really is pretty solid for the first 5 or 6 episodes, but becomes exponentially narrower as the series progresses. It goes from being all-inclusive  to a museum exhibit, allowing access only to those musicians (curators) who once associated with those now-or-soon-to-be-dead icons. (Wynton played with Art Blakey and therefore is the designated torch-bearer, right?) As one of my favorite professors in graduate school said, “Classical music is now mainly an amusement park for old people.” (This coming from a harpsichordist.)

Enter Jazz In The Present Tense. While the documentary of course features many contemporary musicians from the broader jazz spectrum, it’s thesis has to do with the word “jazz” itself. Whereas Burns (and Wynton, or rather Wynton via Burns) stated This is jazz, JITP asks What is jazz today?. The answers come from all sides – Terence Blanchard, John Medeski, Bill Frisell, Wynton Marsalis, Nicholas Payton, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Robert Glasper (his newly-released Black Radio is getting much press), Donald Harrison Jr., Marco Benevento, and more – and it’s quickly evident that these disagreements aren’t  slight. For example, Harrison’s obsession with both hard bop and his association with Art Blakey would even make Wynton blush. The divide between the more traditional jazz-is-anything-up-through-hard-bop and jazz-needs-to-keep-changing-to-stay-alive camps is quite evident. The filmmakers also take some time to focus on the word jazz‘s parallel in rock: jam band. I was very refreshed to see that, as “jam band” is more of a bad word than anything according to many musicians. After the Grateful Dead, most bands who featured improvisation wanted to be called anything but a jam band, a problem that continues to this day. Of course, Herbie was the one to perhaps best state the problem, saying, “The term jazz, in a sense perhaps, is its own worst enemy.” Herbie, one of the last remaining living legends – literally – is still light years beyond not only many of his peers but also the younger generations, both artistically and intellectually. (One of the many reasons I hold him on such a pedestal.)

[Side note: I couldn’t help but literally laugh out loud when Nicholas Payton appeared on my television as the first interviewee, spouting his nonsense. For those at least peripherally aware of online jazz “debates,” he’s heated up the blogosphere the last few months with self-righteous, incoherent rants, stating that jazz is now dead and that we should call what we think of as jazz “Black American Music” instead. Payton’s new term isn’t the problem – it’s his schizophrenic non-explanations of it. He does make compelling points now and again in his various blog entries, but the ongoing argument as a whole is…something. NPR’s perennially-disappointing A Blog Supreme has given Payton’s tripe far more attention than it’s due. If you’ve seen #BAM on Twitter, that’s probably why…]

Of course, this isn’t a film review. My viewing the documentary, coupled with the recent radio spot, are simply two instances out of countless similar experiences I’ve had. But the whole dilemma of style isn’t just an matter of definition, but one of context, as it’s reliant on many factors. One such factor is canon. Every style has its major works that serve as hallmarks. However, once you scratch the surface, you become aware of just how deep the rabbit hole can go, as not everyone will agree on everything. As with the two jazz documentaries, Burns was comfy with most styles through Hard Bop (except for Cool/West Coast), and Icons found almost no consensus on anything.

The classical canon, and expectations of students’ familiarity with it, has stuck in my craw for many years. Going to college and graduate school for (mostly) classical performance is interesting for a saxophonist, considering the instrument is only ~165 years old. Consequently the instrument’s repertoire is only a fraction of the size of the flute’s, violin’s, or piano’s. This causes two issues: 1) saxophonists, unlike most other classically-oriented instruments, are immersed in contemporary music, but 2) this also causes a deficit in performing and knowing older (Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, early Romantic) literature. While most classical saxophonists probably couldn’t pick out the second movement of one of Beethoven’s string quartets, we also can pick out and understand the sequenzas of Luciano Berio better than most other classical musicians. Does that mean that classical saxophonists are somehow “less than”? No, it’s just a different animal. Speaking for myself, I have an interest in many of the older/other styles and genres, specifically Renaissance and Baroque music and Wagner. (The latter goes deep.) And my personal (not just academic) interest in orchestral music has really deepened these last couple years. But of course home base, classically speaking, is still contemporary music. (To reference another recent internet meme, I’ve been correcting a musical blind spot. With much enthusiasm.)

I definitely agree that in order to learn a particular style of music (be it a broad category such as classical or jazz, or perhaps narrower like heavy metal), one should be intimately familiar with both the style’s history and the details of its evolution and various iterations. But I don’t believe that it ends there. Not at all. Those who’ve forged ahead to create something new – large or small – have almost always included some sort of outside source or influence. Besides, regarding the above jazz discussion, the biggest argument against the jazz-must-continually-evolve-and-include-outside-styles crowd is that it overlooks or even disregards earlier styles. Following that logic, however, why is it that pre-Hard Bop purists are allowed to do the same for later styles without similar condemnation?

As regular readers know, I’m equal parts classical, jazz, and pop. (Only in that order for alphabetical reasons.) I cringe each time I write, say, or type “classical and jazz saxophonist,” or anything else to that effect. Honestly, I just consider myself, plainly, a “saxophonist” or “musician.” And frankly, at the end of the day, the only canon I’m really concerned with is my own – the canon that has shaped me. As a musician, I’ve worked for years on developing my own personal style and aesthetic. Much work indeed remains to be done, and I’ll arguably never be complete. If someone were to assemble the canon of Michael Teager’s musical education, there would of course be saxophonic references – Coltrane, Liebman, John Harle, James Carter, etc. – throughout, but it would also include the music of the Top 5, Elton John, Richard Wagner, nineties rock, and ECM, just to name a few. Yes, I know A Love Supreme forwards and backwards. (And rightly place it above most other works of art, where it belongs.) But I’m just as familiar with CrashMellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, and Aenima (to focus on ’95-’96). And they’re just as important to the musician I am and continue to become as any other “major work.” I discussed this latter point slightly over a year ago here.

It’s not that I think standard repertoire need be diminished or negated, but room must also be made on the pedestal for other, more individualized preferences. In fact, such personalization should be encouraged. While younger generations are becoming more open-minded, it seems that the old guard, especially in classical music, jazz, and other academically-associated musics, remain set in their ways. Slowly but surely, the boundaries are eroding.

This topic has many tributaries, and if I go any further you’ll need breadcrumbs to find your way back. But it does tie together. Style – jazz, classical, folk, blues, rock, etc. – is more than just a word, like it or not. It implicitly suggests and entire tradition and repertoire. Even slight deviations from a stated style can jar the listener, promoter, booker, and/or critic, taking me back to the introductory anecdote about Teag & PK‘s “style.” What do Matt and I call our project? Does it matter? It seems to be in our interest to avoid  such categorizations, or simply make one up just to end the discussion. Common problems we’ve encountered are:
• We’re not “folk” because of the sax (and occasional electronics)
• We’re not “jazz” because of all the verse-chorus songs
• We’re not “blues” because it’s too folky
• We’re not “rock” because it’s guitar and sax
• We’re not “indie” because…we’re not hipsters? 🙂 (We still haven’t figured that one out.)
• Those ambient improvisations? What the hell are those?!?

And to top it off, we really don’t care what it’s called. We’ve considered calling it “acid folk” – not to be confused with “psych folk” – just to have something consistent. And it doesn’t offend any purists we may encounter along the way. When Matt’s canon – ambient, rock, Flight of the Conchords, and blues that Alan Lomax would approve of – meets mine the result is something beyond either of us. It’s also beyond simply picking one style and sticking to it.

The result is what matters. Not what we call it.

Grammys 2012: My $0.02

For me, the Grammys largely come and go most years without much notice. I occasionally have some small emotional stake in one or two awards. This year I was pleased to see Bon Iver (praised here) not only nominated but win, and I was pleased that they refused to perform. I don’t often watch the show. It’s not out of protest or an attempt to be some sort of hipster; I’m more curious in the outcome than the fanfare, presentations, and most performances. And yes, I’m well aware that the Grammys are more of a corporate than artistic affair. (That’s part of what made Herbie‘s well-deserved 2008 Album of the Year win so exciting.)

Yadda, yadda, yadda.

This year I actually had Sunday evening free and decided I’d watch the awards show. You know, give it a chance. (After all, I was hoping for some Bon Iver success, and I was quite looking forward to the Beach Boys‘ reunion performance.) That lasted about 30-40 minutes, or however long it took for Chris Brown‘s sad display to end, before I shut it off. Bruce was Bruce (and wasn’t helped by the awkward camera work), and the derivative Bruno Mars set lost my interest after a minute or two. (I love James Brown’s music, especially when it’s James Brown doing James Brown. [Un]fortunately [for Bruno Mars], it’s more than wardrobe and staging.)

Then good ol’ Chris. Not only was I offended when I first saw it (having looked up from my laptop, as I was also following the Greek debacle), but my irritation has grown as the week’s progressed. His performance, as I’m sure you know by now, sparked controversy across all media, but not for artistic reasons. Everyone’s been in a furor over 1) the Grammys allowing him to perform after his pre-Grammy domestic violence a few years ago, and 2) various reactions to those reactions, etc., especially via the all-powerful Twitter (granting gravitas to dumb 14 year olds everywhere). Yes, domestic violence is awful, and should not be either taken lightly or even forgiven. But here I’m coming from a strictly artistic point of view – music only, personal history aside. People who have done far worse have received infinitely much more praise throughout the years, and it’s often necessary to separate the music from the (wo)man. As someone with a deep, deep love of the music of both Miles Davis and Richard Wagner, I know this all too well. As high as a mantle as I may place the appropriately-named Prince of Darkness, I know and discuss his many shortcomings. It would’ve been amazing to have been his employee and band member, but not so much his friend or acquaintance. Forget Brown, Miles could have given a masterclass in misogyny and domestic violence. (Let’s not forget that he also enjoyed boxing). And of course there was his legendary drug addiction. Yet he recently received his own US stamp…

Often, an artist is quite complicated, and while a person’s life can and does inform their art, the art can – though understandably not always – also be judged separately from the (cult of) personality. Sure, different strokes for different folks – what some can compartmentalize others cannot. It can be as severe as Miles, or as subjective (for me) as Ted Nugent. 🙂

Anyway, back to Mr. Brown. Aside from his absurd staging, which resembled more of a realized Q*bert fantasy than anything else, his lip-syncing was atrocious. Not that he was lip-syncing, but that he was doing so poorly. Unless, of course, he wanted onlookers to believe he could circular breathe while doing so. Add to that the fact that he was lip-syncing something that was severely auto-tuned and you’ve got a recipe for something really special. I watched it as one would watch a train-wreck, and then to my astonishment the crowd (largely of music industry types) went wild. Hm. A man lip-syncs vocal effects in front of thousands of musicians and is adored. Corporate or not, that’s something to behold.

This whole last week, Adam Carolla has been saying about Brown on his podcast that, “We’ve constructed a society in which you can be forgiven for anything as long as you can dance.” While he was saying that in context of Brown’s domestic violence and Jacko’s many controversies, his point could just as well be applied to Brown’s performance itself (and many other pop acts). As with most things, Ace was on-point.

I simply waited until Monday to catch the Beach Boys performance on the internet, and I must say I watched it probably twenty times. What a joy. Unfortunately, most reviews referenced or centered around their age and appearance, but let’s not forget that they’re celebrating their 50th anniversary. (That generally means old.) Sure, some of the harmonies could have been a little cleaner, but overall they sounded quite good for all being near 70. And in context, they outdid the preceding lackluster cover performances by Maroon 5 and Foster the People. (Case in point, when Adam Levine and that other guy joined them for the end of “Good Vibrations,” Levine made no effort to actually sing into the microphone. Was he afraid the judge wouldn’t turn his/her throne around?) Yes, the Beach Boys are old, and Brian Wilson often looked near death. However, given everything they’ve been through – professionally, emotionally, physically, mentally, and psychopharmacologically – it’s amazing those survivors did anything at all. (Just skim their lineup history for a taste of the drama.) And Brian Wilson actually looked to be having a ball at times.

As surprised as I was to hear so much discussion of Chris Brown after the Grammys, I was equally surprised – and disappointed – at the lack of Beach Boys discussion. While I didn’t expect them to receive undying praise from all media outlets, it seems as if their performance was largely unnoticed. Perhaps I’m cynical, but maybe there are just too many left alive to care. I mean, The Beach Boys are one of the biggest rock/pop acts in American music, and Brian Wilson is consequently considered one of the great American pop songwriters. The Beach Boys also allowed the US to give England & the Beatles a run for their money in the 1960s. I’m sure part of it is their heavy association with a particular geographical area (i.e., the tropical coast), and the fact that their enduring career provided a decent amount of cheese, possibly diluting the more substantial material. (I can’t be the only one my age who remembers endlessly hearing “Kokomo” at the roller-rink in elementary school.)

[This of course touches on a whole other area worthy of much discussion – longevity and surpassing one’s prime – distilled in this clip from High Fidelity (a GREAT movie for pop music snobbery — one of my favorites, and one I often reference in this blog) – simply substitute The Beach Boys for Stevie Wonder.]

Although Brian Wilson (and the rest of his bandmates) have enjoyed wildly different post-1960s careers than those of McCartney, Lennon, et. al., and even the Grateful Dead, the fact remains that they belonged to bands that laid the groundwork for much of what took place the subsequent 4+ decades. I saw a (skeletal) Beach Boys performance around 2003 – Mike Love had licensed the name for touring with bandmate Bruce Johnston and a backing band that I think comprised most of the Grammy backing band – and it quite fun. Similarly, and more profoundly, when I saw the original Black Sabbath in 2004 & 2005 and The Dead in 2010, I knew that I was seeing a genuine piece of rock history. Also in those cases, the old original members blew away their younger competition.

Going back to the aforementioned Grammy performances, The Beach Boys actually sang (!!!) those trademark tight vocal harmonies and ended up a footnote, whereas Chris Brown pretended to sing auto-tune and walked away with much of the press’s attention (thanks also to his tremendous hubris).

And jazz and classical musicians are sad to be largely excluded from this circus…? Blech.

MTH-V: Michael Brecker

This past Friday (01.13) marked the fifth anniversary of Michael Brecker‘s death. His music and musicianship definitely touches me still. Not only was he one of the tenor saxophone’s greatest technicians, but he played with a deep intensity and emotional to match.

Of the many reasons to love Michael’s playing and ethic, one that particularly stands out to me is his stylistic versatility, having attained a great degree of commercial success in pop music while maintaining a career as a heavy, widely-respected jazz musician. His funk and fusion work with his brother Randy in the Brecker Brothers is of course widely known to most musicians, but his work with James Taylor, Joni Mitchell (if you aren’t familiar with Shadows and Light, go buy it right now), and Paul Simon exposed his name and playing to a much wider audience. (His solo on James Taylor’s “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight” is classic.) And then of course his more straight ahead and avant-garde jazz roots shone brightly in his solo work and that with his longtime collaborators in Saxophone Summit. (His playing was evidence of his deep love for Coltrane’s late period. In fact, it made his passing the day after Alice Coltrane‘s death that much more eerie.)

While there are hundreds of videos I could choose from, I’ve chosen only a few. This first video is from a Vienna performance of Herbie’s “The Sorcerer” with Herbie Hancock, Roy Hargrove, bassist George Mraz, and drummer Willie Jones III. I saw Michael Brecker live with a variation of this band (with bassist Scott Colley and the always intense Terri Lyne Carrington on drums) a couple months before his disease was made public. Brecker was quite pale, and, though he spent much of the night sitting on a stool or offstage when not playing, he absolutely destroyed Detroit’s Orchestra Hall. Enjoy Herbie ripping it up at the top; Brecker’s solo starts at 3:55.

Just when you thought Brecker had no need for improvements, here’s an excerpt of a 1996 interview with Jazz’s web documentarian Bret Primack:

And what post remembering Michael would be complete with Brecker Brothers’ “Some Skunk Funk”? (With Mike Stern, drummer Dennis Chambers [whom you should recognize from the Stern/Berg post], bassist James Genus, and keyboardist George Whitty.) This is BURNIN’!

Herbie Quote

I ran across this the other day, and it really struck a chord:

“I don’t mind being classified as a jazz artist, but I do mind being restricted to being a jazz artist. My foundation has been in jazz, though I didn’t really start out that way. I started in classical music, but my formative years were in jazz, and it makes a great foundation.”