Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/04/19/herbie-hancocks-killer-origi.html
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Now if somebody could find a copy of that special. I’ve been looking for a copy for years and this has little to do with the Filmation series we knew but a Grafilm project animated by Floyd Norman. Grafilm as the style and not a company so like Eleanor Rigby in Yellow Submarine or Twice Upon a Time)
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Aw man, an old roommate had that on CD. I forgot how good it is. Used to groove to this whenever we needed a pick-me-up.
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If you can, pick up Mwandishi: The Complete Warner Brothers Recordings. It includes this whole album, as well as Crossings (which is my favorite stuff on the album) and Mwandishi. I’ve been listening to this album regularly for the last several decades, and it NEVER gets old.
Edit: looks like there’s an even more complete compilation from this period now: The Warner Bros. Years 1969-1972. I’m off order it momentarily…
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Herbie Hancock is a national treasure. Look at his discography, his original straight-ahead jazz LPs, his funky fusion LPs, there are a lot of classics in there. He might have as many albums in the top jazz lists as Miles.
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I could play that all day at work, but then my clients might suspect something.
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Though it was a decade or so later, I always thought of this as one of the classic music vids from the golden age, right up there w/ Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer:
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I’ve always really, really wanted to like Herbie Hancock’s music. I really do… but it’s just not my thing. I’m always left sort of feeling like I was waiting for something to happen in his songs. Like they should go somewhere.
The irony is I like electronic music and can listen for hours to techno/house/EDM songs consisting of meandering beats that lack the traditional structure of popular music.
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Huh. Well, do you like jazz at all? I don’t expect anyone who doesn’t like jazz to like a jazz musician. I’m curious which albums you’ve listened to. I think Sextant and Headhunters are among his best in the funky fusion genre, with Sextant being my personal favorite of his entire catalog-- very dark and trippy, and it’s been sampled a bunch too.
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Headhunters blew my mind the first time I heard it so seconded. I will have to hunt down a copy of Sextant.
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Bill Laswell remix work. Groundbreaking.
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He has soooo many different styles, from classic jazz to funk to rock. Some are really great and some are boring. When I saw him live it was exactly the same - a real mixed bag. He’s not afraid of making bad music while exploring ideas. Leads to some great work if you pick through.
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That was ace.
I like!
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Right now I hate the internet. Is it so much to ask for there to be a simple list of the Fat Albert characters, name and image together? A large image, with the names easily readable. It should take like 4 seconds to bring this up. I hate the internet.
Was just going to make the same recommendation, although Mwandishi is my favorite (particularly “Wandering Spirit Song”).
Weird how the new collection The Warner Bros. Years 1969-1972 is “Amazon’s Choice” for “The Warner Bros. Years 1969-1972.”
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Rockit was so inspirational. Yes, the music was unlike anything ever. But the video was a vision of maker-space to come, creatives and techies collaborating on something almost indistinguishable from magic. Oh, and the video editing was ahead of its time. Imagine doing that before nonlinear editing systems. I think that was around the time that “jog/shuttle” dials were becoming a thing on pro video, with all the lag of physically moving heads and tape around.
If I ever get around to making an art car, the visible means of propulsion will have to be robotic pants.
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The names are blurry but legible mostly:
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The song is still one of my favourites, it just hit me when it came out. Hancock is, well, Hancock!
I also was amazed by the video back then. But then I learned that what seemed to be a clever device to contribute to the robotic, virtual feel of it all was, at the end of the day, something rotten.
“The video features lots of animated mannequins, and was very popular on MTV, winning five video music awards in 1984: Best Art Direction, Best Concept, Best Editing, Best Special Effects, and Most Experimental Video. Along with Michael Jackson and Prince, Hancock was one of the first black artists to get significant airplay on MTV, but he barely appears in the video (he is shown briefly in one of the television sets), which was by design. The video was directed by Kevin Godley and Lol Creme, who also make the Police video for “Every Breath You Take.” Their directive was to get Hancock played on MTV, a daunting task considering the network’s reluctance to play black artists. Keeping the artist out of the video was a way to take the race factor out of it, and it worked.”
Source
I remember reading an interview with the directors years ago. Their brief for the Rockit video basically was “don’t show so much of the black guy”, to put it in a way that prevents the 
from showing up.
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I found that one…it was close, but no cigar. See what I mean? It should not be this difficult!!!
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