“Peace and Love” as my friend Ara says… (hit play)

This is a pretty killer recording of Jaco Pastorious sitting in with Herbie Hancock quintet in 1977 at the Ivanhoe Theatre in New York. At first I thought I’d just play a couple of my favorite songs but I thought that wouldn’t be fair for the folks who haven’t heard it before, as this is rare but not “that” rare… Instead I staggered the order as Track 2 and particularly track 3 – It Remains to Be Seen, are some of my favorites. In typical fashion this track came on my ipod on the way home tonight from the shop and it just cranks, so here I am playing it — no rhyme or reason I suppose (smile).

Also — and this is important — now, here I was, thinking I was something special with some of these rare tracks. But as I was looking online for both the playlist and some art for this bootleg (or “import” as they were once called), out of the wood work I found some blogs way older than this one, including **holy gold mine** – very cool, make sure you click that link. In this single post there are 44 great bootlegs — many of which I don’t even own. And look at the lineup, Roy Ayers (trust me – there is some Roy Ayers coming) and a gazillion others… It’s so good that I added his blog to the blog roll on the right and it will take be days to get through it all, and to even get a good beginning…

Here is some art from this blog & this post. There is something about the covers of early 70s recordings, again just keepin it real…

The Spook Who Sat By the Door was a Blaxploitation era movie that Herbie Hancock did the soundtrack for. The theme song eventually became the song “Actual Proof” on Thrust. Look for more posts about this album and ‘the spook’ soundtrack coming up some time…

I’m not one for most metal (except I like some artists, and dug “grunge” in the early 90′s) but I definitely 100% respect Black Sabbath and like quite a few songs off their 1970 quadruple-platinum album Paranoid. I also figure a lot of 20 year olds probably have no idea who “Ozzie” is other than that MTV show when they were 14 called The Osborns with some crazy dude who can’t talk. Ozzie was the lead singer of Black Sabbath before he got sacked from the band for heavy drug use, which is why he’s so physically messed up today.

In funky jazz music there were plenty of early pioneers just as there probably are with metal. But if there were one band I’d say is the “Black Sabbath” of jazz music, I’d say it’s Mahavishnu Orchestra.

Click play to start listening:

The first two are my favorites off Inner Mounting Flame.

The rest of the songs are the actual Black Sabbath songs of Paranoid, you might as well listen to them too as they rock also… This is the complete album, in order…

Mahavishnu was the first major group out of the “Miles Davis alumni” who went on to become the jazz & funk pioneers that are so heavily covered on this blog. The 1971 Inner Mounting Flame (the songs you’re listening to) was one of the first jazz funk albums that became “popular” without Miles’ name on it, and was more “listenable” than the avante-garde (downfall of) bebop & jazz music of the late 60′s, including Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew, the first major jazz-funk album.

I forget when or where it was, but at some point I heard a recording of Herbie Hancock saying ‘there is something about Mahavishnu” that led to his involvement that is the source of the existence of this blog, for example, and how a guy like me who wasn’t even born until 1978 is still fascinated with this stuff that happened 35 years ago…

Mahavishu was a little a-traditional in their lineup as well. They had an electric violin player of all instruments, a French guy named Jean-Luc Ponty, as a leader in their small group. Some people like this, some don’t. To some the violin is a smooth, romantic song, and to some it’s piecing. Mahavishnu also extensively used the Fender Rhodes as well.

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So I thought I’d give some ode to the “Black Sabbath” of Jazz-funk, and a little Black Sabbath too while we’re at it… Enjoy the tunes…

Good reads/relevant:
http://www.liraproductions.com/jazzrock/htdocs/histhome.htm
And all the wikipedia links in this post…

The analog is rooted in the old school. An old gauge that sweeps and might not be 100% right but is probably pretty close. A mechanical device, of or pertaining to a mechanism that represents data by measurement of a continuous physical variable, as voltage or pressure.

The famous analog keyboards that make up a crux of the tunes on this site:

Hammond Organ – B3 & variants – “The Hammond” or anything mentioning “B3″
The Wurlitzer Electric Jazz Piano (what Ray Charles played) – “The Wurlitzer”
The Fender Rhodes Electric Jazz Piano (what Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea played) – “The Rhodes”
The Hohnet Clavinet – “The Clav” or “The Clavinet” – Funky!

and a few others but these take the cake though…

A good honorable mention is the Moog, the first electric synthesizer which was also analog…

Now, some samples (click play to listen):

- Bill Withers, Use Me Up. Exclusively using the clav…

- The Disco Track 9 is a song off the Boogie Nights soundtrack affectionately known as “track 9.” The main instrument is the clavinet once it gets into the breakdown. Sorry, this is a long, very repetitive song but good stuff… The echo-ey “Riders on the Storm” sounding instrument is the Rhodes piano as well.

- Soulive, Uncle Junior. This is a good Hammond Organ-heavy song… There are only three guys playing; the organ player is also playing the bass.

- Chick Corea, Fickle Funk. A good Fender Rhodes-heavy song by Chick Corea…

- Beastie Boys, Namaste – Good example of the Wurlitzer in action…

– Hugo Montenegro and His Orchestra – Moog Power.mp3

- And finally, a song that ties them all together… Chameleon by Herbie Hancock & The Headhunters. It was common practice to have some or all of them and play them all. Sometimes 2 at a time, one hand on each such as Herbie Hancock does. If you listen carefully, you can catch them all in there. Anything really really “scratchy” or echo-ie like the sound of a rubber band is the Moog. The solo at about 8 minutes in is him on the Rhodes. It is really hard to pick them all out, so fear not…

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Now some video:

Here’s a Wurlitzer demo some dude made off youtube:
( You’ll notice some similarities between it and the Rhodes as well… )

And here is a youtube video of a Rhodes in action. He’s just showing off a pedal there but it doesn’t change much (an effect he’s messing with called “vibrato”).

And finally, here is a live version of Herbie Hancock playing Chamelon Live in 1974. I found a bunch of copies on YouTube but never found a full length one. I uploaded this full length version that used to be on YouTube (so I was wondering where it went) but they shot it down because it’s too long (about 14 mintues) so I uploaded it to Vimeo.

When I first saw this, it blew my mind… Enjoy…

Herbie Hancock – Chameleon Live 1974 from Andre Shoumatoff on Vimeo.