I Want My MTv Cops!!!

Hi,

Continuing with the 1980s electronic music theme and with appreciation of the great stash of videos at Dailymotion, this post is about the Miami Vice TV show and the music featured in it.

So, the story I've heard about the origin of the Miami Vice TV show was that back in the mid 80s, a clever TV executive at NBC named Brandon Tartikoff came up with the idea to do a hip and cool show about cops, selling it as "MTv Cops". As you may know, it went on to become a big hit show, and aside from the look and style of it, the popular music of the times was prominently featured in it. One thing that was memorable about the style of the show was that the two stars of the show wore some slick suits and outfits, often in light and pastel colors, in line with the tropical setting of the show in Miami. I distinctly remember one day back in the 8th grade when two of my classmates both came into school wearing pastel colored suits a la Miami Vice. Not only that, one of them was Caucasian and one was African American, echoing the ethnicities of two stars of the show, Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas. It's such a hoot to think that they may have each already had clothes like that and then planned to come in together like that. So 80s!

So, but back to the music, to my mind, there are two songs in particular that are synonymous with the show and what follow are some musing about them. The first song is the shows' opening theme song by Jan Hammer, kind of an obvious choice. There might be a guitar on the recording but otherwise I think it was created entirely from synthesized sounds. The recording may in fact be the highpoint in the life of that uniquely 80s musical instrument, the keytar. The keytar is a keyboard with a strap, worn like guitar, instead of being placed on a stand, thus giving the player the mobility to move around. From looking at the second video below it looks like Jan used it in a way that sounds more like a guitar than a keyboard.

I've got two clips for this theme song, the first being the TV shows' memorable opening credits montage, and the second being the full length version of the theme song that features Jan and clips from the show. Being that I was like 12 or 13 when I first saw the show, I must also admit that part of what makes the opening credits clip so memorable is that clip that is a close up of the chest of a woman in the bikini top walking past with a bit of bounce in her step that syncs up with the tom-tom drum fill in the music. Nothing like a breast shot to catch a horny teenager's eye!!

Regarding the second song, if you watched the show, you'll probably guess that the second song I'm going to present is In The Air Tonight by Phil Collins. I'm pretty sure Phil did not write this with Miami Vice in mind, but it's use in the show set against Crockett and Tubbs driving through the streets of Miami at night as they prepare to face the bad guys is pretty iconic. I know the director Michael Mann was involved in the shows back then, so I'm guessing he may been behind these scenes because they seem very much in his style.

I also want to mention that In The Air Tonight also makes heavy use of synthesizers and was a notable recording to feature the recording studio technique of recording the drum part used gated reverb. Gated reverb was a very popular technique to record drums parts back in the 80s, and basically it means that the drums are recorded in such as way as to sound punchy when first hit but then rapidly cut off as the sound fades.

Hope you enjoy.

Opening credits for the Miami Vice TV show



Full length music video for the theme song

Miami Vice Theme - Jan Hammer
Uploaded by bebepanda. - Explore more music videos.

Clip from the show featuring In The Air Tonight



Full length music video for In The Air Tonight

Phil collins-in the air tonight
Uploaded by Docbuzz. - Watch more music videos, in HD!

Let me tell you dawg, Dailymotion has got some really great videos

Hi,

Up until today, I thought YouTube was the be all and end all when it came to music videos. It is definitely a great site to find stuff, but let me tell you, Dailymotion has got a fantastic collection as well. Dailymotion has got stuff that YouTube does not, in particular I finally found the music video for Atomic Dog by George Clinton on the site.

While watching this video again after so long, I was immediately struck at how influenced it was by the arcade video game craze back then in the 1980s, and also how much this song is an influence on the rapper Snoop Dog's early work. The thing I remember most about it was all the animation done over the actual video, which is a still a great touch and pretty funny as well.

Check it out.

George Clinton - Atomic dog
Uploaded by papafonk. - Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.

It's new to you if you don't know otherwise

Hi,

In my last post, I mentioned some music videos from the 80s that seem to knock around in my consciousness and occasionally come to the fore. In particular, I mentioned Rock It by Herbie Hancock, Miami Vice (Theme) by Jan Hammer, and Atomic Dog by George Clinton. I could only find something for Rock It. I'll keep digging around for the other two.

It's kind of odd for me to be making this post about Rock It by Herbie Hancock in the sense that I'm not particularly a fan of music from the 1980s, nor a fan of electronic music, nor a fan of jazz. So, I guess it's mostly about how creative the music video is for the song, and how the song strikes me as funky and cool. I had never even heard of Herbie Hancock until I first saw this video way back in the 1980s, but I eventually learned about his great talent and fabulous career in jazz before making this kind of a novelty hit for himself. I'm sure that at the time, an older person who already knew of and appreciated Herbie Hancock would laugh at hearing someone of my age at the time, like 10 or 11 years old, talk about this strange video with robots in it by "some guy" named Herbie Hancock.

Maybe it was a deliberate move on his part to try and reach a (most likely) younger and unacquainted crowd with this song and video than his usual audience. It is definitely a smart move in both an artistic and financial sense for an artist to try something new once in awhile to reach a different audience. It certainly worked in my case.

Here's the video, hope you enjoy it.

Herbie Hancock - Rockit
Uploaded by despiot. - Explore more music videos.

Julian Lennon, and watching music videos in the early 1980s without MTV

Hi,

So, you know by now, from looking at some of my previous posts that I'm a Beatles fan, but here's a bit of twist in that regard, a post about an offspring of a Beatle, namely Julian Lennon.

I definitely remember when Julian Lennon was a big splash in the early 1980s. I was in the 6th grade, or maybe in junior high school, and knew enough about the Beatles to see how the way Julian Lennon's look and voice and music at the time was of very reminiscent of his father. Not to be cynical but I suspect that this was a very calculating move by his record company and producers and agents and all to present him this way. This angle definitely helped him when he first came out, at least to me being a Beatles fan, but maybe it ended up hurting him in the long run, I don't know. His first album was a pretty big hit, certainly in the realm of MTV, but for various reasons, things dropped off after that in terms of the mainstream music press. He is definitely a talented musician in his own right, and still making music, but it's undoubtedly tough to be appreciated without comparisons when your dad was a Beatle.

I saw something about Julian Lennon somewhere recently and thought of this video with him, running around in the snow and the steam engine and all. I didn't really remember the song but I did remember the video, from watching it way back in the early 80s, probably on Friday Nights Videos. Isn't it interesting and funny how the mind works? That reading something about him made me think of this video? This correlation just made me think of something else - the concept of "sticky-ness" that the author Malcom Gladwell writes of in his book The Tipping Point. I guess the memory of the video is somehow stuck in my mind when the subject of Julian Lennon comes up.

So, but let me talk about watching music videos for a bit here. See, my family didn't have cable in the 80s, so without MTV, there weren't many outlets for music videos except for Friday Night Videos on NBC. I used to sleep over at my Nana's apartment on Fridays because she would let me stay up late and watch shows like Miami Vice and such. Aren't grandparents great for letting you do stuff like that??? Sadly, my Nana's passed on, but she's always right in my heart for things like that and so much more.

Other than Friday Night Videos, there was also a local UHF station in the NY area, U68, that played a lot of music videos. There was also some show on the local ABC station on like either on Saturday or Sunday afternoons that played mostly rap and hip hop music videos. Can't remember the name of that show at the moment, but it was pretty good. The two things I remember from it were Herbie Hancock's Rock It video, and less vivdly, the video for Atomic Dog by George Clinton. Those two were really offbeat, so that's probably why I remember them. Think I'll revisit them both in a forthcoming post.

Anyway, let me stop with the history, and present the Julian Lennon music video. The song is Say You're Wrong, and it is very Beatles sounding, and Julian looks very much like his dad. He's wearing some kind of hat that I think his dad wore in the early Beatles days, that looks like a Greek fisherman's cap. This song was a hit, and I actually like it better than the other bigger hit of his, Too Late For Goodbye's, from that time. Surprisingly, YouTube didn't have this video, but fortunately MySpace does. Enjoy.

Julian Lennon - Say You're Wrong (Promo Clip)

Experience the Jimi Hendrix post

Hi,

Today's post is about the great Jimi Hendrix, one of my all time favorites. I'd say that most people know of Hendrix for his innovative guitar playing and showmanship, but in addition to that, I think he was also a fantastic songwriter, arranger, and performer. Despite what others have said, I also think his singing voice was pretty cool.

My first love when it comes to popular music was probably the Beatles, or more generally their kind of pop/rock music. The Beatles and their peers, imitators, and followers, like the Monkees, were the ones that made me want to get a guitar as a teenager and try to play it. A little bit down the road, Jimi Hendrix is the one that made me actually want to learn how to actually play the guitar!

Now, of course, I can't play like him, but between his physical command of the guitar, coupled with the sounds and tones and rhythms he got from it with some help from his innovate use of effects and amplification, is nothing short on inspiring to me. Nobody before him had that mix of technique and equipment, and nobody can do it quite the same way after him. On top of that, the way he took the blues guitar style and added rock and funk to it, is just incredible too. I also should add, that the people he played with were also fantastic players, especially the drummer Mitch Mitchell, and that added to the appeal of his music.

Truth be told, what first piqued my interest in him when I was like 13 or 14, was the story of the ill-conceived and short lived pairing of Hendrix as opening act for the Monkees on their summer 1967 tour. Being a Monkees fan and still in discovery mode of music from the 1960s, my thinking was that if the Monkees were fans of Hendrix, that I might like his music too. I actually soon found out that he and Monkees were from two different worlds, but in a way, his music was a introduction of something more than just pop music for me, and I could appreciate it as well.

Anyway, I think the first time I actually heard some Hendrix was via a music video of clips of him that was compiled together for the song Voodoo Chile when Alan Douglas was in charge of Hendrix's catalog. It aired on some UHF video show in the New York area back in the 1980s. One of clips below is the actual live performance of Voodoo Child that was cut up for that music video clip. It was done for a tv audience in England in late 1968 or early 1969, and Hendrix is definitely in a playful mood.

Before that, the first clip is from the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, which was Hendrix's grand debut back in America after being a new sensation in England. I think his set their was one of his greatest performances ever. His playing was spot on and he pulled out all the stops when it came to showmanship. In this clip I found, he does a a fantastic, sped up version of the old blues song Rock Me Baby

Hope you enjoy.

Rock Me Baby




Voodoo Chile

The Wild One

Hi,

No, this post is not about Iggy Pop. As a change of pace I'm going to post something non-music related, namely an old screen test of the other "Wild One", Marlon Brando.

I love movies almost as much as I love music. The thing that gives music an edge is that it is much easier to enjoy and appreciate for me because it's scope is shorter, in the sense of a single song. I can just listen to a song and not an entire album and still feel dialed into it. The thing about movies is that for some reason I can't seem to get into a movie unless I watch it in its entirety. I can definitely appreciate a scene in the movie in and of itself, but it's just not the same.

Anyway, here's an old screen test of a young Marlon Brando, testing for a very early version of what eventually became the movie Rebel Without A Cause. Of course, Brando did not go on to star in that movie, James Dean did. I think that at this point in his life, Brando had not done any film work and was only known as a New York stage actor. Still, I think that in this clip he is already pretty much realized as the movie star he would later become. I particularly love the last part after the scene where he's talking to someone off camera - watch how he rolls his eyes when he mentions the actress Tallulah Bankhead that he was in a play with in New York - too funny! Something must have gone down between them.

The Return

Hi,

I started this blog more than a year ago when I was unemployed. After doing a few posts in the late summer of 2007, I stopped to really focus on brushing up my career skills, namely getting certified in Java programming, and getting a new position as a Java developer. Being out of work was not a fun time for the most part, but fortunately, I was successful in passing the certification exam and soon thereafter getting a position in January 2008. I have been employed since, which is not to be taken for granted given how things are in the world at present.

I've been meaning to return to this blog for sometime because I've never stopped thinking about, listening to, and playing music. It's just part of my life and it needs outlets. Other things just have a way of coming up and distracting me, but going forward I'm going to endeavor to post with more regularity. Times are tough and music has a way of soothing that. I'm going continue to do posts mostly about music, but I'm also going to post about other things here and there that I think are interesting or funny or both.

I want to mention a music blog that I follow that is pretty cool. I used to work with the guy behind it, and it most definitely had a influence on me returning to this blog. Check it out sometime 365RPM

As far as something to share with this post, I've got a link to a YouTube clip of the song The Harder They Come by Jimmy Cliff. This song was featured in a movie of the same name from the early 1970s that also starred Jimmy Cliff. I actually have the movie on DVD sitting at home from Netflix and will watch it sooner or later. This song is a gem, I just love its rhythm and the sentiment of going after what you want. The scenes in the clip are from the movie, and don't you just love those 1970s styles! More thoughtfully, it also seems like a real snapshot of life in Jamaica at that time. Hope you enjoy it too.