HANG UP YOUR HANG UPS

Twisting my Watermelon Man

So it’s 2016 and some mad keen Fall fan (there are no other sort of Fall fans) is embarking on launching a free online fanzine and calling it #Fret, a title borne from an amalgamation of his tendency to overthink and worry about absolutely everything & anything and a fret board (which is obviously a part of a guitar neck, but not to be confused with a fingerboard). Genius wordplay, uh!? Or something like that anyway.

Knowing of my long-time on/off connections with The Fall and my hard-worn (and occasionally volatile) friendship with their leader and front-man Mark E. Smith, he approached me with an idea for an article in the form of a challenge: Write an overview of an artist renowned for their longevity and often unappreciated prolific output. Wax lyrical about their extensive back catalogue and the influence that they have had over their peers. Pick out a few career highs and lows and possibly include a few personal anecdotes to your potted biography, discography and appraisal. There’s no upper or lower word limit, because this is an online resource, not a hard copy print version requiring reams of paper. But if you could submit your final draft in approximately eight weeks time, to coincide with my targeted launch date, I would be most grateful.

I knew exactly who he wanted me to write about (not a funking chance pal!), given his fanboy tendencies towards the Fall. But his assumption that my piece would be about my barmy mate from Sedgeley Park, was way off the mark (pun intended). Instead, the next day (never mind striving to meet the eight week deadline), I forwarded him my personal appraisal of Herbie Hancock, which I have reproduced below for your perusal.

Sadly #Fret never got off the ground, so this by now quite dated overview of Mwandishi (a word meaning composer, which is Hancock’s nickname), has sat gathering dust on the hard drive of my old laptop for nine whole years now, so having rediscovered it while deleting a lot of flotsam and jetsam, I thought it might be interesting to see if this snapshot from my past, might garner any interest via the conduit of my new internet fad of the moment, which is this Substack variant of my slowly (but surely) recovering blog.

Discounting all of the re-issues of previously released material, to the best of my somewhat limited knowledge, Herbie Hancock's extensive discography consists of a weighty forty-one studio albums, twelve live albums, sixty-two compilation albums, five soundtrack albums, thirty-eight singles, nine promo-only singles and four separate songs that charted when they were exclusively released in a downloadable format.

At last count (circa. Aprl 2016) I've also managed to source another one-hundred and fifty-one albums that Hancock has appeared on either in a guest capacity role, as a sideman, a co-collaborator, a backing musician or co-composer, or been involved with the production side of things.

Always light years ahead of his time, innovative, inspirational, multi-genre defining (and re-defining) and broad church encompassing enough to embrace all manner of influences to supplement his unique and often otherworldly creations (and joint collaborations), the Illinois, Chicago born musician also redefines the very word prolific.

Whereas many other artists churn out a large quantity of material that may well maintain some kind of continuity and a certain level of inertia, but doesn't necessarily always retain any level of consistency in terms of top end quality; to date, I've yet to hear a single release by Hancock that you could level the allegation at of it merely being an example of going through the motions, or that could fall into that all too common trapping of rushing out any old crap by way of a deadline busting contractual obligation. 'Tis all killer and no filler... to coin a phrase.

During the 1960's alone, the in demand musician was drafted in to contribute any number of his multitude of talents to no less than seventy different album projects, whereby he augmented the output of an impressive roll-call of fellow artists and musicians.

Exploring the nether edges beyond the accepted boundaries and the confines and limitations of even the most experimental of free-form jazz, whilst pinpointing precisely where such hitherto unrecognised parameters actually once existed out-with the scope of all but the wide open of minds in the first place, with no territory whatsoever considered to be too far off of the beaten track to be considered out of bounds, off limits, too obscure, too broodingly dark, or by the same but completely reversed token overtly exposed to even the most incandescently blinding limelight of rampant commercialism and accessibility.

Hancock isn't so much a virtuoso musician and composer (though he obviously fits handsomely into either jacket associated with the connotations of both) he could more accurately be championed as an alchemist of sound.

In creating his own menu with composite elements of tonal fusion, while adding a juxtaposed plethora of ingredients from a vast range of influences and mixing it all together into a magical trance-like sound recipe concoction, Hancock encompasses a structured yet fragmented beautiful chaos that reverberates, ricochets and refracts at hitherto unexplored tangents and obtuse angles around the fleshy parts of your inner ear, while massaging the soundscape (sound scope, even) of your auditory perception and cognition, on a multi-faceted and layered rhythmic thrill ride.

And in doing he transports the captivated listener on a journey to an other-worldly level of higher conscientious, representing a discovery of an uncharted listening booth chamber in the recesses and previously unused void and vacant spaces of your cranium... and possibly even your heart and soul.

The gentle pummeling of your senses and coaxing of your third ear (it's in there somewhere, if only you believe in it... honestly!), can easily cause you to feel dizzy and giddy all at once, while throwing you completely off-balance, but not in an unpleasant way. As the most random threads Hancock has weaved into his creations begin to make sense and bring about the realisation that what initially seemed to be a mish-mash of a fragmented mess, is in truth the actual cerebrospinal fluid of the whole piece and the cord that just about gels this aural scatter-gun of pleasure (that you can scarcely measure), together.

And then other times, he just makes bloody good pop music, borne out of the rudimentary elements of simplicity itself. And that ain't no crime... take the evidence presented on the 'Future Shock' album as the the actual, factual proof and clarification that backs up such a statement.

The outstanding Miles Davis album 'Bitches Brew' that featured Hancock among its impressive rota of band members, opened new doors that led me in an inquisitive manner towards a whole new range of sounds and possibilities, while Hancock's own 'Head Hunters' album changed the way that I will actually ever listen to music again forever and for the better.

It is no exaggeration to say that when this particular album took hold and firmly grasped my undivided attention, a whole broad spectrum of new sounds instantly began to make sense and as such, the realisation was akin to a life-affirming eureka moment.

As one might say: 'succumb to the beat surrender', to jam in a well trodden musical reference point... or even 'listen without prejudice' to wham in another.

'Head Hunters' doesn't merely sit there on the shelf, gathering dust and waiting for you to check it out, while gleefully discovering the euphoria of it's significance, standing and pole positioning in the race to find the source and meaning of sound as a cosmic driving force and energy in itself. No, it will find you instead, because you needed your head-hunting, in lieu of the fact that you've been looking in all of the wrong places for your own musical salvation and raison d'etre for far too long... and I suspect that quest had more than likely taken you forever to get nowhere near ever even contemplating completion.

Hammering square pegs into round holes and trying to convince yourself that they fit is no longer an option, nor requirement, once you've abandoned yourself to the funk-tinged grooves of this majestic masterpiece of an album. All of a sudden a whole lot of truth outside the tunnel visionesque range of your previously perceived notions of what really matters in this crazy old funked up world (and more to the point what actually doesn't) will become crystal clear.

And the beauty of it all is that you can choose for yourself at just what level and depth of understanding you want to paddle into as you emerge (and submerge) into the multifarious sized pools of learning that are available to you, from the first time you free yourself of all pre-conceptions and allow yourself to explore all of the multiple juxtapositions of tonal variations therein.

The imbibed wisdom I found is empowering, yet calming and massively reassuring all at the same time.

You never quite know what you're going to get next with each and every new Hancock release, or which direction(s) he is likely to be heading off in. There have even been occasions when the next shift has been nothing less than seismic and maybe even a little puzzling initially upon the first listen.

But one thing is always a 100% set in stone certainty, inasmuch as he's always been several light years and several hundred thousand massive strides ahead of just about any other so called innovative reference point you might care to mention.

I'm in no doubt whatsoever, that on occasion Hancock will be having a good old chuckle to himself as he toys with his audience, while sowing the seeds of clues for a whole host of plagiarists and pale, shallow imitators to vaingloriously attempt to follow and replicate.

Vis, discovering the complete works of Herbert Jeffrey Hancock for yourself: there's no template, nor right or wrong way of doing it. But I personally started with the earlier material prior to 'Head Hunters' and followed, as closely as is humanly possible, a chronological timeline trajectory thereafter. But you could just as easily jump in feet first (or head first if you prefer), at any single port of call on his voyage of sound exploration and allow the ripple effect to take you off in any number of (or even all) directions.

For the purposes of this fanzine overview I'm now supposed to select a few stand out tracks... but I'm not even going to attempt to stick to any such kind of a staid formula, because with the burgeoning, ever evolving, simultaneously mutating and transposing, non-stop production line of Herbie Hancock material, it simply doesn't work like that.

Each composite element is, in equal part, a staging point on a gigantic map that encompasses a hugely inspirational body of work... and to that end, it all has it's merits.

Recommended listening, as I'm supposedly required to shortlist the details of at this juncture, would encompass: just about anything and everything that Hancock has been involved with. There is something there for everyone who doesn't have a completely closed mind... and isn't effectively dead with glue-eared numbness from the neck up.

None of the album sleeves and artworks reproduced in conjunction with this overview are listed or depicted in the order in which they were released. But I'll leave it up to you, to discover all of that kind of peripheral detail along the way. That is, of course, assuming that you're open-minded enough to allow yourself to find a new way of partaking in aural pleasures.

It's all pretty much a one way ticket, because once your escape pod is engaged into forward mode, there'll be no turning back, nor will you feel the desire to return to things as you misguidedly thought they ever were before.

With Hancock's back catalogue, it wasn't so much a case of me discovering a plethora of different levels, stages and platforms to embrace newly discovered sound on. I genuinely believe that they discovered me. And until that momentous happening occurred in my life (and I shall be eternally grateful that it did), I was actually ignorant to (and completely unaware of) the fact that I even needed to be found.

It's genuinely scary to think, that as I rapidly approach my twilight years, so much of this awe-inspiring and essential 'must have' music might simply just have passed me by and remained hidden away outside the limited span of my previously tethered reach, on some out of bounds plateau, that I might never have bothered to visit for myself.

When you get around to discovering Herbie Hancock, or to be more precise, as I've previously alluded to... when his body of sound texture reaches out and taps you on the shoulder, it's akin to a experiencing a blissful high, comparable to an eye (and ear) opening Road to Damascus scale awakening, that's going to be coming at you from all angles, like a scatter bomb of aural depth charges all simultaneously arriving in a soothingly pleasant, ecstasy inspiring manner, from a multifarious abundance of frequency levels.

Baton down the hatches, buckle-up, bump your gums together and brace yourself for an earth-shaking and king-sized orgasmic climax, that is going to blast away the cobwebs from inside your mind and expose the wide open spaces to a whole new kind of workout. Enjoy the ride and expect the unexpected at every single turn.

'Hang Up Your Hang Ups', as the title of the seven and a half minute opus and opening track from 1975's 'Man-Child' LP tells y'all to do... 'cos you ain't gonna be needing them damn things no more.

And once you've progressed beyond the remedial stage of fine tuning your listening pleasures, there is a nineteen and a half minute unrestrained beast of a take of that same opus, that appears as the play out song at the end of the 'Flood' album, that showcases seven live tracks, segmented and served up as a cross section from two shows Hancock and his band played in Tokyo that same year.

RW (#Fret: Issue 1, May 2016)