To me Herbie Hancock is the One Hit Wonder who preformed Rock It, which featured a lot of future Cyberdyne Robotics products dancing and shaking. This was a cool video, back in the day when people made videos to go with their songs. My reaction on hearing he had won the Grammy for Album of the Year 2008 was, what-Herbie Hancock is still alive?
Bill Flagan was on CBS Sunday Morning a few weeks ago talking about how the Grammys often seemed to go to the wrong album, but were later proven to be the perfect album to represent not only the year, but the era in which they were recorded.
A look at past Albums of the Year, a perfect use of Wikepedia by the way, shows that there is some truth to Bill Flagan’s claim. Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band was the perfect album for 1968. Still Crazy After All These Years was right for 1976. Saturday Night Fever was the disco album and tells the story of 1979. The Joshua Tree was the sign of new times in 1988. Jagged Little Pill was all that anyone was listening to in 1996-has it really been 12 years?
But there are plenty of Albums of the Year that don’t stand too well the test of time. The first Album of the Year was Music from Peter Gunn by Henry Mancini, best known for silly songs like the theme to the Pink Panther. Great stuff in its way, but not really a giant like many of the other winners. Bob Newhart’s Button-Down Mind and The First Family by John Kennedy impersonator Vaughn Meader both won best Album. Christopher Cross was a mystery to Bill Flagan. And I have no idea who Lauryn Hill is. As far as I am concerned Natalie Cole’s award should have gone straight to her father instead.
The clear Album of The Year for 2008 should have been Rehab, not because Rehab and Amy Winehouse didn’t get enough attention-but because music now lives in the age of Rehab, just as Baseball lives in the age of Steroids. The only thing that would have been more fitting, would have been Rehab recorded by Britney Spears-that would have told the story of 2008.
Herbie Hancock’s River is a good album, if you like Peanuts kind of jazz and a longing for the good old days. So maybe this is the perfect album for 2008, a desire to go back to the way it used to be. When musicians recorded music and we only paid attention to them when they released new music, not when they were released from some kind of holding facility.
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