Thoughts on "Escape From Television"?


SonnyCrockettBurnett01

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22 minutes ago, Daytona74 said:

To be very honest, I personally think that "Forever Tonight" and "Before the Storm" are both somewhat unremarkable tracks. Given Jan Hammer's usual level of musical genius.

Maybe Jan Hammer included them on the album to show that he could do other things besides write amazing score music for Miami Vice. But I would probably have liked it better to hear another two familiar scores from the series.

That's kind of why I eagerly bought both "Snapshots" and "The Complete Collection" almost the day they came out. 

Also, have you guys listened to the Secret Admirer soundtrack? One of Jan Hammer's side projects from 1985... 

 

 

Edit:

+1 on all that!

IMO, the final cue from Secret Admirer is as good or better than many MV cues!

Edited by nofretz
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23 minutes ago, Daytona74 said:

To be very honest, I personally think that "Forever Tonight" and "Before the Storm" are both somewhat unremarkable tracks. Given Jan Hammer's usual level of musical genius.

 

I agree.  Same with "South Beach".  Rather "blah" compared to his S1 & S2 cues.  Hammer's work in S1 & S2 has never been equaled or even approached in TV history, to the best of my knowledge.

 

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vor 15 Minuten schrieb airtommy:

I agree.  Same with "South Beach".  Rather "blah" compared to his S1 & S2 cues.  Hammer's work in S1 & S2 has never been equaled or even approached in TV history, to the best of my knowledge.

That's because score music is often treated as a afterthought. Or at least it was back then. Just watch old episodes of the A Team, of Fall Guy or even Magnum P.I. ... the theme music on those shows was almost like the television equivalent to elevator music.

I think Mike Post did the A Team and Magnum, and maybe he's not a bad musician, but his scores just sounded incredibly bland, like they were seriously stuck way back in the late 70s. Jan Hammer's stuff was innovative, he used the latest synthesizers, and it was gripping, and it developed a life of its own on the show.

So yeah, I can't think of any examples either where TV score music was ever that good again. 

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1 hour ago, Daytona74 said:

Also, have you guys listened to the Secret Admirer soundtrack? One of Jan Hammer's side projects from 1985... 

 

Absolutely! I like SA main theme and I find the music of the end sequence fabulous.

I know it's not exactly a forgotten album, as it's indeed a classic in its genre, but I never cease to be astonished with Jan's album "The First Seven Days", from 1975. There will be no Fairlight CMI there, of course, no Memorymoog, no DX-7, But one can certainly "hear" his identity. Some of the piano music from this album, like "Oceans and Continents", kind of antecipates to my ears some piano moments of Vice (Gina, Brenda/Theresa, some parts of Duty and Honor and so on).

When he left Vice on 5th Season, to me it was as if Edward James Olmos left the series (or even worse than that!)

 

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I think the "South Beach" song would sound WAY better with the instruments he scored the show with (complete with his old Fairlight drum samples). I even thought about covering it before, but I was afraid the ppl who requested actual non-released cues to be covered would martyr me :) 

 

He never shared a midi track of that, did he?? I know there was at least one song where he did. 

Edited by nofretz
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vor 10 Stunden schrieb nofretz:

I think the "South Beach" song would sound WAY better with the instruments he scored the show with (complete with his old Fairlight drum samples).

 

 

Yes, the Fairlight was what shaped 1980s synth sound like few other things. Just think of its "ARR1" patch... it was used on thousands of tracks, including much of Jan Hammer's work:

 

 

The Fairlight just had a very unique sound, which was never again achieved with newer platforms like Atari/Qbase or others. Especially the earlier versions of the Fairlight with their 8-bit sampling (I think Jan Hammer used the 8-bit Fairlight IIx for his work on Miami Vice). It sounded "rough around the edges" in just the right way.

Nowadays, with 64-bit sampling and terabytes of memory, you've got ways of creating electronic sounds that were just impossible back then. But it also means that electronic music no longer has that "rough" edge, like 8-bit synthesizers did in the 80s. And I guess that's also somewhat true for some of Jan Hammer's more recent  work.

 

But here's one track by Jan Hammer that's from 2010, and I think it's pretty darn cool:

 

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