I post a weekly diary of the historical notes, arts & science items, foreign news (often receiving little notice in the US) and whimsical pieces from the outside world that I featured this past week in "Cheers & Jeers". For example .....
Bye, bye Rick .....
SEPARATED at BIRTH - former GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum ...
...
and TV star Bob Saget ("Full House" and "America's Funniest Home Videos").
OK, you've been warned - here is this week's tomfoolery material that I posted.
ART NOTES - the German avant-garde electronic music group Kraftwerk has begun performing for eight consecutive evenings (each devoted to one of the group’s albums) ...
...to accompany their extensive visual material - now at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City through this coming Tuesday.
IT WAS A RELIEF to the citizens of Senegal that its two-term president - barred by the constitution (which he himself wrote) from seeking another term - was thwarted by voters from becoming a president-for-life .... and thus preserving Senegal's title as Africa’s oldest democracy.
SEVERAL CABLE TV NETWORKS are slated to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars owed to them by Tax Masters - the company claiming it would help you resolve your tax issues .....
... until it filed for bankruptcy following a massive $200M fraud settlement.
THE SEARCH IS ON for a missing hero ... as Chloe the Cat awoke a sleeping man from a building fire in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan ... and who hopefully is just missing, rather than consumed by the flames.
WEDNESDAY's CHILD is Misty Mouse the Cat - a California kitteh who wound up locked in the house next door for 18 days without food - fortunately, discovered by workers and is now back home.
AFTER TWENTY YEARS plans for a 35-mile rail link under the Alps - four miles longer than the Channel tunnel and linking Turin, Italy to Lyons, France - may be ready to begin.
DIRECT DESCENDANTS? - the role of the late Steve Jobs - at least in one of two competing biopics forthcoming about the late founder of Apple Computer - is to be portrayed by ... TV star Ashton Kutcher.
CHEERS to figures released this week showing that Sweden gives more development aid in relation to gross national income than any other country.
LAST YEAR IT WAS the German defense minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg who had to resign from office - and now the president of Hungary, Pál Schmitt has also had to resign for a similar reason .... after being stripped of his PhD when his thesis was determined to have been largely plagiarized.
ART NOTES - an exhibition of small-scale portraits (or miniatures) from history are at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri through July 29th.
IN A PROFILE of the European film star Chiara Mastroianni - the daughter of Catherine Deneuve and the late Marcello Mastroianni - she is happy to talk about her mother and father but admits, "I only saw my parents together ... on screen."
ART NOTES #2 - a painting newly authenticated as a work by Rembrandt - known as 'The Old Rabbi', last exhibited in 1950 and which had hung ever since in a private room - has gone on public display in Britain.
THURSDAY's CHILD is Clementine the Cat - part of the Cuddly Catz program for inmates at the Larch Corrections Center in Washington state.
BRAIN TEASER - try this week's Weekly World News Quiz from the BBC.
THIS PAST THURSDAY yours truly hosted the Top Comments diary, written in advance of last night's induction ceremonies into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame - which takes a look at why the Hall is (deservedly) situated in Cleveland, Ohio ...... and the song that Ian Hunter wrote in the city's honor.
FRIDAY's CHILD is Sessa the Cat - who rules-the-roost at the Philadelphia Rare Books and Manuscripts Company.
......and finally (repeated for the west coasters) for a song of the week ................... if you asked a hip-hop fan, a jazz buff, a rocker and a classical music devotee to come up with a musician they all respected: one performer they could agree on is Herbie Hancock because he could fit so comfortably in those genres (and others). Still at heart a modern jazz pianist: now after fifty years in the music business, he probably has another trick or two awaiting for us all.
The Chicago native was a child prodigy, performing with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1951 at the age of eleven. He began his studies at Iowa's prestigious Grinnell College as a major in music ... actually as an electrical engineering major, before switching to music. He joined Donald Byrd's band in 1961 and was offered a solo contract by Blue Note Records. His first album in 1962 yielded the song Watermelon Man - that Mongo Santamaria covered and made into a classic. The next year, Miles Davis asked him to join his band, and Herbie remained with him for five years (in one of Miles Davis's "classic quintets").
All the while, Hancock continued recording solo albums; with songs such as "Dolphin Dance" and "Cantaloupe Island" - but with his 1965 album Maiden Voyage seen as his classic. Listening to the title track at this link is my favorite song for a rainy day - and it features the late Freddie Hubbard on trumpet.
Miles Davis encouraged him to try the Fender Rhodes electric piano, which spawned his subsequent interest in electronic keyboards (along with his engineering background). After venturing out on his own in 1968, Hancock furthered explored the emerging versions of electronics, along with composing for Bill Cosby's "Fat Albert" TV show (with the tune "Tell Me a Bedtime Story" becoming a hit for Quincy Jones).
It was his 1973 breakthrough album Head Hunters that made him well-known to the general public. Mixing the emerging funk/soul sound with jazz, it included the song Chameleon that had an additional rock/funk riff as its melody.
Miles Davis had issued his own album "On the Corner" album with the same musical blend, but later wrote in his autobiography that 'Head Hunters' was "the album I should have released". Indeed, I saw the two men's bands on a double-bill in 1975 ... with Miles Davis opening for Hancock (and listed on the program as such) .... which (temporarily) strained their relationship.
But to show that he hadn't forgotten his roots: Hancock formed an off-and-on band called VSOP - which reunited Hancock with his old Miles Davis Quintet bandmates (Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter and Tony Williams) and with Freddie Hubbard in the trumpet spot. Its classic modern acoustic jazz sound helped pave the way for traditionalists such as Wynton Marsalis, who were working their way into the limelight.
In 1983, Hancock scored a crossover hit on MTV with the funk song Rockit that introduced him to a younger generation. Since then, Hancock has been all around the field of music. His film scores include Norman Jewison's "A Soldier's Story", Richard Pryor's "JoJo Dancer", Eddie Murphy's "Harlem Nights" and "Round Midnight" - in which he also acted, and won an Oscar for the score.
In 1998 he released the album Gershwin's World - on the 100th anniversary of his birth - in which he backed soprano Kathleen Battle on "Prelude in C# Minor".
He has also recorded with popular musicians too numerous to mention: in 2005, Herbie Hancock recorded an album entitled Possibilities with musicians including Sting, Annie Lennox, Stevie Wonder, John Mayer, Christina Aguilera and Paul Simon. In 2008, his tribute album to Joni Mitchell entitled River: the Joni Letters became only the second jazz album to win the Grammy Album of the Year award. His most recent album was 2010's Imagine Project - featuring not only that John Lennon classic, but also the Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows", Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are a Changin'" and Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come".
I had a chance to see him perform in 2010 (35 years after the last time) with his Imagine Project band - and he had a wide range of musical stylists featured on-stage (such as the African guitarist Lionel Loueke) that played all of Hancock's classics (albeit more funky) plus songs from this album - and the man seemed as energetic as ever, coming out with a keyboard around his neck to play "Chameleon" for an encore. The man is no nostalgia act, let me assure you.
Herbie Hancock has won a total of fourteen Grammys, was elected to the Downbeat Magazine Hall of Fame in 2005, is quite active in Democratic politics and since being named a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador last July has established International Jazz Day to be held on April 30 of every year. All of which he will undoubtedly mention in his upcoming memoirs to be published in 2014.
In the meantime, Herbie Hancock turns age 72 .... ummm ..... THIS PAST THURSDAY! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!. And begins a tour with a quartet - beginning with a show in West Palm Beach on May 3rd.
One song appearing on the "Imagine Project" album (and which he performed on tour, including the show I attended) was Space Captain - written by the singer Matthew Moore who was in the choir backing-up Joe Cocker when he sang this tune on his landmark 1970 Mad Dogs and Englishmen album. On Herbie Hancock's version, the husband-and-wife team of Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi are among the featured performers - and below you can hear it.
Once I was traveling across the sky
This lovely planet caught my eye
And being curious: I flew close by
Now I'm caught here until I die
I lost my memory of where I've been
We all forgot that we could fly
Someday we'll all change into peaceful men
And we'll return into the sky
Until we die
Learning to live together
Learning to live together
Learning to live together
'Till we die