Hello all! I recently discovered this forum and it’s pretty neat. Since I first became a fan of Herb’s in high school back around 1970, I thought I should jump in and introduce myself.
I haven’t really listened to Herb much in recent years, but I was recently motivated to haul out some of my old albums (I still have almost all of them on vinyl) after accidentally finding out some info that I’m sure you all already know, but had completely escaped my attention until now. I bought a copy of the new 5th edition of the Billboard Book of #1 Hits, and was stunned to learn that “Hypnotize” by Notorious B.I.G. was based on “Rise”. I don’t listen to rap, or current top 40 in general, so this song was previously unknown to me. I went to Amazon.com to listen to a clip of “Hypnotize”, and sure enough! There was that familiar bass line and guitar stabs.
I then checked out the listings for some of the old TJB albums on Amazon, and found a link to this forum in a review. It was cool reading thru some of the message threads here, seeing what people’s favorite songs are, getting the inside scoop from Randy Badazz, etc. I was gratified to see that many of my favorite tracks are quite popular here, including seemingly everyone’s #1, “The Sea is My Soil”. I thought I was the only one who liked it that much! I also appreciated the unexpectedly strong support for two of my other all-time favorites, “Beyond” and “The Factory”.
Off the top of my head, some other favorite cuts, in roughly chronological order, are:
El Presidente
Bittersweet Samba
More and More Amor
What Now My Love
Memories of Madrid - one of my favorite bits in Herb’s entire catalog is the chord sequence C – F9 – Bb6 – Eb7 – Abmaj7 – Db+11 (killer!) – Gm. The way those chords are used to sustain the melody G note with a descending chromatic harmony line is just genius.
Blue Sunday
Treasure of San Miguel
Bud
Panama
Slick
The Robin
I’ll Be Back (beautiful, haunting arrangement)
The Nicest Things Happen
Last Tango in Paris
Fox Hunt
Song for Herb
Carmine
Vento Bravo
Lobo (I’m surprised that a search of the board didn’t uncover more support for this one. It’s my favorite Herb track of the 70s. Wonderfully exuberant arrangement & soloing.)
1980
Rise
Route 101
Make A Wish
I don’t know if this is heresy, but two songs I’ve never liked at all are Tijuana Taxi and Spanish Flea. *ducking for cover* They’re just too too corny.
My interest in Herb was the beginning of a lifelong search for interesting instrumental music that has taken me in many different directions over the years.
In high school and early college (early-mid 70s) I liked MOR pop (Herb, Henry Mancini, Boots Randolph, Percy Faith) and straightahead jazz/swing (Stan Kenton, Glenn Miller, Phil Woods, Parker/Gillespie, Brubeck/Desmond, Getz). I was influenced by taking up the alto saxophone and having a small group of high school bandmates who were also TJB fans. In fact we had our own group for a while called the Americana Brass. We frequently got together to play along with TJB albums and try to work out our own arrangements.
Later in college and thru most of the 80s I got into contemporary jazz (Barbieri, Mangione, Ponty, Crusaders, Grover Washington, David Sanborn). This was significantly aided by the existence of a commercial jazz radio station in town that mostly played this sort of stuff.
In college I also briefly took an interest in small-group classical music (flute & harpsichord duets, solo piano, classical guitar) and later in the 80s I discovered Latin music (salsa and Brazilian) and African (mainly juju from King Sunny Ade and Afrobeat from Fela Anikulapo-Kuti).
In 1987, via CDs from the public library, I developed an affinity for acoustic "new age" music (William Ackerman, George Winston, Paul Winter, etc). Then in 1988 came an event that completely changed my life. I attended a concert by a group that I previously knew little about – the German synthesizer trio Tangerine Dream. They absolutely blew me away and for the next several years I was completely consumed by them and other electronic “space music” – Jean-Michel Jarre, Vangelis, Klaus Schulze, Steve Roach, etc. I still to this day do not understand how I remained oblivious to this music for so long when most of those artists were already making incredible, groundbreaking albums back in the early & mid 70s.
Also during those years I really started appreciating Carlos Santana and got into a little bit of instrumental rock such as Robert Fripp, Andy Summers, Joe Satriani, and David Sylvian.
Finally, around 1993, I was regularly listening to the syndicated radio programs Echoes and Musical Starstreams, and occasionally heard an exciting new type of music by artists like Sven Vath and Deep Forest. I found out that this was a newly developing genre called “ambient techno” – based on dance rhythms and club aesthetic, but slower, more complex, more abstract, and meant for listening rather than dancing. For me it was the new “coolest thing ever” and to this day it remains my favorite music. It’s still pretty obscure (I have several CDs from a particular German ambient label that were released in quantities of only 1000 copies each); the “big stars” of ambient are still mostly unknown to the general public – acts like Orbital, Future Sound of London, the Orb, Aphex Twin, Banco de Gaia, and Black Dog. Not exactly the sort of thing an almost 50-year-old guy would be expected to listen to, but it’s tremendously exciting and I don’t forsee myself ever getting tired of it.
Well, this has gotten a bit long, not all of it related to Herb, but I hope it was worth reading. He was still the beginning of it all. I hope some of you might be encouraged to try some of these other musical paths if you haven’t already.
I haven’t really listened to Herb much in recent years, but I was recently motivated to haul out some of my old albums (I still have almost all of them on vinyl) after accidentally finding out some info that I’m sure you all already know, but had completely escaped my attention until now. I bought a copy of the new 5th edition of the Billboard Book of #1 Hits, and was stunned to learn that “Hypnotize” by Notorious B.I.G. was based on “Rise”. I don’t listen to rap, or current top 40 in general, so this song was previously unknown to me. I went to Amazon.com to listen to a clip of “Hypnotize”, and sure enough! There was that familiar bass line and guitar stabs.
I then checked out the listings for some of the old TJB albums on Amazon, and found a link to this forum in a review. It was cool reading thru some of the message threads here, seeing what people’s favorite songs are, getting the inside scoop from Randy Badazz, etc. I was gratified to see that many of my favorite tracks are quite popular here, including seemingly everyone’s #1, “The Sea is My Soil”. I thought I was the only one who liked it that much! I also appreciated the unexpectedly strong support for two of my other all-time favorites, “Beyond” and “The Factory”.
Off the top of my head, some other favorite cuts, in roughly chronological order, are:
El Presidente
Bittersweet Samba
More and More Amor
What Now My Love
Memories of Madrid - one of my favorite bits in Herb’s entire catalog is the chord sequence C – F9 – Bb6 – Eb7 – Abmaj7 – Db+11 (killer!) – Gm. The way those chords are used to sustain the melody G note with a descending chromatic harmony line is just genius.
Blue Sunday
Treasure of San Miguel
Bud
Panama
Slick
The Robin
I’ll Be Back (beautiful, haunting arrangement)
The Nicest Things Happen
Last Tango in Paris
Fox Hunt
Song for Herb
Carmine
Vento Bravo
Lobo (I’m surprised that a search of the board didn’t uncover more support for this one. It’s my favorite Herb track of the 70s. Wonderfully exuberant arrangement & soloing.)
1980
Rise
Route 101
Make A Wish
I don’t know if this is heresy, but two songs I’ve never liked at all are Tijuana Taxi and Spanish Flea. *ducking for cover* They’re just too too corny.
My interest in Herb was the beginning of a lifelong search for interesting instrumental music that has taken me in many different directions over the years.
In high school and early college (early-mid 70s) I liked MOR pop (Herb, Henry Mancini, Boots Randolph, Percy Faith) and straightahead jazz/swing (Stan Kenton, Glenn Miller, Phil Woods, Parker/Gillespie, Brubeck/Desmond, Getz). I was influenced by taking up the alto saxophone and having a small group of high school bandmates who were also TJB fans. In fact we had our own group for a while called the Americana Brass. We frequently got together to play along with TJB albums and try to work out our own arrangements.
Later in college and thru most of the 80s I got into contemporary jazz (Barbieri, Mangione, Ponty, Crusaders, Grover Washington, David Sanborn). This was significantly aided by the existence of a commercial jazz radio station in town that mostly played this sort of stuff.
In college I also briefly took an interest in small-group classical music (flute & harpsichord duets, solo piano, classical guitar) and later in the 80s I discovered Latin music (salsa and Brazilian) and African (mainly juju from King Sunny Ade and Afrobeat from Fela Anikulapo-Kuti).
In 1987, via CDs from the public library, I developed an affinity for acoustic "new age" music (William Ackerman, George Winston, Paul Winter, etc). Then in 1988 came an event that completely changed my life. I attended a concert by a group that I previously knew little about – the German synthesizer trio Tangerine Dream. They absolutely blew me away and for the next several years I was completely consumed by them and other electronic “space music” – Jean-Michel Jarre, Vangelis, Klaus Schulze, Steve Roach, etc. I still to this day do not understand how I remained oblivious to this music for so long when most of those artists were already making incredible, groundbreaking albums back in the early & mid 70s.
Also during those years I really started appreciating Carlos Santana and got into a little bit of instrumental rock such as Robert Fripp, Andy Summers, Joe Satriani, and David Sylvian.
Finally, around 1993, I was regularly listening to the syndicated radio programs Echoes and Musical Starstreams, and occasionally heard an exciting new type of music by artists like Sven Vath and Deep Forest. I found out that this was a newly developing genre called “ambient techno” – based on dance rhythms and club aesthetic, but slower, more complex, more abstract, and meant for listening rather than dancing. For me it was the new “coolest thing ever” and to this day it remains my favorite music. It’s still pretty obscure (I have several CDs from a particular German ambient label that were released in quantities of only 1000 copies each); the “big stars” of ambient are still mostly unknown to the general public – acts like Orbital, Future Sound of London, the Orb, Aphex Twin, Banco de Gaia, and Black Dog. Not exactly the sort of thing an almost 50-year-old guy would be expected to listen to, but it’s tremendously exciting and I don’t forsee myself ever getting tired of it.
Well, this has gotten a bit long, not all of it related to Herb, but I hope it was worth reading. He was still the beginning of it all. I hope some of you might be encouraged to try some of these other musical paths if you haven’t already.
