Elevensies

So I finally got the chance to return the Street Suite compilation LP to my funk buddy Wayne but his record player's mothballed so he said I could keep it.

We'd been enthusing about the glorious sound of the vocoder on those early 80s Herbie Hancock tracks and he'd brought this up to play me, many years and a hundred relationship traumas ago.

I can't think of another artist who transitioned so successfully from skinny tie Blue Note modernist to jazz-funk/electro pioneer and back again as Mr Hancock did. Those old school B-boys all went crazy for 'Rockit', and this from a man who had played with Miles Davis in 1963. Dammit but the man can also sing, and proved it on a handful of 80s pop hits and the magnificent 'Stars In Your Eyes', truly one of my favourite tracks of all time.

This'll be a strange week where Friday is not really Friday, Thursday does a decent stand-in instead and today is a kind of Wednesday that isn't, so I see no reason why we all shouldn't mellow-funk out a tad for elevensies today. My current fondness for green tea shows no sign of abating, meanwhile. Go figure, as they say.

Herbie Hancock - 'Give It All Your Heart' (1982)

[A vinyl rip from Wayne's comp; originally from the 'largely unavailable' this].