"Wouldn't you prefer not to leave your home, if you have a beautiful home, a beautiful family and didn't have to go anywhere?" he says. Hammer's workplace, on a 150-year-old farm about an hour outside New York City, is not precisely "Vice"-like. But from talking to Michael, I immediately sensed that he was onto something, that he was after a different sounding show, not just a different looking show." But I had no idea it was going to turn out to be such a good show, so different. "And you think, if it goes, it can be lucrative. When producer Mann first approached him about a weekly show, with new music for every episode, "I was interested it was something I wanted to try. Hammer was no stranger to scoring before "Miami Vice," having worked on several movies and television specials. It works because Hammer composes, performs and engineers every note of original music heard on "Miami Vice." Music coordinator Fred Lyle selects the rock songs that are also prominently featured. Here, I've been totally left alone and I can do all the things I've ever done at the same time. "I was allowed to work under my own terms. "There is a good reason for it," he adds. It's an honest-to-goodness rock thing - driving, rude rock and roll. "It's really a rock thing, which is why it stands apart from all other series themes. The only time we talk is if he says 'we want more, more, more music.' "Īs for the music's success, Hammer says that most hit themes have been wimpy. This is an unprecedented move, producer Michael Mann giving me this much leeway, but it's really paying off. "I think that's why so much TV music sounds so bland, so prefab. "Producers usually not only want scorers on site, they want to look over their shoulder, they want to meddle," Hammer says. Without Hammer's music, it wouldn't be the same. Louder than life and obviously geared to the MTV generation, "Miami Vice" is yuppie hip. Sound is an integral part of the show's appeal, as important as Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas' fashions or the stylized violence. Unlike most television shows, "Miami Vice" puts its music in the foreground. "Miami Vice Theme" is his first hit single. "It's really wonderful," says Hammer, who finds himself at 37 both a celebrity and a chart-topper after almost two decades of trench work in the music business. That was also the last time musical textures were so crucial to a show's integrity. And where the album sits, too - the first TV sound track to do so since Henry Mancini's "Music From Peter Gunn" 27 years ago. Full of heavily layered keyboards, rowdy guitars, and intricate drum programming, this is sure to take you back to the days of white sportcoats with pastel T-shirts, high-speed boat chases off the Florida coast, and explosive-laden shootouts with ruthless Colombian cartels.Which is exactly where his high-voltage theme song for "Miami Vice" is listed on the pop charts. But it was Hammer's work on the '80s TV series Miami Vice that catapulted him into the mainstream, earned him multiple GRAMMYs® and Emmys, and made him a household name.(He worked on the hit show from 1984 to 1988 before moving on to film work and other ventures.) This exhaustive collection includes the original themes and instrumentals found on both Miami Vice soundtracks, plus tons of new recordings of various background music. He recorded with the likes of Elvin Jones, Jeff Beck, and Mick Jagger, releasing 10 solo or group albums that blurred the line between jazz and rock. He was an original member of the pioneering fusion group Mahavishnu Orchestra and an early adopter of the Mini Moog synthesizer. A classically trained jazz musician from Czechoslovakia, Jan Hammer moved to the States in the late '60s to attend the famed Berklee School of Music.
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