Herbie Hancock: "Flood"

This is probably the record that’s been on my want-list the longest.  Long before I was digging deep into the back catalogues of offshoot soul labels and regional diasporas, this was still on my radar, with Herbie being one of my early gateway musicians into the ever-expanding world of jazz-funk.  This double LP features the Headhunters live and in their prime, classic line-up intact, with Herbie on keys and synths, Bennie Maupin on sax, Bill Summers on percussion, Paul Jackson on bass, Mike Clarke on drums, and newer addition Blackbird McKnight on guitar.  Many of the well-known tunes from the Headhunters’ studio albums of the era get a complete revamp here, like in “Actual Proof,” where Herbie plays acoustic piano instead of Fender Rhodes, or in “Chameleon,” where the synth solo from the studio version becomes completely negated in the wake of Herbie’s live take on the tune, which features not so much a synth solo as it does a synth meltdown, a barrage of futuristic fireworks from inside the mind of a computer as fused with the mad genius of a jazz musician.  The band is incendiary throughout the set, though Blackbird McKnight’s contributions are more tentative than they would be on future Headhunters efforts and in his subsequent work with Funkadelic.  The rhythm section of Mike Clarke and Paul Jackson is one of the most telepathic ever recorded to tape, with their interlocking lines and grooves only able to be explained by the phenomenon of extrasensory perception.  For anyone that has ever fancied themselves even a casual collector and/or fan of ‘70’s jazz-funk-fusion, this album is an essential listen.