Cars & Music - Herbie Hancock (1)

The guys down the corridor at Facel Vega Soul have a lot to answer for. 'Oh go on, do a Car & Muisc thing for The Effect, it'll be a good laugh'. Well, two-odd years on and that 'Cars & Music thing' has morphed into a Alice In Wonderland-style rabbit hole of musical discovery; we'll do one of these features and end up spending the day on YouTube listening to music we never knew existed. Damn you cool cats, damn you...
Now just like our FVS neighbours, Herbie Hancock's music is right up Amazo-san's street. Come to think of it, not only has Mr Hancock driven up his street, but parked in his garage, raided his fridge, flopped in his Eames Recliner and stuck the footie on. Quite why Glorious Leader makes us write these when he could probably knock one up in 10 minutes flat I'm not sure, but I think he like to see us struggle. Buts it's always fascinating for sure, and today is no exception. the link is a tenuous one we will admit, but a) that's forgiveable as the video is amazing and b) we've got a feature lined up that is bona-fide, seeing as Mr Hancock is a Cobra owner...

The video maker's long-time inspirations for making the vid were the 70's cop show The Streets Of San Francisco opening intro and the film to Jimi Hendrix's Crosstown Traffic. Using only a computer, a VHS recorder and a lot of determination, he took footage from 70's films that had scenes shot in New York; Taxi Driver, French Connection, Midnight Cowboy and Kojak, with one shot from the 1969 film Sicilian Clan and another from Forrest Gump. Read that again; he transferred the footage from video tape to digital, a slow and frustrating process as we know from experience given that that program we used to do do this for a project a while back crashed all the time. Then he tackled the painstaking task of editing the clips and syncing them with the track; well we salute you buddy - the end product is so authentic you could be fooled into thinking it had been made especially for the track, which is Hang Up Your Hang Ups, from his 1975 album Man-Child.

They don't make album covers like that anymore. Probably because most of the airbrush artists have gone to rehab

Well, you've had the music, but the side benefit of that old footage is all of the lovely old metal driving around. We've watched the vid multiple times trying to identify all of the cars, an eye-crossing process we'd probably not want to repeat anytime soon. But before we gave up, here's the cars we did glean from New York's funky heyday, in no particular order:
Checker Cab, Dodge Monaco, GMC TDH 5301 truck, VW Beetle, Ford Country Squire, Opel Manta, Chrysler New Yorker, Ford Torino Saloon, Roll-Royce Silver Cloud SIII, Mercedes SL, Ford H-series truck, Ford Galaxie, Buick Regal (a no-brainer because of the Kojak footage), Pontiac Bonneville, Greyhound bus (Eagle model 05), Chevrolet Luv pickup, Chevrolet G-series van, GM PD 4107 Buffalo Bus, Lincoln Continental MKIV, Pontiac Le Mans, Ford LTD, Dodge Polara, Ford F-Series fourth generation...
Phew! okay that's enough, you get the idea...