MIAMI VICE - MUSIC FROM THE TELEVISION SERIES (OST)

Some of my favorite music is on soundtracks. I especially like 70s stuff like Quincey Jones and Herbie Hancock. Their mixture of orchestra, analog synthesizers and sound effects can make for some interesting experimental music. Unfortunately this soundtrack by Hammer is from the 80s and was all done on keyboards, sequencers and drum machines.

No decade has dated as badly as the 80s when it comes to music. So much from that era sounds so plastic and phony. For instance, those awful drum machines and those cheesy horn blasts that sounded so cool at first, but sound so cheap in retrospect. The trouble with 80s music is that everyone immersed themselves so totally in the technology of the time that their music will always bear a stamp that clearly says, "this came from the 80s". Some bands who recorded music with that 80s sound have aged well, Devo and Prince come to mind, but many haven't.

Anyway, Hammer's tracks on here are professional and occaissonally almost interesting, but then there's that plastic sound and overall a total lack of subtlety. Some of the other cuts on the record are by folks like Glenn Frey, Tina Turner and Mr 80s himself, the formerly omni-present Phil Collins. There was some incedental dialouge on the record that caught my ear, apparently the always funny Busy Bee, one of NYC earliest rappers, made a spot appearance as an arrestee.