Product Details
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| 1. Crockett's Theme |
| 2. Theresa |
| 3. Colombia |
| 4. Rum Cay |
| 5. Trial and the Search |
| 6. Tubbs and Valerie |
| 7. Forever Tonight |
| 8. Last Flight |
| 9. Rico's Blues |
| 10. Before the Storm |
| 11. Night Talk |
| 12. Miami Vice Theme |
| 13. Forever Tonight [*] |
This album is consists of bits of the soundtrack from Miami Vice. The sound is bright, lively and beautiful in parts. This came at the dawn of the digital age, with clear music and a very high dynamic range.
In spite of all that, this is not a good album. It is TV program background, composed to go along with a certain dramatic scene. When the music is pulled out of the context of the show, it loses its meaning. That would be OK if the compostitions could stand on their own, but these can't for the most part.
On their own, most of the compositions are weak. They are very short (around 2 to 3 minutes) and not very complex. They have a simple theme that is repeated over and over.
These tracks weren't meant to be complete compositions, but were meant to be background music. They weren't meant to overwhelm the scene, but to set the mood. I guess if that you want to recreate the Miami Vice lifestyle and need some background music for it, this is the perfect disc.
This CD is 46 minutes. It has a "bonus" track that is a 6 minute extended version of Forever Tonight, which really illustrates the tediousness and repitition of the music. There are 3 very good tracks that do stand on their own. But, that is not enought to recommend this CD.
The liner notes for the CD are great. They explain which episode each track was from and what was going on in the actual scene.
Note that no matter how much you think you would like this, you don't want to buy. If you know you are going to like it, you should get the Miami Vice: The Complete Collection. It has all these tracks plus much more.
All the music on this CD may be heard on Miami Vice, but the booklet informs that "Forever Tonight" (previously heard with vocals in the albun "Hammer") and "Before the Storm" are not Miami Vice tracks. These two tracks are, respectively, from "Child's play" and "Love at First Sight" episodes of the fourth season (after the release of this albun). The hits "Miami Vice Theme" (unfortunately not the rare remix version unavailable on CD) and "Crockett's Theme" are together with great icons of the series not released before. "Rico's Blues" (along with "Flashback" from Miami Vice volume I) could be named as "Tubbs' theme". "Theresa" (from the homonymous episode, an overdubbed version from the material of the first season episode "Nobody lives Forever" - an interesting technique) shows Jan's refined production on combination of sounds. This can also be said about most tracks of the albun, "Before the storm" and its Rhodes piano, "Forever Tonight" (and its remix) with the synth sounds, "Colombia" with the Andean flutes and percussion blocks (actually Farlight CMI samples) are just some examples. A complaint: some differences between what we hear on the episodes and on this albun (mixing differences and sometimes more than that). Most of times what is on the CD is better treated than in the episode, but in the episode there was the first impression. But this does not put the style away, not a bit.
One could say that this music is more effective through the episodes action, which is quite non-sense. This music IS the episode action, not the contrary: it was made for that and works like that perfectly well. "The Trial" is the character of criminal judgement of young General Lao Li grandsons, "The Search", in the same way, the mood of Tubbs disappearance or the deadly encouter with druglord Mario Fuente (Frank Zappa). What would be of "Rites of Passage" or "The Prodigal Son" episodes without "Tubbs and Valerie" (one of the most remarkable Miami Vice tunes)? This happens also between "Trust fund Pirates" episode and "Night Talk" (orinally from the "Made for Each Other" episode). And what would be of "One way ticket" without the good vibrated "Rum Cay" and, on the other hand, the extremely dramatic and disturbed "Last Flight"? Possibly those moments would mean much less without those tracks.
Jan Hammer's Vice music was exhaustively imitated during the eighties, and even re-recorded by others. But his music character is unique as some of his timbres are. And for sure the musical character one could hear on this albun. We must remember that Hammer is more than just Miami Vice. From Mahavishnu Orchestra to "The First Seven Days", from "Oh, Yeah?" to "Secret Admirer", he passed through lots of musical moments. This CD is one of them, a very important one: the Miami Vice soul.
