I swear this isn’t a parody. It’s just Jan Hammer going full-on Miami Vice to his own theme. There are still gratuitous swimwear shots, but now the camera lingers over the Fairlight CMI interface.
And yeah, after Noise Engineering mentioning Miami Vice’s toms, I mean, here you really feel those toms:
Honestly, YouTubers – you need to up your wardrobe game for those synth jams. Jan is dressing the part.
There’s not much info around on the music video, though its release on Jan Hammer’s official channel coincided with a release of Miami Vice soundtrack material as digital download.
For more on the soundtrack, though, here’s some reading:
Songs of Fire and ‘Vice’: Jan Hammer on the Music of ‘Miami Vice’ [Rolling Stone, 2014]
There’s tons of great detail in that interview, including getting real freedom to score the show however he wanted and composing in his farmhouse. This description of why he chose synths and found a voice resonates today:
I had this frustration with the fixed pitch of a piano. You couldn’t bend notes. There was no vibrato, no flirt, no slide. All the other instruments — violins, guitars — they could do it. The human voice, too. That’s where the synthesizer came in. It was a keyboard, so it was already second nature to me and, through the controls, I could play melodies with slides and bends. To me, that was heaven. So that’s how I ended up finding my own voice on a synthesizer.
Oh, by the way, while Jan leaps through action sequences for the video, the Miami Vice Wiki helpfully tells us that the Prague-born composer did make a couple of cameos on the show. Having Jan Hammer as your wedding musician is one heck of a score.
And by the way, Miami Vice apparently still holds the record for chart-topping TV theme song. (Sorry, White Lotus and Succession.) If you need to feel more 80s and neon, someone has also helpfully uploaded 50 minutes of Crockett’s Theme for you.
Here’s the original theme, as shown on the show.
The official Jan Hammer YouTube channel is a beautiful, beautiful linkhole. Complete Beyond the Mind’s Eye, which I fondly remember from LaserDisc in the 90s? Check.
Plus you get Jan Hammer’s jazz fusion trio, Mahavishnu Orchestra, represented:
But you know what’s more popular than 80s TV? Apparently Czech film, as Czech viewers have rocketed this earworm by 19-year-old Jan Hammer to the top of his YouTube charts. And it’s a gem. I have to remix this somehow for the next HÖR appearance.