Terumasa Hino -- High Tide-Manhattan Ecstasy

In the last couple of weeks, I've been watching the videos of one Erik Conover on YouTube who seems to absolutely delight in showing off the most luxurious of homes and apartments of New York City. Obviously, I'm nowhere in the market to purchase even a dog's watering bowl in such abodes but admittedly I have been enjoying watching these on the same level as I watch with fascination societies on alien worlds like Vulcan.

And this goes back to when I was a university kid because back then I used to watch this series called "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" with Robin Leach from time to time. The title says it all. Leach visited these opulent homes of the wealthy celebrities such as Liberace. I never particularly envied or sought that way of life but I was curious about how these folks took in their form of comfort. To be frank, from watching the show, there was more jade in my eyes than there was in any of the baubles that adorned the interiors of those mansions.

I have given you all that preamble to present a marvelous track from jazz trumpeter's Terumasa Hino's（日野皓正）1979 "City Connection" album, "High Tide-Manhattan Ecstasy". If a theme song could be placed with one of Conover's ultra-luxurious showings, I would pick this one.

"High Tide-Manhattan Ecstasy" is a 7-minute journey which begins with a slow and sensuous trumpet passage by Hino. It seems to start off a morning for some Mickey Spillane-inspired detective with intact internal pithy dialogue before he steps out onto the tough sun-baked concrete of Manhattan on some sort of case. The funky beat then gradually washes in as Hino joins in on the jam. The detective starts his usual routine of shaking the trees by talking with his contacts in the lowest of low places as well as the highest of high places. Intimate 50s nightclub jazz gives way to streetwise funk n' fusion.

Finally, the last couple of minutes feature a true fusion of the jazz and funk as the detective somehow finishes the day, resolving or not resolving the case, by hitting his favourite hole-in-the-wall for a slug of the hard stuff (and not a slug of the hard lead) before schlepping it back to his apartment which is guaranteed not to be anything on Conover's love list. "High Tide-Manhattan Ecstasy" may be 7 minutes but it's a trip well worth taking, no matter which city where you are walking.