While living in Indianapolis (for a hot minute), I had the pleasure of writing for NUVO, an independent alternative news organization based just north of downtown. Shortly before moving back to the Berkshires, I covered a Herbie Hancock concert for them in Carmel, an affluent suburb of Indy that I described to a friend as “the Lenox of Indianapolis.”

Ironically, it was in Lenox that I saw Hancock for the first time a few years back and wrote this little gem for Berkshire Living. The only problem with having such a funky performer in that type of setting? The type of crowd it attracts isn’t exactly conducive to getting your groove on (if I hadn’t been sitting in a balcony, I would have joined the one woman in the second row who had the courage to get up and shake her thang, despite dirty looks from her neighbors). Oh well, at least he had the wherewithal to repeat my top two favorite Herbie moments: “Chameleon” and plenty of keytar jams. No matter where he plays, and no matter who’s in the crowd, there is no one that can make a keytar look as cool as Herbie Hancock does–just hope he leaves the vocoder at home.

Herbie Hancock, photo by Douglas Kirklan