Record of the Week #4: Manfred Mann's Earth Band
Why doesn't anyone know about this record?
As you can tell, I am really enjoying listening to this. First heard it last week at dinner - see planning your next dinner party - and wanted to hear it some more. Of course it turns out that Robert Christgau loves this record too, giving it an A+ in his poll, here is what he says about the record:
"Manfred Mann's Earth Band [Polydor, 1972]
Mann has always embraced rock and roll's art-commerce dichotomy with uncommon passion--he used to rave on about jazz to the fanmags in the "Doo Wah Diddy Diddy" days. This extraordinary cult record achieves the synthesis. Almost every song is defined by a hook that repeats over and over--the phrase "down on my knees" in "Please Mrs. Henry," the galvanizing guitar riff that runs through the almost-hit "Living Without You." But the doo-wah-diddy is continually threatened by an undercurrent of jazzy disintegration--the Cecil Taylor piano jangles that close "Jump Sturdy" or the discords that dominate the closing instrumental. The deliberately characterless vocal ensembles and square rhythms defy today's pseudo-soul norm, and Mann's songs--especially the brilliant "Part Time Man," about not getting a job after World War III--are indecisive and a little down. In short, the perfect corrective to the willful brightness of boogie optimism. A+"
Find it on record or - blasphemy - even on CD, if you can. I'm not sure its ever been released on CD. Definitely worth getting into, like many of Mann's records.
Oh, and it has a fantastic architectonic album cover. See above: beautiful 1970s lettering,the candy colored tubular alphabet overlaid onto a gritty, black and white urban perspective with the band, obscure silhouettes only, in the shadows at the center of it all. Oooh.
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