A Yawn in Your E-Mail - April 2002

I am a child of the sixties (well fifties actually but who is counting). The Beatles or Silver Beatles or whatever they were called then played one of their first gigs in Litherland Town Hall, a stones throw away from the Victorian Vicarage in which I lived and probably failed to grow up in for many years. That is until it was demolished in favour of a much better and smaller new vicarage mostly made of paper and plastic. As I love to remind her as often as possible as she is now very grown up and opera going, my sister fancied Paul Jones. To be fair, most hot blooded females fancied Paul Jones and many probably still do.

So what has this all got to do with the preoccupation of most of my spare time over the last couple of years – "The 30 Years of MMEB Box Set".

Well unlike many, in fact most of the fans out there, I was a big fan of Manfred Mann in the sixties. To start with I loved those timeless classics like "Do Wah Diddy Diddy" and "5-4-3-2-1". As time went on, street cred became more and more threatened at a time in life when street cred was about the most important thing on earth (other than sex) and steam trains had dropped to a poor third. This lead to conversations like "well you should hear the B-side, or didn't you see them playing cool Jazz on the Julie Felix show or catch the Wednesday play this week Manfred and Mike did the music. I was too young and innocent to know about the "Ski Full of Fitness Song" (thank God), we probably didn't have anything as healthy as yoghurts in our house. I did kinda of know that Klaus Voorman did the Hovis voice at the start of the commercial. Oddly perhaps, that didn't crop up in conversations defending "My Name is Jack" against Creams latest.

Things got better. I am the other person you have longed to meet for years who liked Manfred Mann Chapter III. Where are the guitars man? Even in recent times, big fans have accused poor Bernie Living of self indulgence...and Hendrix wasn't.

In the last few years things have got little better. If I got a pound or even a Euro for every time somebody who thinks they know me says 'Hey Phil, I saw in the paper today, your lot are on in Manchester, Southport, Bosnia, a small hotel in Bognor etc etc etc, referring of course to the Manfreds who have found a market for themselves playing all the stuff that caused me maximum embarrassment in the sixties and very little of the cool jazz and R&B, the serious stuff in other words. Now much older and wiser than back in the sixties I have learnt that "My Name is Jack" is in fact a well crafted and well performed pop song and when the mood is right can be enjoyable to the ear. Do I want everyone to think I devote my spare time to this kind of stuff. I should be so mature now that I don't care, but I did never grow up, probably moving to a Vicarage made out of paper did that. What is more I hate the idea of it being seen as a nostalgia thing, I mean shit I like Dido, The Sterophonics, Oasis, modern you know bands man, oh and steam trains of course, but that's different isn't it?

So what I am trying to say is being a Manfred Mann fan has never been easy. It probably never will be. We have to wait years for a new album, no gigs in the UK. It sometimes seems that just about every band ever in the world has been on 'Later with Jools Holland', except Manfred Mann's Earth Band and there can't be many other bands with no video or DVD in the shops.

Then there is Manfred himself. He will often dismiss whole tranches of his career. Whilst one of the things I like most about him is his desire to move on, change, evolve, not to stay the sam,e it can also be very frustrating.

So why not give up the whole thing and join the Wombles fan club for a bit of normality. Well I hope the Box Set when it arrives (which should be very soon) answers not only that question but many others.

For your money you will get four CD's. I make no apology for the inclusion of some very familiar material. I know that there is a limit to how many "best ofs" I would buy. With that in mind, I have tried even for a little variety here. A new 2001 live version of "Davy" for example. Nevertheless CD's two and three, entitled "Hollywood Town" and "Brothers and Sisters" cover much familiar territory with the odd jem hidden away. These however are very personal to me the compiler. Its what I like mostly on here, not always the great commercial tracks. There was some debate whether to include "Blinded" or not, it has been on every recent compilation album to date. In the end I decided it had to be there if this was to be a true 30 years album. CD1 "In the Beginning", traces the period from the end of the pop group to the establishment of the first MMEB and their first hit "Joybringer". Along the journey you will hear for the first time music that was long believed to have been lost for ever. Not only is this music good, but for me it kinda fills the gap. CD1 highlights the great Mick Rogers, co founder of MMEB. CD's 2 and 3 feature a number of vocalists from the last 30 years including the late Steve Waller. In particular it features the voice of Chris Thompson who for many years has been the voice of MMEB. Sadly I could find very little unused Chris Thompson stuff, so there is just one song you have not heard sung by Chris, interestingly written by Mick. CD4 features MMEB's other great singer, Noel McCalla and fingers crossed and all being well contains only one previously released track from Plains Music. I tried to find an even better version of that and can honestly say I couldn't. The rest of CD4 is all being well a mixture of previously unreleased songs or different versions. About half of the tracks on CD4 are live recordings, the oldest from 1993 and the newest 2001. So as well as featuring Noel, the spotlight is also on long serving bass player Steve Kinch, as well as Mick Rogers and at least three different drummers.

I have listed at the end of the little book, fully illustrated with many previously unused pictures I might add, all, or nearly all the people who have ever performed with Manfred on a record since the first Chapter III album. There is a more detailed account of those who have been part of the various live bands over the years.

More than anybody however, this is about one man - Manfred Mann. He will always try to dismiss his importance in anything he has done. In the end, the last thirty years, good and bad, its down to him. In my view it goes back further than that. Listen to the Manfreds try their best to create an exact replica of a sixties hit and there is a big hole in it. Frustrating though it must be for them, the true fan can only hear the hole, despite how good the rest of them are. Manfred and his style was as much part of that as of everything else he does. Interestingly when the Manfreds try their own arrangement of a song like they do with "Come Tomorrow "and "Oh No Not My Baby" then it works really well, 'cause don't get me wrong these guys are bloody good themselves.

There is a common thread in Manfred's music, a kind of timeless thing which no matter how much his style evolves and changes is always there. I am not sure what it is exactly but few songs since 1963 don't have it. "My Little Red Book" is one and I was delighted to find out only recently that Manfred does not play on that track. Its there on "Blinded" and "Martha", its there on some of the new and very different stuff he is doing at the moment. I am not sure what it is some jazz thing maybe, something in the beat.

Try this at home. Imagine Manfred playing keyboards live on stage, imagine any non Manfred track Once in a while you might get a fit. Now take any Manfred track and try again, "DoWah Diddy" and "Blinded" will do and it does fit. Whatever song you take it will fit. That is why I have never understood fans who say dig MMEB but don't get Plains Music. Yes very different but its Manfred and whatever the secret ingredient is its there.

I believe that it is because of this 'secret ingredient' that little of Manfred's music ever dates. There are people who like to live in the past with their music and I suppose there is nothing wrong with that. There are people who like to dismiss music because it was made in the past and so in their view can have no relevance today. There are those who seem to think that to be creative in music you must be under a certain age. There are sadly many now who have no interest in the music but only in the sex, pain and drugs that the artist may have experienced along the way. This is so true now that I find that about 90% of actors and rock stars who confess to drugs or drink abuse with close to death experiences have probably got little more than a bad caffeine habbit. The cynic in me can't help but wonder if it's that more than the music that gets some of them on 'Later with Jools Holland' though.

Manfred may not get to play stuff from the box on Jool's show, not even for the reasons I have given, but maybe even because Manfred does not want to. Manfred quite rightly will want to play the new stuff. What you will have beyond the very nice packaging, the brilliant book what I wrote, the brilliant photographs many of which I also took, around half the material previously unreleased is a collection of varied but timeless music spanning one rock legends career from the end of the first phase.

This is not a trip down memory lane, even though the music spans five decades. I hope when you get hold of a copy you find it challenging, fun and enjoyable. I think the oldest track dates from 1969 and the newest from hopefully the next project - so 2002. I have tried very hard to avoid using any track just because it was unreleased or a different version. Of course it is always subjective but I have tried to use only material that sounds good to me. As for retrospective albums, looking back, nostalga all that horrible stuff, don't worry Manfred.

'We Have No Past' - this is just Thirty Years and more of Manfred Mann's Earth Band.

Please note I can't give a final track listing just yet, you will just have to wait a bit longer. Likewise latest news on a release date as soon as we know. As I said its never been easy being a Manfred Mann fan so why should it change now!

All the best... (Philip) Andy Taylor

(Carol sends her love)

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