A Yawn in Your E-Mail - February 2006

The First Yawn of 2006

First of all Happy New Year everyone, or should I say happy already quite old year. I can't believe its February already! We haven't had too great a start. One of our dogs Harry died suddenly on New Year's Day. I went down with the worst flu ever, although others described it as a bad cold. (I was trying to work out when I last had contact with any birds!) The Taxman seems to think he should have most of my money, and we haven't seen sunshine for about a month.

As if to cheer my spirits, half way through this desperately miserable month, I found a flyer on Lime St station proclaiming the Blues Band were playing at Pacific Road, a fine little venue in Birkenhead, little more than ten of fifteen minutes from the Taylor homestead. I have always thought this would be a great venue for MMEB, pretty central for all UK fans (and bloody convenient for me.)

 I have mentioned before how much I admire the Blues Band, who come far closer to what you would have got for your money if you had gone to see the Manfreds back in the sixties. Rhythm and Blues is timeless music, so the Blues band also always sounds fresh and exciting. If you still haven't checked out some of the very early Manfred stuff, trust me and try it. The Five faces of Manfred Mann, is a good starting point. Find me a better album for 1964 if you can!

 So did the Blues Band live up to my expectations I hear you cry. Well how should I know? The flyer simply told me they had performed the night before, so I had missed the show! I told you January was a bad month.

 Some nice things have happened. As I write these notes Manfred has just made a brief TV appearance on the program 'Classic Albums' discussing Jack Bruce's short period as a member of Manfred Mann in 1966.

 On Carol's birthday, we got Billy, a new Border collie pup, who I regret to report is very naughty. Late in the month I received samples of the Japanese MMEB albums to check out. These are absolutely wonderful miniatures of the old albums. The ones that had gatefold sleeves have had these reproduced beautifully. Inner sleeves are also exact replicas. You also get sleeve notes in Japanese, which are obviously not as good as the brilliant sleeve notes what I wrote. (They probably would be if I could read Japanese.) Each album has well chosen bonus tracks.

 Obviously you are buying these albums mostly for the packaging. There is nothing new here. The quality of the re-mastering sounds very good to me, although I probably should point out that I do not have the state of the art technology some of you out there obviously have. No doubt somebody will find hiss and drop out somewhere. (Incidentally if you want to see an example of re-mastering at its very best check out Doctor Who 'The Beginning' DVD as against a previously released video version of the pilot episode, 'An Unearthly Child'. It shows you what really can be done nowadays. The difference is quite incredible.)

The Japanese Messin has the full version of Black and Blue unlike the European version. This very much to the credit of those involved, tells you that they just haven't copied what has gone before.

I think it is possible now to have every Manfred album, from 'Five Faces' up to 'Budapest' in miniatures of their old 12-inch form. That is the HMV albums, 'Five Faces', 'Mann Made', 'Soul of Mann' and 'Mann Made Hits'. The Fontana albums have also been released, 'As Is' and 'Mighty Garvey', plus the budget album 'What A Mann' and a best of. I think 'Up the Junction' is also available, although I haven't seen it in that form yet.

 Also from the sixties you should still be able to track down a four CD set made up of perfect replicas of the Ascot/United Artists releases for the U.S. market. With the two wonderful Chapter III albums and the MMEB ones you could build up a very nice collection of mini replicas. For the more serious collectors I also have the rather odd Mike Vickers's album, Wish I Was A Group Again in this form. I also have a card cover version of Best of the Re-Masters, which I compiled a few years ago. This was done as a promotional disc. Although not an album there was also a nice card cover for the single Sikelele, and a promo for a sixties best of. There are no doubt others you can tell me about. Please do, because I'm a sucker for this kind of thing. Comes of being born a train spotter, I fear.

 So what can we look forward to in 2006? Well the big project is to do a DVD. This is in its early stages of development, so I can't promise you will actually see it in 2006, if ever. Remember how long you waited for a few odds and sods, although I hope you all agree it was very much worth the wait. The DVD is another exciting project. The idea is to put together archive footage hunted down from all over the world. I will tell you more as soon as I can. There is also talk of doing a live DVD from Germany, although nothing has been decided yet.

 Earth Band is due back on the road in the spring after quite a long break.

 I have had good feedback from German friends to the Manfred/Chris shows in Germany last December. As I understand it, they did 'Blinded', 'Davy', 'Quinn' and an instrumental version of 'Do Wah Diddy' and of course went down a storm. I am told that in previous years a live CD has been released of one of the nights, although I have no idea if this will happen this year.

 Lastly, it was good to hear from Michael Sanz recently. Michael for those of you who don't know was responsible for the brilliant Watch cover design. He has sent me some interesting photos, which I will pass on to Nigel who can hopefully make them available to everyone. These include a Citroen 2CV, with Michael's painting copied onto the back! There is also an oil painting he sold to Manfred in 1977, the guy who modelled for the cover artwork and a photo of the two original canvases. Thanks to Michael for sending me these.

There has been so much talk, about album covers this time that I thought I would extend that to the competition. So if you want to win one of the Japanese CDs, all you have to do is tell me the connection between As is and the Beatle's Revolver album. First correct answer is the winner. I think you will agree, a rather easy question to start the year. The more detailed the answer, the better please.

Good Luck. See you soon

Regards Andy Taylor

P S. Please keep telling people about my new novel, 'The Pirate of Heffen'. Thanks to all of you who have bought a copy. If you haven't bought a copy yet please do. Amazon is the best place. I have been getting great feedback so far, although I suppose you might just be being nice.

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