MANFRED MANN
BBC Sessions (EMI)
Reviewed by Alan Wright

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I enjoy the music of early Manfred Mann, and have been spinning the "Abbey Road Sessions" CD a lot, so I thought I'd check this baby out, too. There's a lot of really cool stuff on here, often showing off their penchant for recording odd covers and things they never laid down for any of their '60s albums. In fact, if you're looking for a lot of their better known numbers like like "5-4-3-2-1," "Hubble Bubble," "Cock-A-Hoop," "Doo Wah Diddy Diddy," "Quinn The Eskimo" and the like, you won't find it here. Other than "Sha La La," "Pretty Flamingo" and their cover of Dylan's "If You Gotta Go, Go Now," there's very little of their pop hits. Instead, you get a good cross section of their rougher R 'n' B and jazzier tunes. Some of the things they cover include blues standards like "Watermelon Man," "I Put A Spell On You," and "Parchman Farm," to the Goffin/King penned "Oh, No, Not My Baby," the Everly Brothers' "When Will I Be Loved" and Phil Spector's "What Am I To Do." There's a fair share of lesser-known originals like "The Abominable Snowman," "L.S.D.," (no, not the Pretties' song, rather an "original" which is basically "You Don't Love Me"), "The One In The Middle" (well, I guess that one's also pretty well known), "It Took A Little While" and "Tired Of Trying, Bored With Lying, Scared Of Dying." A couple of really off-the-wall covers that took me by surprise were an instrumental take on the Yardbirds' "Still I'm Sad" and Mort Shuman's "Machines," which I know most as a song by Lothar and the Hand People! Manfred Mann turn it into a horn-driven rocker, but it's still a weird song.

© 2002 - Alan Wright