Manfred Mann

Opening with Mike Hugg's title track, which builds on Mick Rogers' intense riffing and the killer vocals of Vicki Brown, Judith Powell, Liza Strike, and Ruby James, Messin' is pretty intense and involving from its very first bars. It's also damned topical and serious, for all of the free-wheeling rock & roll spirits and the progressive rock complexities that go into the playing. And the result is a spellbinding whole, featuring some astonishing keyboard flourishes by Manfred Mann himself (who ventures into Rick Wakeman and Keith Emerson territory on "Buddah," even as the rest of the band seems to be emulating Deep Purple) and killer guitar from Mick Rogers, while Colin Pattenden and Chris Slade lay down the rhythm section like a pair of articulate pile-drivers.

Opening with Mike Hugg's title track, which builds on Mick Rogers' intense riffing and the killer vocals of Vicki Brown, Judith Powell, Liza Strike, and Ruby James, Messin' is pretty intense and involving from its very first bars. It's also damned topical and serious, for all of the free-wheeling rock & roll spirits and the progressive rock complexities that go into the playing. And the result is a spellbinding whole, featuring some astonishing keyboard flourishes by Manfred Mann himself (who ventures into Rick Wakeman and Keith Emerson territory on "Buddah," even as the rest of the band seems to be emulating Deep Purple) and killer guitar from Mick Rogers, while Colin Pattenden and Chris Slade lay down the rhythm section like a pair of articulate pile-drivers.

The album that was Manfred Mann's commercial breakthrough was a departure from the previous albums made with the Earth Band. Though the personnel are the same and the musicianship is as mind-blowing as ever, the songs are shorter and punchier, in some cases more poppy. This is not to say that the band had sacrificed a bit of ingenuity or complexity, but the long jams are gone in favor of briefer sound portraits. Nightingales and Bombers included Manfred Mann's first cover of a Bruce Springsteen song, the album-opening "Spirits in the Night," a single that charted, and became one of the only pieces written in 10/4 time ever to do so.

Manfred Mann's 1980 album is a strange mix of topical songwriting, progressive rock, and power pop – from its opening seconds, the Earth Band is pressing serious messages and social commentary on their listenership amid swirling prog rock keyboards and catchy guitar hooks and choruses. The whole package is challenging in ways that should have put them on the cutting edge of rock music at the outset of that decade, but one suspects that Mann and company were too musically adept and sophisticated for their own good – a little dumbing down and maybe a little less musicianship on display would have made them more accessible to the coming MTV generation.

In 1992, Manfred Mann's Earth Band in its latest incarnation delivered a new album that retraced a few earlier steps and got closer to finishing some ideas that earlier incarnations of the band had begun. The result was Masque, a strange and beautiful (and strangely beautiful) mix of jazz, rock, classical, and pop sounds, drawing on compositions from Paul Weller to Gustav Holst…

Another piece of topical hard rock from Manfred Mann's Earth Band and, as before, listenable even to those without a serious bone in their bodies, by virtue of the playing. Moving between hard rock and British blues influences (with a special debt to Cream on the opening cut, "Give Me the Good Earth") and progressive rock, the quartet cuts a mean swathe across the sonic landscape, between Mick Rogers' soaring guitar solos and Manfred Mann's inimitable synthesizer work. Some of the less ambitious cuts, such as "I'll Be Gone," are relatively dispensable, but when these guys start reaching, as on "Earth Hymn," that's when their best musical instincts take hold, and the results are always worth hearing.

This 25-song CD (originally a shorter LP called The Singles Album) is a handy collection of the band's most well-known English tracks from 1963 through 1966, plus their B-sides and some songs off of EPs that charted high in the U.K. Except for the final three songs – "Groovin'," "Can't Believe It," and "Did You Have to Do That?," none of which are that easy to find on compilations – it's all assembled in chronological order from their debut single "Why Should We Not" to 1966's "You Gave Me Somebody to Love." The notes by John Tobler are a bit superficial, and the American EMI Manfred Mann: The Definitive Collection is a little more adventurous. Also, the sound here doesn't match the presence and clarity of more recent 24-bit transfers. Nonetheless, this is a respectable compilation for the novice or the casual fan. The presence of the B-sides, including lost gems like "What Did I Do Wrong" (a killer Chess-style blues number written by Tom McGuinness) and the Goffin/King-authored "Oh No Not My Baby" (one of Paul Jones's greatest R&B-style performances), assures that one gets a truer picture of the band's output and their focus on R&B, jazz, blues, and folk, than the A-sides by themselves would provide.

18 hits including Mighty Quinn, Ha Ha the Clown, the Vicar's Daughter, I Wanna Be Rich and more. This is the definitive compilation covering the Mike D'Abo era. This compilation is book-ended by two Bob Dylan songs (Mighty Quinn, Just like a woman), both of which were among the seven top ten UK hits that Manfred Mann clocked up with Mike D'Abo as lead singer between 1966 and 1969 following the departure of the original lead singer, Paul Jones.