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Remakes can be atrocious wastes of wax: subpar carbon copy re-treads dressed up as calculated idolatry, or deconstructionist reconfigurations basking in the laziness of lyrics already written. However, two of the greatest rewrites in history belong to Manfred Mann's Earth Band. The treatments of Bruce Springsteen's "Blinded By the Light" and "For You" included here create a wholly unique variation on the stark, earthy originals by flipping the tracks and exposing the soft, white underbelly, then piling on excessive musical ornamentation like a master filmmaker visualizing a novel, blowing the inspiration at the nucleus into a bowdlerized paronomasia of sonic perfection.

Blinded By The Light: The Very Best Of Manfred Mann's Earth Band is a compilation album released in 1992 by Manfred Mann's Earth Band. Manfred Mann's Earth Band are an English rock band formed by South African musician Manfred Mann. The band's hits include covers of Bruce Springsteen's "For You","Blinded by the Light" and "Spirit In The Night". After forming in 1971 and despite a short hiatus in the late 1980s/early 1990s, the Earth Band has continued to perform and tour through the present.

The Best Of Manfred Mann's Earth Band is a compilation album released in 1993 by Manfred Mann's Earth Band. After a very successful period in the 60's with the pop group named after him and a much less successful intermezzo in Jazz with Chapter Three, the South-African born keyboardist Manfred Mann turned towards Rock music. In 1971 he formed Manfred Mann's Earth Band (MMEB). Mann's use of the Moog synthesizer was key to the sound of this band. MMEB had a very successful area during the mid 70's and early 80's but was disbanded by Mann in 1987 after being fed up with trying to produce hit records. He started a project which was based mostly on the music of Native American Indians named Manfred Mann's Plain Music and which released one album. After this Mann reformed the MMEB in 1991 and was starting again to release records with them occasionally but also to be a regular live band with extensive tours mostly in Europe until today.

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 reason that The Roaring Silence became Manfred Mann's Earth Band's best-selling album may have been because of both Bruce Springsteen-penned singles, but its instrumental makeup, by way of Mann's keyboard manipulation coupled with Chris Thompson's chiseled singing, had just as much of an affect. "Blinded By the Light" and "Spirit in the Night" gave the band hits at both ends of the Top 40 spectrum, with "Blinded" going to number one while the mysteriously-sounding "Spirit in the Night" edged in at number 40 six months later. Outside of the singles, The Roaring Silence is made up of clean-cut, well-established synthesizer and guitar work, with touches of techno psychedelia that are sometimes lengthy but never messy.

Somewhere in Afrika, an ode to Mann's home country of South Africa, contains a formula that is atypical of Manfred Mann's Earth Band sound. With rhythms that combine an African flavor with a modern rock feel, vocalist Mick Rogers takes over on vocals with the number 22 hit "Runner," released as the album's only single. Tracks such as "Demolition Man" and "Eyes of Nostradamus" are model Earth Band efforts, but the compelling material lies in songs such as "Lalela," "Koze Kobenini," and the title track, which conveys Mann's love for his birthplace without sounding overly pretentious or manufactured. The instrumentation is solid and free-flowing, with drums and other percussion work coming to the forefront while maintaining the group's atmosphere as a rock band.

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.

The second album by Manfred Mann's Earth Band to be released in 1972, Glorified Magnified is as solid a heavy rock album as you're likely to find from that era, and it still holds up three decades later, mostly because these guys are smarter than the music they're playing and don't mind indulging their taste as well as their dexterity. They can romp and stomp through "Meat" or "I'm Gonna Have You All," complete with a slashing guitar solo by Mick Rogers on the latter, or throw in a synthesizer interlude by Mann on "One Way Glass" that's so quietly and carefully executed as to be worthy of a classical piece – and not skip a beat doing it.

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.