Monday's Long Song

 

Most regular visitors to these pages will know that I grew up in the 1970's. Glam rock was the first kind of music that really captivated me. Older friends taught me to listen to and appreciate other kinds of music as well. I still remember very clearly one afternoon when I went to visit my school friend Wolfgang and his older brother played us some records from his collection. I’d heard of Jimi Hendrix and Chicago before, but there was one band that really caught my attention.

It was Slow Motion by the Welsh rock band Man. I wanted to listen to the record because the cover featured a picture of Alfred E. Neumann, the mascot of the satirical magazine Mad, holding a fish in his hands. Man were Micky Jones’s band, which had a constantly changing line-up over the years. British blues rock with sprawling guitar jams was their trademark and set them apart from the crowd of bands at the time. In 1975, they released Maximum Darkness, a live album documenting their tour with John Cippolina, the mastermind behind Quicksilver Messenger Service.

It’s an album I still hold in high regard today, as Cippolina’s guitar adds a psychedelic element to their sound. The guitar work is raw, the beat is driving, and at the time it was unsettling for many in my circle of friends. For fans, this was of little consequence, but Man faded into obscurity at the latest when punk turned the music scene on its head a year later.

Man - 7171-551