Anchor ads are not supported on this page.

4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs

Manfred Mann's Earth Band: “Glorified Magnified”

Manfred Mann's Earth Band

“Glorified Magnified”

Best known for their covers, Manfred and his Earth Band first charted with their 1964 cover of the cloyingly/annoyingly pop rendition of “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” by the Exciters. Thirteen years later the Earth Band would create one of the most memorable and misheard lyrics of the seventies. Seemingly an endorsement for feminine hygienic products, “Blinded by the Light” became known as “that song about the douche.” And the douche wasn't Manfred or even Bruce Springsteen who originally penned the song. Instead, “Blinded by the Light” was the title track on Springsteen's first album with the E-Street band: “Greeting from Ashbury Park.” The record failed to chart anything other than Springsteen's new-found ability to cash in using his denim vest and un-worked hands. The line actually sung by Manfred and Springclean is “revved up like a deuce.” Filtered through America’s mass unconsciousness, the line becomes “wrapped up like a douche.[1]”

It is however through a serious approach that finds Glorified Magnified as the bands awakening and transformative record. 1972 saw the band moving away from their R&B home (though they still had some of their stuff in the basement and came home to do their laundry) and settling into progressive rock tendencies.

The real eye-separating moments come from the absurd and almost Zappaesque[2] explorations into the ridiculous and unconventional. “Meat” marks the opening of the record as well as the high-watermark of Glorified Magnified. Towering and with childlike simplicity, the guitars on “Meat” echo, pulse, and lull above Manfred's voice. Largely instrumental and oddly constructed, the piece careens from Manfred's scolding: “You don't take life / But the cat take life / Jump, now turn around / Who wrong? You wrong / What you gonna do son / Jump, now turn around,” to a deliberate back and forth of guitar licks. Slowly now the disintegration comes through the speakers. The guitars noodle, the synthesizers synth, and Manfred's jingoistic slogan on vegetarianism? returns through a distorted and pre-recorded track. Then it all fades out, which is the trademark of being unable/unwilling to write an appropriate coda.

The B-side opens after a few through-away-tracks with “Down Home,” a by the numbers (I, IV, V) blues number that doesn't cause much of a stir in the listener's frontal cortex.

The next course is what? More covers. That's right. That's rock's bread and sexual butter. Don't reinvent the wheel just put a new spin on it and dole it out by the wooden spoonful. Dylan's (Zimmerman's) famous “It's All Over Now Baby Blue” from his 1965 album “Bringing it All Back Home,” gets re-imagined (slightly) by the gang with little success or dazzle before leading into the eponymous “Glorified Magnified.”

As far as being proto-anything, the Earth Band is not. Their mixture of Blues, R & B, Rock, and semi-prog-rock, is nothing more than a dilution of the ingredients. Yet when the band expands into a kaleidoscopic haze of discord that rises, falls, waxes and wanes – only to emerge the borderline skronk[3] at a recognizable juncture, does the band approach majestic silver seas.

  1. There are numerous examples of misheard lyrics contained in the annals of rock music. “Bad Moon Rising” from Creedence Clearwater Revival's 1969 album Green River, has the line “there's a bad moon on the rise” which is frequently garbled into “there's a bathroom on the right. Perhaps most famous is the homosexual rendering of The Jimi Henrdix Experience's 1967 song Purple Haze. Here the line “excuse me while I kiss the sky,” becomes 'scuse me while I plant one on this guy over here. The common thread here? A base rendering of already vapid lyrics that were likely first heard through tiny transistor radios rather than polyphonic high-fidelity home stereos. These mishearings have become so prolific that the term mondegreen has been applied to them.

  2. Duck calls and fragmentation place the Earth band in some aspects under Zappa's Motherly wing. However, none of Zappa and his Mother's nonsense parodies are present.

  3. Coined by Escondido resident and legendary music reviewist, Lester Bangs, it is used to define a-tonal or non-musical music. In Bang's 1981article “A Reasonable Guide to Horrible Music” he reaches back as far as Blue Cheer's crud album “Vincebus Eruptum” or more knowingly the outro/ending to the Beatles “Helter Skelter” as early examples of skronk.  “Look at it this way” Lester writes “there are many here among us for whom the life force is best represented by the livid twitching of one tortured nerve, or even a full-scale anxiety attack. I do not subscribe to this point of view 100%, but I understand it, have lived it. Thus the shriek, the caterwaul, the chainsaw gnarlgnashing, the yowl and the whizz that decapitates may be reheard by the adventurous or emotionally damaged as mellifluous bursts of unarguable affirmation.” It may be of some use to know that he was portrayed by Philip Seymour Hoffman in the film “Almost Famous.”

http://sandiegoreader.com/users/photos/2012/may/06/23979/

Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all

Previous article

Tár is a waste of time

The only great classical music movie is Amadeus
Next Article

Tim Flannery, Pete “Pops” Escovedo, Roger Clyne, Orion Song, Jeff Berkley

Jazz, country, R&B, rock, and acoustic evenings in La Jolla, Little Italy, Ramona, and Solana Beach

Manfred Mann's Earth Band

“Glorified Magnified”

Best known for their covers, Manfred and his Earth Band first charted with their 1964 cover of the cloyingly/annoyingly pop rendition of “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” by the Exciters. Thirteen years later the Earth Band would create one of the most memorable and misheard lyrics of the seventies. Seemingly an endorsement for feminine hygienic products, “Blinded by the Light” became known as “that song about the douche.” And the douche wasn't Manfred or even Bruce Springsteen who originally penned the song. Instead, “Blinded by the Light” was the title track on Springsteen's first album with the E-Street band: “Greeting from Ashbury Park.” The record failed to chart anything other than Springsteen's new-found ability to cash in using his denim vest and un-worked hands. The line actually sung by Manfred and Springclean is “revved up like a deuce.” Filtered through America’s mass unconsciousness, the line becomes “wrapped up like a douche.[1]”

It is however through a serious approach that finds Glorified Magnified as the bands awakening and transformative record. 1972 saw the band moving away from their R&B home (though they still had some of their stuff in the basement and came home to do their laundry) and settling into progressive rock tendencies.

The real eye-separating moments come from the absurd and almost Zappaesque[2] explorations into the ridiculous and unconventional. “Meat” marks the opening of the record as well as the high-watermark of Glorified Magnified. Towering and with childlike simplicity, the guitars on “Meat” echo, pulse, and lull above Manfred's voice. Largely instrumental and oddly constructed, the piece careens from Manfred's scolding: “You don't take life / But the cat take life / Jump, now turn around / Who wrong? You wrong / What you gonna do son / Jump, now turn around,” to a deliberate back and forth of guitar licks. Slowly now the disintegration comes through the speakers. The guitars noodle, the synthesizers synth, and Manfred's jingoistic slogan on vegetarianism? returns through a distorted and pre-recorded track. Then it all fades out, which is the trademark of being unable/unwilling to write an appropriate coda.

The B-side opens after a few through-away-tracks with “Down Home,” a by the numbers (I, IV, V) blues number that doesn't cause much of a stir in the listener's frontal cortex.

The next course is what? More covers. That's right. That's rock's bread and sexual butter. Don't reinvent the wheel just put a new spin on it and dole it out by the wooden spoonful. Dylan's (Zimmerman's) famous “It's All Over Now Baby Blue” from his 1965 album “Bringing it All Back Home,” gets re-imagined (slightly) by the gang with little success or dazzle before leading into the eponymous “Glorified Magnified.”

As far as being proto-anything, the Earth Band is not. Their mixture of Blues, R & B, Rock, and semi-prog-rock, is nothing more than a dilution of the ingredients. Yet when the band expands into a kaleidoscopic haze of discord that rises, falls, waxes and wanes – only to emerge the borderline skronk[3] at a recognizable juncture, does the band approach majestic silver seas.

  1. There are numerous examples of misheard lyrics contained in the annals of rock music. “Bad Moon Rising” from Creedence Clearwater Revival's 1969 album Green River, has the line “there's a bad moon on the rise” which is frequently garbled into “there's a bathroom on the right. Perhaps most famous is the homosexual rendering of The Jimi Henrdix Experience's 1967 song Purple Haze. Here the line “excuse me while I kiss the sky,” becomes 'scuse me while I plant one on this guy over here. The common thread here? A base rendering of already vapid lyrics that were likely first heard through tiny transistor radios rather than polyphonic high-fidelity home stereos. These mishearings have become so prolific that the term mondegreen has been applied to them.

  2. Duck calls and fragmentation place the Earth band in some aspects under Zappa's Motherly wing. However, none of Zappa and his Mother's nonsense parodies are present.

  3. Coined by Escondido resident and legendary music reviewist, Lester Bangs, it is used to define a-tonal or non-musical music. In Bang's 1981article “A Reasonable Guide to Horrible Music” he reaches back as far as Blue Cheer's crud album “Vincebus Eruptum” or more knowingly the outro/ending to the Beatles “Helter Skelter” as early examples of skronk.  “Look at it this way” Lester writes “there are many here among us for whom the life force is best represented by the livid twitching of one tortured nerve, or even a full-scale anxiety attack. I do not subscribe to this point of view 100%, but I understand it, have lived it. Thus the shriek, the caterwaul, the chainsaw gnarlgnashing, the yowl and the whizz that decapitates may be reheard by the adventurous or emotionally damaged as mellifluous bursts of unarguable affirmation.” It may be of some use to know that he was portrayed by Philip Seymour Hoffman in the film “Almost Famous.”

http://sandiegoreader.com/users/photos/2012/may/06/23979/

Sponsored
Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed Big Screen — Movie commentary Blurt — Music's inside track Booze News — San Diego spirits Classical Music — Immortal beauty Classifieds — Free and easy Cover Stories — Front-page features Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts Feast! — Food & drink reviews Feature Stories — Local news & stories Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore From the Archives — Spotlight on the past Golden Dreams — Talk of the town The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it Letters — Our inbox Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news News Ticker — News & politics Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated Poetry — The old and the new Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers Reading — The hunt for intellectuals Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds SD on the QT — Almost factual news Sheep and Goats — Places of worship Special Issues — The best of Street Style — San Diego streets have style Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves Theater — On stage in San Diego this week Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads Your Week — Daily event picks
4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs
Close

Anchor ads are not supported on this page.