1 post tagged “manfred mann”
Here's the further post on Chris Thompson, guitarist and singer with Night, that I alluded to a few days ago. Some months ago, while reading Russian linguist George Starostin's record reviews on Only Solitaire (warning: do not start reading Only Solitaire unless you can afford to get sucked in for hours on end; Starostin is an unabashed fan of what would become codified as Album-Oriented Rock, and has written the most thoughtful, comprehensive, and engaging reviews of AOR albums that I have ever come across), something stirred a distant memory. I was reading his page on Manfred Mann's Earth Band, and in his review of the 1979 album Angel Station (sung by Chris Thompson), he writes:
Another positive highlight is the weird, near-mystical ode 'Angels At My Gate', in this reviewer's humble opinion, one of the best songs in Manfred Mann's entire catalog. The AMG review had an interesting idea about how Peter Gabriel's 'Games Without Frontieres' might have been influenced by this composition, and hey well you know, they just might have something there; in any case, it's hardly any worse, and sports pretty much the same thrilling otherworldly atmosphere, with echoey ominous drums, misty vocals and heavenly synths somewhere high up in the sky. And the only thing that can keep that threatening chorus out of your head - '58, 56, 54, good angels at my door...' is the fact that you can easily mess up the numbers.
I dimly remember lying in bed late one night in eighth grade (1979) listening to the radio and hearing a weird song with descending numbers in the lyrics. This was back in the heyday of rock radio, when WAVA would play a new album in its entirety every weeknight at 11:00. Could this be the song that left an imprint on my mind nearly twenty-five years later after hearing it just once? I've finally gotten a copy of Angel Station, and yes, that's the song!
The fact that I found the album cover so weird and unsettling probably helped burned the song into my memory. The All-Music Guide review, which is reproduced on about a zillion other websites, makes mention of the "John Shaw-photographed album cover." I can't track down this John Shaw, but I think it's fair to say he was influenced by Storm Thorgerson's work with Hignosis, who made "weird and unsettling" the order of the day for 70s rock album covers. Thorgerson is still doing it, too, most recently for Muse and The Mars Volta, and his designs are just as weird and unsettling as ever.
Hey, this song would make a good mashup with Duran Duran's "The Chauffeur":
