MANFRED MANN'S EARTH BAND

Before I got into Progressive Rock, I was quite a fan of Classic Rock. When I started exploring progressive rock music, I was surprised to find a number of bands that I had previously considered to be classic rock were also considered progressive rock - bands like Pink Floyd and Supertramp.

Manfred Mann's Earth Band is another entry in that list, although unlike with the previously mentioned artists, I didn't explore their discography until after I got into prog.

The Earth Band's debut album comes just three years after Manfred Mann's previous band (which was just called Manfred Mann)'s last single had charted. Back then he was doing the kind of music you would hear on an AM oldies station - an example of one of their most favorite tracks being "Do Wah Diddy Diddy".

Despite this heritage, the Earth Band's debut sounds modern (for the '70s). The influence of other classic and psych rock bands can be heard in both the composition style and the sound of the album. There is also a fairly noticeable blues base in a number of songs and some soulful vocal harmonies in a couple of the tracks.

The music is mostly vocal driven, barring a few instrumental tracks of which the too-short "Sloth" is my favorite and of which "Tribute" is also nice. The band does play with a love song (Living Without You), but it's not particularly good even as a love song. The tracks with the vocal harmonies are easily the most intense sounding on this album (Captain Bobby Scout, Please Mrs. Henry) but unfortunately they don't tend to go anywhere and repeat themselves an awful lot. The last two songs (Part Time Man, I'm Up And I'm Leaving) are almost completely different in feel, being more somber and featuring a different vocalist, and they are a bit of an odd way to end the album.

Still, for some fun, simple 70s rock that is coloured by the proggy direction the Earth Band would explore more later in their career, and that has a nice variety, you can't really go wrong with this album.