Major Letdowns: Manfred Mann's Earth Band, "Masque"

If there's one subject I've written about more than any other over the last 30 years or so, it's the various ways in which the market trends of the '80s forced countless veteran artists to take a bunch of wildly unlikely detours. It's a subject that will apparently never stop being fascinating for me, and I make no apologies for this — why, a person could fill multiple books with all the things that went haywire when new wave happened to old artists, and that's just the tip of the musical iceberg. If you'd managed to go gold or platinum in the '60s or '70s and you still had a record deal in the '80s, it's all but certain that the decade left at least a couple of outliers in your discography.

Oh hi, Manfred Mann's Earth Band!

It's probably safe to assume that for most people, Manfred and/or his Earth Band ceased to exist after hitting No. 1 with their cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Blinded by the Light," but the truth is, they're still around; minus a hiatus between 1988-'90, they've remained a going concern since the early '70s. There's something to be said for that. (I'm not sure it's a positive something, but something nonetheless.) They were always odd ducks, musically speaking — if all you've ever heard is "Blinded by the Light," it'd be easy to assume they were hairy-chested, denim-clad heartland rockers, but they're really an English band named for their keyboard-playing South African leader, a guy whose tastes toe the line between admirably eclectic and simply strange. Though Mann's prog leanings are perhaps the chief (and arguably sole) through line across the group's catalog, their records are also dotted with covers of cuts by seemingly unrelated artists. For example, in 1984, they scored an extremely unlikely No. 22 hit in the States with their cover of "Runner," a song written and originally recorded by Ian Thomas, younger brother of legendary Canadian comedian Dave Thomas:

"Runner" arrived on the heels of 1982's well-received Somewhere in Afrika album, a sort of proto-Graceland that saw Mann — who'd been banned from his native country due to his outspoken opposition to apartheid — sending various collaborators back home to work with South African artists. The stage seemed to be set for a commercial resurgence of sorts, which is perhaps why the band left its longtime label home of Bronze Records and signed a new deal with Virgin. The fruits of that signing first emerged in 1986 with Criminal Tango, which took the quite '80s sonic stylings heard on "Runner" and turned them up a few notches; undaunted by that album's relative commercial failure, Mann stuck with the synths for its follow-up, 1987's Masque.

At this point, it was probably apparent to everyone involved on either side of the band/label relationship that Manfred Mann's Earth Band were massively out of step with current trends, no matter how they tried to gussy up their sound. Full credit to Mann, then, for doing whatever the hell he wanted anyway — Masque, subtitled Songs and Planets, is the bowdlerized fulfillment of an idea he'd been futzing with since the early '70s, specifically to fashion some sort of rock opera out of Holst's The Planets. Rights issues thwarted Mann's earlier attempts, and they'd eventually harpoon his original concept for Masque; ultimately, the planetary stuff is merely dotted across the album's firmament, with a whole bunch of starry-eyed nonsense scattered in between.

The record kicks off with "Joybringer (from Jupiter)," a re-recording of a '70s Earth Band track that lists Holst as one of its credited writers. Things come immediately screaming back to Earth with "Sister Billy's Bounce," a sort of spiritual Jive Bunny predecessor that uses machine-driven beats and synthy tomfoolery to stitch Horace Silver's "Sister Sadie" in with the Charlie Parker classic "Billie's Bounce." The results are fun enough in an extremely late '80s way, but I have to question whether this is the type of thing Manfred Mann fanns were looking for. (Tough luck if they weren't — the very similar "Billy's Orno Bounce" pops up just a few songs later.) This is followed by a cover of the Jam's "What You Give Is What You Get (Start)," which might seem strange unless you already know the band had covered "Going Underground" for Criminal Tango, in which case it might seem stranger still. Next is "Telegram to Monica," featuring bass and lead vocals from U.K. music vet Denny Newman.

You probably get the idea. Like a lot of acts named for bandleaders who don't sing, Manfred Mann's Earth Band were emboldened to embrace their lack of a unifying "sound" by following the muse wherever she happened to flit, with often amusingly unpredictable results. (Another example: the cover of Cream's "We're Going Wrong" that shows up later on in Masque.) This isn't an approach I tend to particularly enjoy, but it certainly has its merits, as any fan of the Alan Parsons Project will probably be more than happy to argue at length. I would personally argue, however, that in order for it to really work, the songs need to be corralled by some type of central concept; using your album title to pretend they do isn't quite good enough.

The other issue here, naturally, is the production, which — per the time — is stultifyingly programmed. If you know me, you know I have an enormous soft spot for the digi-soft late '80s sound, so it isn't like I'm standing here pretending to think it's dumb that Mann played something called a "trumpeton" (presumably some sort of trumpet-imitating EWI) on this record, or that Ian Porter is credited with "emulator toggling" in the liner notes. What I'm saying is that there's a fundamental disconnect between a band taking this type of wild, ill-fated swing and the aggressively programmed nature of the results. When someone strides out on stage and their pants fall down, that's a real human moment that deserves real human emotions; instead, what you get with Masque is the sound of some lads wanking around with a bunch of MIDI software in a vain attempt to disguise their work as some sort of statement.

Again, Masque isn't an unpleasant listen, at least if you're in the mood to hear what could happen when big egos and a decent sense of humor were combined with the latest technology in 1987. On the other hand, it also sounds a lot like what it was — the last gasp of a long-running act before taking a couple of years off to regroup and figure out what should happen next. (The answer to that question, incidentally, was 1991's Plains Music, an album which, in Mann's words, "consists mainly of the melodies of the North American Plains Indians.")

Masque achieved its greatest success in Germany, where it peaked at No. 44. It charted nowhere else in the world.