On the strength of a scratchy 45 of mine, “Midnight Blue,” I’ve been drawn into the world of Melissa Manchester, yes, the height of 1970s riding-around-with-my-mom-in-the-car radio. I’ve learned a lot. Manchester co-wrote “Midnight Blue” and “Whenever I Call You Friend,” and long before the 1980s brought “You Should Hear How She Talks About You” and other minor chestnuts, was recording albums in classic singer-songwriter style–Home to Myself, Bright Eyes, Melissa, Help Is on the Way. She not only a singing, but playing piano, writing many or most of the songs on her albums, often with long-term writing partner Carole Bayer Sager.
I picked up a two-CD, four-album set featuring these albums and started playing it in the background of my typing doings, noticing when “Midnight Blue” came on, when she did a good cover of “Dirty Work,” and occasionally had my ear perked with other pieces of songs. I started hearing shades of piano I never expected, minor keys, quiet playing in the dark, something as set in another world, or at least a rare home of her own, her quiet corner of NYC. “Easy,” “Jenny,” “Bright Eyes,” “I Don’t Want to Hear It Anymore.” These songs caught me, and reminded me of one of my favorite albums of all time.
There are only a few albums that have instantly made me feel I had entered another dimension, another world, another landscape to explore. These three always spring to mind: 1977 by Talking Heads, Murmur by R.E.M., Mental Notes by Split Enz. This last came out in 1975, just after the first two Manchester albums I listed, and the same year as the third. Mental Notes has elements of early Genesis, but it really is a thing unto itself. And I guess now I can add there’s a bit of Melissa Manchester, those moments of quiet piano. If you listen to the stylings of Eddie Rayner and Tim Finn on “Time for a Change,” you’ll hear a touch and more of what she was playing. In the quiet corners of one the best albums ever recorded–the latter halves of “Stranger than Fiction” and “Under the Wheel,” and times when they segue into rollicking beats–you might hear her.
What would it be like if Bronx-born Melissa had been the Split Enz keyboardist? I discovered the great Akiko Yano in a mental/Wikipedia exercise, starting with a thought and looking for a pianist to fill the spot. I am glad I stumbled into Melissa Manchester in a similar way, albeit backwards–starting with a hit song and surprisingly finding a corner of her musicianship I’d never expected.
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[…] isn’t the first time Phil Judd and Split Enz have surfaced here in Stevesunusual Land. This is an outstanding music video, showcasing Noel […]
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[…] Streisand’s never meant too much to me. Stoney End is a great album I invested in some time ago. But, otherwise, of her films, her life, and her earlier and later songs, only her ridiculous version of “Jingle Bells” figures in my active consciousness as I find myself singing it once every year or two. And, although she didn’t write anything I can think of, she did have a way of making songs her own, as singers of earlier eras and her ilk do. (Sometimes—even in the era of sing-songwriters—it’s surprising to learn that they did write a lot of their own material, as is the case of Melissa Manchester.) […]
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