MAIL: A MIXED MAILBAG

I am so uncertain as to whether there are any songs about e-mails that I am not going to look. Any complaints about that, send me a S.A.E. for my nuanced response. I like letters, yet I cannot recall the last time I either sent or received one, other than electronically. Even birthday and christmas cards seem but a fond memory, as even aged aunts resort to social media to mark their notice of such milestones. So, what then is the purpose of a postal service, mail and mailmen (and women)? Junk, bills and amazon deliveries seems to be the answer. Given at least one of our small and loyal band of posters works in a country where such luxury no longer exists, how long, I wonder, will the rest of us be graced by the regular tap tap tap of the postman's knock? And will that demise be hastened by the opinion of the extravagantly haired buffoon (U.S. version) wanting to knock postal voting out the ocean?

Time then to remind ourselves of the power of the post: the excitement and anticipation of writing and sending a letter to a loved one, awaiting, with baited breath, for a response. And then? Tell me text is as poignant, e-mail as effective, and I'll tell you different. Far too quick, too instant: where's the build up of hope, increasing by the day, layer upon layer. And supposing then, like this song, you then get this reply?

Since the gruff tones of Alex Chilton helmed the original Boxtops version, back in 1967, this song has been covered oodles, often from similarly chalky voiced singers, most attacking the lyric at the same lick. Walking in Memphis hitmaker Marc Cohn gives it a slightly less frantic approach, a sense of quiet determination rather than the breakneck rush of the original. I like it and hope he got there safe.

But it isn't always so simple, as Richard Thompson so exquisitely describes. A rousing song he still finishes most live shows with, it has a real zydeco vibe to it, many folk learning of the song through the version by cajun squeezeboxer Jo-El Sonnier. But prior to that, swamp rocker Jerry Williams had released the featured version, again, as with 'The Letter', a less frantic version, one that swings, perhaps like a pendulum of the emotions brought on by the letter in question. I say swamp rocker because that's what Williams sounds like, and an assumption I certainly initially made. In fact, he was a Swede, most of his career based there, as early rock'n'roll enticed the youth of his homeland just as much as the rest of the world. As a bonus, here is a link to the great RT, knowing he has fans here, this being from David Sanbourn's great 80s/90s TV show, Night Music, and which features him, alongside both Thompson and the above mentioned Sonnier.

Worse still than any reply, is the spectre of no reply, insult added to by the injury of having the letter you first sent dropped back to your door. Classic Elvis is the template, obviously, but I enjoy this curiously upbeat version, coming from the possibly little known Dave Kelly. However, if you are familiar with UK blues maestros, the, um, Blues Band, fronted by ex-Manfred Mann frontman and BBC radio blues broadcaster Paul Jones, you will recognise the voice and the slide guitar of Kelly. Sticking with a mail theme, here is that band, with a Son house classic.

You can find these songs yourself, but maybe won't think of this.....

MASKS: MASQUE/MANFRED MANN'S EARTHBAND

O, shame the poor wag who suggested the name of the album was a suggestion to the band. Cripes, they aren't that ugly, are they? Hardly Slipknot territory, or the Straitjackets, both those bands clearly victims to the horror of looks only their mothers could love.

(OK, I accept the above may not even be the same line-up as for Masque, and who would? But it is an awkward cantilever to my introduction of an anecdote. Back when my brother was at Uni in the late 60s, and Manfred Mann, as in the then incarnation of his eponymous band, was always riding high in the charts, he too employed on of those natty beard without 'tache numbers. And specs. One day, at Glasgow's Central station, he was shouted at by two girls: "ooo, look it's Manfred." And then they ran off. That's it.)

Manfred Mann, the band, had a pretty damn fine career, littering the charts with singles and getting a rare accolade from Bob Dylan, who had suggested they did the best versions of his songs. (To be fair, have you heard the original of Mighty Quinn?) Having exhausted initial vocalist Paul Jones, who moved onto worlds bluer, and then Mike D'Abo to songs poppier, Mann ditched the band, bar drummer Mike Hutt, for the singularly unsuccessful Manfred Mann Chapter Three. The rest of the band had meanwhile largely found a home in the brief burst of joy of McGuinness Flint. You would think that would be that for the South African piano player.

However, against the odds, Mann bounced back. Always more a jazz noodler than teen delight, prog rock was just the vista his vision required, and the Earthband plunged, fully formed, into the charts with a cover, this time of a 'new' Dylan, one Bruce Springsteen. The song? Blinded by the Light, that perhaps the only part of the lyric discernible to young boys intent on singing along.

Masque was astonishingly their thirteenth (!!) album, and the last ahead of a temporary hiatus, between 1987 and 1996. Unsurprisingly, as is the way of all all warhorses, he pulls a version of the band around to this day. But Masque was the first to really catch my ear. Having been a huge fan of the Nice and ELP, where Keith Emerson would fuse classical pomp with rock, Mann too liked to weld these opposites, his ambition having always been to put out a rock version of Gustav Holst's The Planets Suite. Annoyingly the executors of Holst's estate continued to put a block on this, as they had when the idea was first aired to them years earlier. So only one track, the opener and single, Joybringer, gets the direct lift and a composing credit for Gustav, with other tracks merely alluding to occasional planets, and hints of their musical inspiration. (In fact, Jupiter/Joybringer had had a first lick of paint back in 1973, when Mann first came up with the idea, released as a non album single.) Planets Schmanets, on side two, probably sums up Mann's opinion of the executors. Confusingly, interspersed there are songs with credits to sources as disparate as Horace Silver, Paul Weller and Michael Murphey. It makes for quite a milky way of influences, all in all. If you can keep up the canter between styles, it is well worth the ride, perhaps also explaining the title, each "masque" being applied as the band skip from the classics to 1940s big band jazz to synth pop to singer-songwriter staples. Phew!

Here are the two versions of Joybringer, 1973, above, and 1985, below, for comparison.

So now you know who the Masqued Mann really was!

Here.