Saw this in a second-hand record shop in London and was struck by the Nomi-ness - The Manhattan Transfer's 1979 album Extensions.
It's also very New Wave graphic design with its angular blocs of primary color. Shades too, on the back cover, of Kraftwerk's Man Machine.
In 1979 Klaus Nomi - although a couple of years away from releasing his debut album - was active on the Manhattan downtown scene. And at some point during that year Nomi appeared on Saturday Night Live with David Bowie alongside Joey Arias, another downtown performer type.
Still, this would be a somewhat recherche thing to be ripping off by a group as nostalgia-oriented as the Manhattan Transfer.
Presumably the idea came from the designer and the Transfer went along with it, perhaps hoping for access to the New Wave market.
The team behind the design, costuming and photography is quite stellar:
Art Direction and Design – Tako Ono
Front Cover Illustration – Pater Sato
Back Cover Photo – Matthew Rolston
Costume Design – Jean-Paul Gaultier
Hair – Pascal
Make-Up – Koelle
From the Manhattan Transfer website:
Visually, the group wore futuristic costumes designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier that gave them a distinctive look onstage (as well as on the back of the album cover.) The audiences loved it, and the album tour was widely successful at home and especially in Europe.
Here's the group looking back to hooking up with Gaultier
And here's a video for the lead single off the album, which is techno-jazz-disco - vaguely pointing towards the likes of Landscape. Very retro-future - harking back to The Twilight Zone.
5,000 light years from Birdland
But I'm still preachin' the rhythm
Long-gone, uptight years from Birdland
An' I'm still teachin' it with 'em
Years from the land of the Bird
An' I am still feelin' the spirit
5,000 light years from Birdland
But I know people can hear it
Bird named it, Bird made it, Bird heard it, then played it
Well-stated! Birdland--
It happened down in Birdland
In the middle of that hub
I remember one jazz club
Where we went to pat feet
Down on fifty-secon' street
Everybody heard that word
That they named it after Bird
Where the rhythm swooped and swirled
The jazz corner of the world
An' the cats they gigged in there
Were beyond compare
Down them stairs, lose them cares - where?
Down in Birdland
Total swing, bop was king - there
Down in Birdland
Bird would cook, Max would look - where?
Down in Birdland
Miles came through, 'Trane came too - there
Down in Birdland
Basie blew, Blakey too - where?
Down in Birdland
Cannonball played that hall - there
Down in Birdland
Yeah---
There may never be nothin' such as that
No Mo' - No Mo'
Down in Birdland, that's where it was at
I know - I know
Back in them days bop was ridin' high
Hello! 'n goodbye!
How well those cats remember
Their first Birdland gig
To play in Birdland is an honor we still dig
Yeah---that club was like--
In another world, sure enough--
Yeah, baby
All o' the cats had the cookin' on
People just sat an' they was steady lookin' on
Then Bird--he came 'n spread the word--
Birdland
Yes, indeed, he did
Yes, indeed, he did
Yes, indeed, he did
Yes, he did, Parker played at Birdland
Yes, he really did
Yes, indeed, he really did
Yes, he really did
Told the truth down in Birdland
Yes, indeed he did, Yardbird Parker played in
Birdland
Everybody dug that beat
Everybody stomped their feet
Everybody digs be-bop
An' they'll never stop
Down them stairs, lose them cares - yeah!
Down in Birdland
Total swing! bop was king - yeah!
Down in Birdland
Bird would cook, Max would look - yeah
Down in Birdland
Miles came through, 'Trane came too - yeah!
Down in Birdland
Basie blew, Blakey too - yeah!
Down in Birdland
Cannonball played that hall - yeah
Down in Birdland
Most U.K. people of a certain vintage associate Manhattan Transfer with this atrocity, which was number one and whose chart run felt like an eternity
x
I suspect the common thread is the reaching back towards Expressionism and Art Deco in that period - something that would've appealed to the nostalgia-oriented as well as the self-consciously modernistic, if for different reasons.
ReplyDeleteAnother possible reference point - Kraftwerk, who were more of a minor cult success in the US then than I'd realized until a few years ago (there's even a promo poster tucked in the background of an WKRP episode, amongst the Pink Floyd and Bob James and such)
I actually associate Manhattan Transfer with this very album. We didn’t have much money for records in my household in the late 70s and I think my parents must have picked this up cheap in Woolworths or something, so it was lying around the house for me to listen to. I never warmed to it.
ReplyDeleteNo matter how many decades pass, I can’t get past the light-entertainment-ness of MT. Everything they ever did seemed to be an opportunistic novelty song designed for appearances on Russell Harty or Michael Parkinson shows.
So much about Manhattan Transfer is at odds with their easy listening light entertainment reality. Starting with their name, which comes from a pretty avant-garde John Dos Passos novel, influenced by Joyce and Eliot. Weather Report are a reasonably hip reference point, too. But then those lyrics: oh dear. Max Roach and Miles Davis were actually alive to hear themselves being turned into tokens for soft-focus nostalgia. I would love to know if they ever heard it.
ReplyDeleteMy main memory of the Manhattan Transfer is that when their segment came on The Two Ronnies, that was my signal to go and get ready for bed.
I suppose it's not unlike Stevie Wonder's "Sir Duke" or indeed Miles's own "He Loved Him Madly" - but then the subject of the elegy / eulogy was posthumous, so yeah it must have been weird for a living musician to be consigned to History.
Delete"5000 light years from Birdland" - hmm, in 1979 it was only 30-something years ago. It's not like the advance is that astronomically vast.
Had completely forgotten about Manhatten Transfer, but like Ed, I remember them from their Two Ronnies segments. I think they were supposed to provide a contrasting interlude of international classiness amid the Ronnies' low-to-middlebrow japery.
ReplyDeleteThere were a few bands in this vain at the time, like Stutz Bear Cats and Darts - very Americanophile high class (said in a Brooklyn accent) smoothness. I suspect that there weren't enough actual American performers around who were cheap enough to book for British TV producers, so these guys and gals filled that niche.
I had no idea they were such a UK light-entertainment staple, but it makes sense - their native habitat and context was the MOR 70s variety show, and not the redeemable ones (Carol Burnett, Smothers Brothers, etc.) but the blatant programming filler that the Simpsons' Smile Time Hour nailed. A good overview of a simultaneously representative and bizarre example: https://web.archive.org/web/20171018051422/https://www.avclub.com/a-very-special-1970s-nightmare-starring-vincent-price-1819315003
ReplyDeleteCan't wait for the Shakatak post.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair to the MT, their jazz fandom seems entirely genuine. As late as 2004, they released an album with a version of a Miles Davis track from Tutu, with Cheryl Bentyne singing his solos(!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHIUDaiEVwA
ReplyDeleteAnd, bringing them back round to the cutting edge again, apparently Bjork had been listening to the MT (and Bobby McFerrin!) when she recorded her all-vocal album Medulla. Although, to be strictly accurate, she saw them as negative rather than positive influences: a sound and style she wanted to avoid. http://bjorknet.altervista.org/restored/medulla/bio.htm
I'm looking forward to their appearance in the 'Mouth Music' section.