Progressive Bubblegum = Extinction Level Event? Roger Joseph Manning Jr.'s "Catnip Dynamite"
Written: Jun 09 '09
Product Rating:
Pros: The invention of the power-pop epic! Armageddon bubblegum, baby! Alert K-Tel immediately!
Cons: 80 minutes? Seriously? A candidate for heavy rotation on Radio Gitmo?
The Bottom Line: In which the author is thwarted by the inadequacy of the star rating system, believing this record to be equally and "excellent" and "avoidable" - the bipolar opposite of "average".
plorentz's Full Review: Catnip Dynamite [PA] * by Roger Manning (Jellyfish...
Do you ever wonder what “Roundabout” might have sounded like if Barry Manilow had written and recorded it instead of Yes? Ever wonder what might have happened had Graham Russell and Russell Hitchcock of Air Supply made sappy love ballads… about the A-Bomb? Or what might have happened if The Osmonds had made good on their dream to become the next Led Zeppelin? Could you imagine a world where The Bay City Rollers are responsible for The Dark Side of the Moon? Of course not. No one would ever dare to contemplate any of these things, because to do so would be to open the mind’s door to a world of terrifying possibilities, welcoming as permanent guests in our brains the sorts of nightmares that would keep even Freddy Krueger awake at night. It’s kinda like in that opening narration of the movie Deep Impact when Morgan Freeman’s voice-over assures us with matter-of-fact calm that it’s not a matter of “if” the human race will ever be wiped out by a collision with a comet, but “when”. It sends a mortal shiver through you, and you realize how fragile and meaningless and fleeting our – humankind’s - existence is.
And then along comes Roger Joseph Manning Jr., who, for the last twenty years, via his work with acts like Beatnik Beatch, Jellyfish, Imperial Drag, and the Moog Cookbook, as well as with his own solo work, has not only been imagining the sort of musical doomsday scenarios sketched out above, but has been doing his damnedest – like some madness-driven, Victorian-era, gothic-novella villain hell-bent for world domination (or world salvation?)- to bring this fresh Armageddon to fruition. Is he a genius? Or is he a monster?
There’s a distinct Jeckyll-and-Hydeness about Manning’s latest solo album, called Catnip Dynamite, an epic collection of songs written about our impending destruction – be it by popular culture (“Tinsel Town”), hokey spiritual pursuits (“The Turnstile at Heaven’s Gate”), empty personal relationships (the monster chunk of cheddar “Love’s Never Half as Good”), nuclear holocaust (“Survival Machine”, a portentous seven minute mini-opera about Oppenheimer – seriously! - sung in a boy choir falsetto) or merely by the inexorable march of time (as demonstrated by the thrilling glam-rock opener “The Quickening”, a veritable orgy of middle-aged panic with a relentlessly cascading melody and mountains of vocal harmonies). Only these meditations on our inevitable extinction (the stuff of many a classic prog-rock album), most of which surpass the five minute mark without breaking a sweat, are set to sounds stolen from the frivolous 45s of Buddha and Kama Sutra, Bell and Arista, those classic two-and-a-half minute chunks of comic-wrapped Bazooka put out by “bands” like the Archies and Edison Lighthouse, the Blues Magoos and Crazy Elephant. Harpsichord and Farfisa and fake recorders abound! (Eat your heart out, Daryl Dragon!)
But then, of course, there’s also the matter of Manning’s voice, which makes everything here sound like a musical number from a Saturday morning cartoon, circa 1973, high and thin, harmless and sexless, with the occasional lounge vibrato. Though certainly more congruous to a banjo-plucked Dr. Hook-style ballad like “My Girl” (or the adorable recorded-live-in-concert, clap-your-hands-and-sing-along encore “Drive Thru Girl”), that voice never sounds better than when Manning is rocking out a song like “The Quickening” (the quintessential opener for a summertime mix-tape for the Ages), the ELO-vs.-Cheap Trick-vs.-Giorgio Moroder arena rock battle royale “Down In Front”, or the whizz-bang-apocalpytic-power-pop closer “Living in the End Times”. These tracks are capable of producing a narcotic high in this listener that make him a danger to fellow drivers in the middle of commuter traffic. But, damn, they sound soooo far out wonderful in the car!
Still, as the record wears on (and on, and on, and on, and oh wait, there’s bonus tracks too, and okay, that live cover of Elton John’s “Love Lies Bleeding” is pretty amazing), it grows, alarmingly, in its resemblance to a rock ‘n’ roll Wolf-Biederman - head for the hills, LeeLee and Elijah! - the line between brilliance and obnoxiousness becoming hopelessly muddled. Whether the album is an epic, subgenre-defining (progressive bubblegum?) masterwork or the kind of unendurable torture the Geneva Conventions were written specifically to address is wholly a matter of just how well the listener can suspend disbelief. Catnip Dynamite is, unquestionably, a work of extraordinary, quixotic ambition. But is humanity ready for it?
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BECAUSE YOU NEED TO KNOW:
“Catnip Dynamite” by Roger Joseph Manning Jr.
Oglio Records
Released 2/3/2009
Produced by Roger Joseph Manning Jr.
80 min.
SONGS: The Quickening – Love’s Never Half As Good – Down In Front – My Girl – Imaginary Friend – Haunted Henry – Tinsel Town – The Turnstile At Heaven’s Gate – Survival Machine – Living In End Times – Drive Thru Girl /BONUS: Europa and the Pirate Twins – You Were Right – Love Lies Bleeding
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