Customer Reviews

Watch

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Very good,diverse titles, great musicianship here.Especially "drowning on dry land".This song makes blinded by the light seem weak. If they re-issue, jump on it. Excellent guitar work.Lost this and all in flood, Irreplaceable!

First I bought this album when I lived overseas (Germany) and loved it then. Chris Thompson is that fantastic pleasant talented voice and guitar behind the entire album. Someone bless him. Cause of him this album is most definetely worth buying!! Enjoy, it'll make you feel good (and buy as many Deep Purple album as you can)

I remember buying this album when it first came out.The cover was cool.There was something magical in the year of 78 and 77.Great albums emerged.Watch is colorful filled with choir string arrangements and melocohly lyrics.Watch is like the album Octave by the Moody Blues.Rich in texture and somewhat sad sounding,almost like they wrote it after a death of a friend,Never the less it stays with you even when all the tracks are done.That my friend is worth the price of classics.

"Circle", the robo-beat "Chicago Institute" and especially the warm ballad "California" are all real finely crafted songs. I've read some less than positive reviews of this in the All Music Guide, but this is a lost album from the late 70's worth hearing for Fans of Manfred Mann, and beyond.

Recorded in 1977 by Manfred (keyboards and synths), Chris Thompson (guitar and vocals), Dave Flett (lead guitar), Pat King (bass), and Chris Slade (drums). Manfred must have felt a need to decide in which direction the Earth Band was going to proceed after the success of Roaring Silence, and that direction was toward pop. The only vestiges of the firey Earth Band can be heard on the last 3 songs, and as good as they are, don't match the intensity heard on Nightingales-Bombers or Roaring Silence. The other compositions that constitute the album are meticulously produced and, as in the case of Circles, crystal-perfect, delicate and rather generic. They retain a sterile, prefabricated atmosphere that lend well to Thompson's incredible vocals and Flett's honed guitar. Now that Colin Pattenden's fat bass lines have been replaced by the anonymous but professional sessionism of new bassist Pat King, drummer Chris Slade is left with little leeway in which to assert his signature drumming - and ends up, like the other musicians on the album, sounding like a back-up musician rather than an Earth Bander. The two exceptions to this portentiousness are Davy's On The Road Again and The Mighty Quinn (both recorded live), where the chemistry fits just right, where the arrangement once again proves beyond a doubt that Manfred is a monster at the Moog and that the signature oddball arrangements and atmospheric topography of the Earth Band can still soar. And, as prettily drab a song as California is, Manfred does ride it out with one of his best, although tamer, synth solos. A song like Chicago Institute is as benign as it is forgettable, even if you can still hum the guitar riff years later. Overall, I give Watch an A for effort, but a C for the final product. I think part of what swayed the Earth Band in this lushified direction must have been the realization by Thompson that singing rock ballads appealed much more than performing complex art-rock instrumentals, and with such a voice as that, how could Manfred refuse...? Dave's solos, over-burdened but zealously executed on Roaring Silence seem less spastic but also less passionate here. The overall protrait is one of a band which has become too fixated on the formula of recording cover songs that lend themselves to the pop market, sacrificing the signature Earth Band sound. At least on Roaring Silence there was a balance between instrumental prowess and songcraft. And, alas, it is only worse on the next album, Angel Station. But the old solar-flare of the Earth Band does shine in Davy's On The Road Again and the arrangement of Quinn The Eskimo recalls the almost forgotten musical prowess of Nightingales-Bombers era Earth Band. The CD is worth owning just for those two songs alone.

856th ASA Co, Frankfurt W. Germany - you know this is special stuff, magical, clean clear rock and roll. Garylunsford@mindspring.com

I Have Manfred Mann ALL Albums On CD, Starting from 1964 Till Today New Album called 2006 These Guys Have Unique Way of Singing and play there Instruments. But One thing i still Miss it Old Vinyl's 33's Nothing can beat there sound Quality but offcourse hard to find if you find it buy it its worth it for this kind of Music if you are into AfroRock Get OSIBISA those guys are ANOTHER Masterpiece in old Music like Manfred Mann but osibisa Plays Afro Rock you have to hear it to feel it. Good Luck.........Ron