Admittedly, I’ve only heard their Christmas covers. Maybe I should check out one of their Fresh Aire series, perhaps 7, featuring “Conjuring the Number 7”, “Sunday the 7th Day”, “The 7 Colors of the Rainbow”, “The 7 C’s”, “The 7 Metals of Alchemy”, and “The 7 Stars of the Big Dipper”?
Is there any Mannheim song that stands out as being worse than the others? Which song features the longest electro-tom drumfill?
Chip Davis went to my high school, and he came back one day and conducted the high school band playing one of his non-Mannheim compositions. I think he did a pretty good job at that.
Not defensible! Horrid.
I’m kind of enjoying their Christmas stuff at the moment.
Hannah likes it a lot too.
They’re almost so bad that they’re good again, but then they miraculously manage to cross that line, too. Mannheim Steamroller: a Christmas Miracle.
I was with it until some God-awful vocals kicked in on “Good King Wenceslas”. Still, they do turn your home into a shopping mall.
I didn’t know they did vocals. What are they like? Is it one voice, or is it an assault of harmonies?
From memory (I’m at work so I can’t play it) it was just one dude singing one line as a coda during the fade out. He sounded like the sort of bloke who’d make Mannheim Steamroller music, if ya know what I mean.
One time I listened to one of their CDs via boombox plugged into a guitar amp with the distortion on, and it sounded kind of great, like A Rammstein Christmas or something.
It was sort of an accident. Sort of one of the best accidents ever.
Me & the people I was with had this “great” idea to start a band wherein all our music was just us singing over Mannheim Steamroller jams processed as above with lyrics about the most famous fat women celebrities and call it Cameron Mannheim Steamroller.
Drugs were involved obv.
early Fresh Aire series (1970’s) are synth prog wonderstuff, for serious amazing.
early Fresh Aire series (1970’s) are synth prog wonderstuff, for serious amazing.
Comparable to...good Tangerine Dream?
“indefensible”
“FALL-ON-THE-FLOOR HILARIOUS” (when in the right mood)
For my sins, I saw the PBS holiday special once. Chip Davis is an exuberant sort.
d’oh.
Doesn’t “undefendable” seem like it should be a word? But yeah, not in the dictionary.
sigh.
Ned, I’ve committed a comparable sin. I watched the entire Moody Blues Red Rocks performance on PBS—and genuinely enjoyed the “I Know that you’re out there somewhere” song.
Chip Davis gets a pass for being the mastermind behind C.W. McCall’s “Convoy,” so in terms of the karmic balance sheet it all cancels out.
The weird holiday special thing on PBS is worth seeking out because it’s mostly pagan winter imagery with weird dwarves and shit.