#manzel

Manzel “Space Funk” b/w “Midnight Theme” Dopebrother re-release (1975, 2004)

It was mid-Summer 2013 when Catherine and I were going places. Record stores, eateries, town parks, even the station’s studios to come and sit with me during a broadcast. I could envision doing those shows in the old WUSB Studios on a hot sundown Wednesday or weekend evening or night, entering a quiet campus by myself with no people and access to empty buildings. That musty smell of a 50 year-old dilapidated building with all the Sixties and Seventies trappings of plastic engraved signs and fixtures. Moreso walking into the studio with its original consoles, components, wooden doors, shelves, Otari reel-to-reels, and broadcast boards as old as the building itself, which, 50 years down the road was well past maintenance with parts so rare and defining real-life wear and tear. It was a time when I discovered Vinyle Archeologie and absorbed all these posts of obscure records. Jazz, fusion, blues, get-down, electronic, moog; you name it, they’d post it. One-hit wonders, unnoticable press runs, and artists never seen under the radar were again re-discovered and in some cases exposed and resurrected for a new generation of samplists, collectors, diggers, and producers who shared a common ground: the best of vinyl sound. Christian bands with local pressings, Middle Eastern rhythms, Seventies Slavic prog- and psych-rockers, rare southern blues, and even orchestral music. Everything from the Sixties and Seventies was fair game. It was a type of progeny that personally spoke to me central to my single-digit Atari and money-show youth in Brooklyn. “Midnight Theme” stands out as one of the most-played tracks on my iPod because of those few summer moments which everything came together and what it meant to me. Manzel’s “Midnight Theme” and not so much “Space Funk” is maybe something that’s parallel to what I experienced watching on WPIX or WOR and it’s a token that will always stay with me.

MANZEL: "High And Tight" b/w "Standing On Mars"