A feast of Manilow

Must have been the Holy Week or getting ecstatic about listening to Neil Sedaka (Neil Sedaka!) serve up a mean version of Fly Me to the Moon and in his Love Songs collection. The song came with his other hits like Calendar Girl (Ouch!) and Sweet Little You (Double ouch!) but there is something in the way Sedaka did the old ballads that shows there is soul of some depth in him and he is also capable of going beyond bubble gum after all.

So if there is a way to rediscover Neil Sedaka, it only follows that there can be some way to take another look at Barry Manilow. The music of Manilow belongs to a later era. Sedaka’s was the ’60s, Barry came a decade later but they do share an easy nasal kind of song styling, which girls refer to as cute and which boys usually refuse to acknowledge they also like. They do. Otherwise they will not be singing his songs in videoke joints. Other things that they share are a talent for songwriting and their affinity for old songs. Manilow did come up with a well-made album tribute to Sinatra with some of The Voice’s best-remembered songs.

I always enjoyed listening to Manilow’s fast songs like Let’s Hang On, Bermuda Triangle and who can forget the love story of Lola, Tony and Rico in Copacabana? They tell stories and he delivers them with a kind of mock seriousness. They come across as extended jingles which is not surprising since Manilow started out writing commercials like the Bowlene Toilet Cleaner and singing a MacDonald’s tune. Although I suspect he would have wanted to do more of them, the songs that truly made Manilow a big star were his lovelorn ballads. These are just too-too romantic they might have been written and performed by a Filipino. Passion in his songs rarely goes beyond a soft glow but it is the kind that lasts.

Proof is the Manilow Greatest Hits released recently in Arista’s Platinum Collection Series. The amusing fast numbers, all still good for a smile, are present, Could It Be Magic, Bermuda Triangle, Hey Mambo, I Wanna Do It with You, Let’s Hang On, Some Kind of Friend, Copacabana and I’m Your Man. I doubt though if these are what the Pinoy Manilow fan wants in his collection. What will sell the album are the 10 ballads, which are among his biggest hits.

Get your kicks by indulging your hearts’ desire for those old memories by listening to Mandy, Manilow’s first number one seller plus Can’t Smile Without You, Tryin’ to Get the Feeling Again, I Made It Through the Rain, Read ‘em and Weep, Somewhere in the Night, Lonely Together, Stay, If I Should Love Again, I Write the Songs also a number one hit and One Voice. I am sure you will miss Looks Like We Made It, Weekend in New England, Even Now and Somewhere Down the Road but nobody gets everything in one package. For those, you have to check out the other Manilow compilations now available.

Get some respite from the sweltering heat with chill-out music. For this, there is That’s Irma Juice, a collection of electronicaloungehouseacidjazz. That is written as one word on the album cover but that is just some sort of affection deemed cool by people who like this kind of laid-back, supposedly trendy sort of music. It should really read as electronica, lounge, house and acid jazz, new music forms that emerged from Europe within the past two decades.

What makes That’s Irma Juice different from other chill-out collections is the fact that it is made up of well-known pop classics. Think tunes popularized by Barbra Streisand, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Humir Deodato and even The Doors getting the new music treatment. Most albums of this sort contain songs that are only electronic meanderings with absolutely no recognizable melodies. Not this one though. So listeners will get unobtrusive background music along with familiar melodies.

Tunes that get the cool treatment here are Light My Fire, On a Clear Day, Ribbon in the Sky, Blue Train, Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want, Ta Ta Ya Baby, The More I Get, The More I Want, Bullit, Round Midnight, West 42nd 4:52 Street, Freeway of Love and Maiden Voyage.