Chance in Bloomington, MN

Manfred Mann
's 1980 album is a strange mix of topical songwriting,
progressive rock
, and
power pop
-- from its opening seconds,
the Earth Band
is pressing serious messages and social commentary on their listenership amid swirling
prog rock
keyboards and catchy guitar hooks and choruses. The whole package is challenging in ways that should have put them on the cutting edge of
rock
music at the outset of that decade, but one suspects that
Mann
and company were too musically adept and sophisticated for their own good -- a little dumbing down and maybe a little less musicianship on display would have made them more accessible to the coming
MTV
generation. As it is, the album has held up remarkably well across a quarter century, however, even if it now seems an uncomfortably accurate warning of the way the world would go, in terms of politics and society, in the decades to come. It would also be three years before another
Earth Band
album was forthcoming, and that one would be steeped in
world
music sounds. ~ Bruce Eder