Artist: Bird Mancini
CD: The One Delight
11 tracks
Contact: info@birdmancini.com
Website: https://birdmancini.com/album/2043055/the-one-delight
Going Track by Track with Joe Viglione
For those of us who love pop music, especially pop blended with folk,
Americana, new wave perfectly performed, The One Delight is a delightful
collection of moods, sounds and clever arrangements.
Opening with Space Between Two Worlds @ 3:35 minutes to track four’s
“South Side of Summer” and the title track, #5, with its Crosby,
Stills, Nash and Young leanings Bird Mancini has brought multiple
elements that share colorful vibrations that gravitate to one another.
GOING TRACK BY TRACK
1)Space Between Two Worlds: - I’m glad this up-tempo rocker starts the
disc off. Robin Lane put together a brilliant album of songs scattered
across the decades, were the eleven titles on The One Delight
constructed in the same time frame, or are they from different moments
along your musical road?
Billy Carl Mancini: Several of songs on "The One Delight" were written
with the new release in mind. Others were from our back catalog of
songs and were updated or rearranged. "Space Between Two Worlds" is one
of the new ones. I had just been listening to the latest
remix/remaster of John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band CD. I was thinking
about the song “Remember” and the way it moves, bounces, grooves. My
fingers fell on some new chords and a melody. The words “life’s a
mystery” spilled out of my mouth. Ruby said, “we must have a better
title than that” and wrote a whole set of lyrics. A new song is born.
Ruby Bird: Yes and no. The first 4 tracks, plus “The Last Good Day” and
“Just Carry On” are totally new for this project. The other songs were
taken from, as you say, “across the decades,” some with new lyrics and
all newly arranged.
2)Man Plans God Laughs: the melody and playing are superb, but why the
Devil’s Advocate sensibilities? The attitude feels like Al Pacino in
that film with Keanu Reeves where Pacino is the petulant adolescent
angry because he’s not having fun. Is this the sentiment, or is it
parody?
BCM: It’s not a parody. We all make plans and have desires that don’t
always work out quite the way we want them to. I heard the phrase, “Man
Plans God Laughs” on some television show and it struck a nerve. I
knew I wanted to write a song with that sentiment. The verses reflect
Ruby’s and my life. The first verse is me and my teenage dreams, the
second verse is about Ruby and the third verse is about us together.
RB: Our intent here is that no matter how smart or wise we all think we
are, we are not really in control—God is. I think the pandemic has
profoundly underscored this idea. Further into the song, the lyrics are
autobiographical.
3)Master of Nothingness combined with the above leads to eight and a half minutes of questioning things. Are they meant to be connected a la the Rolling Stones twisted trilogy 19th Nervous Breakdown” (Feb 1966,) “Mother’s Little Helper” from Aftermath, (July 1966,) “Have You You’re your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadows,” (Sept 1966,) keeping a theme going, or am I missing something here?
BCM: If anything is connected it’s almost by accident. I guess it’s just where our heads were at the time. “Master of Nothingness” is about a friend who always seemed happy and carefree. He didn't seem to have any ambitions or desires beyond what he was doing every day. Just floating through life. No thoughts of pursuing a complicated career or striving for wealth. One day at a time. I always thought, "that's the way to be happy and carefree.”
RB: I don’t see any of these songs as questioning anything or particularly connected. “Space Between Two Worlds” is simply a fantasy that might be construed as a metaphor for life, death and beyond. “Man Plans God Laughs” see #2 above. “Master of Nothingness” is about a real person we know and appreciate because he is exactly who he wants to be. At least that’s what these songs mean to me. If they mean something else to you or others, that’s OK. I think all art should work that way. It’s in the eye or ear of the beholder.
4)South Side of Summer is one of my favorite tracks.
In 2013 The Swinging Steaks had a CD, “Southside of the Sky” …what is it about the South Side?
RB: Glad you like this track! The South Side here is just about heading toward the last days of Summer. I have no idea what The Steaks had in mind. Maybe the sibilance of the phrase is just catchy. I think so.
BCM: Ruby came to me and said she wanted a song that had a lazy, end of summer kind of feel. She already had ideas in her head about lyrics. I have always loved Gershwin's "Summertime" (especially by Ella Fitzgerald) and thought of that laid back feel when I came up with the chords and melody. Ruby got it immediately came up with the perfect visual lyrics.
5)The One Delight – as stated in my intro: “South Side of Summer” and the title track, #5, with its Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young leanings Bird Mancini has brought multiple elements that share colorful vibrations that gravitate to one another. Can you advise us of your “secret sauce,” or do you want to leave it to our imaginations?
BCM: The “secret sauce” is we write, play and record what we like. We’re not trying to conform to any formula. If something pleases us it will reach other people as well.
RB: Well, in my mind they are two very different songs, but it’s interesting that you think they share characteristics that bring to mind CSNY. We love these guys, but CSNY was not on our minds during the writing of these songs. Or perhaps subliminally? If I were to name influences for each of them, I would say Gershwin’s “Summertime” and Steely Dan were more to blame.
6)The Last Good Day – love the pulsating undercurrent (same with “Homesick,” the themes seem like blues pop, but the music feels optimistic, is this the “happy/sad” of a band like The Zombies?
BCM: I do like songs that have happy, uptempo music with contemplative lyrics. Like Elvis Costello, John Lennon and, sure, The Zombies. Although I must say that when I listen to music I’m most effected by the vibe and and the way it makes me feel. Lyrics usually go right past me unless I’m reading along with the song. Almost everything we do has an undercurrent of Blues, though you might not be able to put your finger on that influence.
RB: Very perceptive, Joe, that you’ve named another band that we both love. It’s certainly possible that their influence is present in these or other writings of ours, but not intentionally. In my mind “Homesick” and “The Last Good Day” are as different as they could be from each other and still be on the same album. But that’s typical for Bird Mancini.
7)Homesick
Same question as above
RB: “Homesick” was written years ago and never recorded. We just tweaked the lyrics and rearranged it for this project so that I could have one more song to sing. I almost didn’t want it on the album because I didn’t think it was a good fit, but this song turns out to be a favorite of a few friends and DJs that we’ve heard from. Who knew? “The Last Good Day” is a new product of the pandemic, as we were thinking about the last good gig we had before shutdown. But these lyrics of course can have very different meaning, depending on your own experience.
8)Just Carry On absolutely sounds like an immersion of CSNY’s “Carry On” and “Wooden Ships”. Is this an inspiration or do you have inspirations that you’d like to share?
BCM: I can’t deny that I love both of those CSN (and sometimes Y) songs. Everything I’ve ever heard influences me. “Just Carry On” started as a mysterious unnamed song file lurking on my computer desktop. What’s that? I played it and it turned out to be a brief song idea I had recorded but had completely forgotten about. So, I finished the song. The words are just stream of consciousness stuff. I think maybe having to do with current times. Not too much you can do about some things, so you just carry on. The “oohs and aahs” harmonies in the middle were straight off the top of my head…no pre-planning.
9)Song for an Imaginary Life – dreamy and elegant, it’s like the band went to the tropics and came up with this smooth essay. A good sequel or counterpoint to “South Side of Summer.” Where did it come from?
RB: This came from a surreal guitar riff that I heard Billy play once in awhile. Eventually, it morphed and expanded, and studio magic happened.
BCM: This is one of those songs that I’ve had kicking around for many years. Might have been sort of inspired by John McLaughlin. Although I never recorded it, I never forgot it and often played it when I was just messing around on the guitar. I decided it was time to let it out of my brain and into the world. Ruby added some cool keyboard melodies to finish it off. This is one of only two tracks where we brought in another musician to play. The song was too weird for either of us to do percussion, so we called Joe Jaworski to play cajon and assorted things in his bag of percussive tricks. We knew he’d know what to do. The title is just something we imagined….
10)Better Forever goes into a world where you can feel the voices of America (who copied C,S,N and Y to a T) – yet your style is not so seventies secure, I love how what I feel are those influences invade your style Soothsayers and oracles…philosophically more helpful than questioning God on track 2, but that’s my opinion…how did this come about?
BCM: Not really questioning God on “Man Plans God Laughs”. If we’re questioning anything, it’s human limitations. One can’t change what God has in mind for us. “Better Forever” is another song that was in my back catalog that had never been recorded. Just a song about being in love and floating off to some place of calm and beauty. Someplace better. Like a Caribbean Island and being served drinks on the beach. Sort of uncharacteristic lyrics for me, I guess. But you just write what you feel when you feel it. This is the other track made better forever by Joe Jaworski on cajon. -BCM
11)Bonus track of Master of Nothingness instrumental: with so much space on a CD, why not the entire instrumental versions that the Beach Boys did with their amazing Stacks of Tracks?
BCM: Nowadays, with people releasing so called “EPs” and single downloads, I’m not sure people can sit still for an 80 minute CD. Many of my favorite albums are about 40-45 minutes in length. This instrumental originally came to me as a melody without any words. I needed to get the melody recorded in order to demo it to Ruby. Later on, the lyrics practically wrote themselves when I had the perfect person in mind. We added this as a bonus track for the download version. It really wasn’t intended to be on the CD but sounded good to my ears and I wanted others to hear it. I had forgotten I’d even done it until the CD was already in production.
Thanks for your time GOING TRACK BY TRACK.
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