The Muffins - Manna/Mirage (1978)

Steve:

Although progressive rock found its primary footing in the UK during its heyday in the 1970s, I learned in the early 90s that progressive rock had been happening all over the globe all along. In the United States, variations on the prog rock style had found commercial acceptance through bands like Styx and Kansas, although these bands were only the most visible ones. In the Washington DC area alone, bands like Happy the Man, However, and The Muffins were quietly making adventurous music that largely flew under the radar.  

The Muffins owed much of their inspiration to the Canterbury progressive rock style, taking an approach similar to bands such as Hatfield and the North, Henry Cow, and Soft Machine. However, their American slant also included the playful and comedic style of Frank Zappa in addition to other quintessentially American jazz influences of the time. While Manna/Mirage was their first album, the band had been honing its sound for at least four years prior, and the debut shows the band fully formed and with a clear vision and purpose.

Lacking the support of a major label contract, The Muffins took matters into their own hands, recording in their own home/studio in Rockville, Maryland, and starting their own record label, Random Radar Records, to issue albums by The Muffins and other local artists. Despite their relatively low profile, their music did not go unnoticed in the UK and Europe. Fred Frith (of Henry Cow) recruited the band to back him on half of his solo album Gravity (1980). Subsequently, Frith produced and played on the Muffins' album <185> (1980). Once the CD reissue of long out-of-print prog albums became available in the early 1990s, the locally prestigious Cuneiform label made Manna/Mirage one of its first reissues - first under the Wayside Music Archive Series rubric in 1991 (the copy I have) and under Cuneiform Records proper in 1993.

Their popularity among an international fan base has kept The Muffins sporadically active. After breaking up in the early 1980s, the band reunited in the late 1990s and continue to perform and record off and on to this day. Primary composer, keyboardist, and woodwind player Dave Newhouse remains active leading or participating in multiple other projects as well, including Manna/Mirage, Moon Men, Moon X, Diratz (with French vocalist Carla Diratz) and Hart/Newhouse.

My introduction to the Muffins was via Frith's Gravity album, which I discovered in my college's old record collection, dating from the years when the school had a student-run radio station. I got involved with a group of other students who were intent on reviving the station. Although it resulted in hours of fun and the discovery of unusual albums such as Gravity, the station itself could not generate a signal strong enough to be heard by anyone except faintly in the student dorms, and only then if listened to on a radio plugged into the dorm's electrical outlets. The noble project thus fizzled out, but I'm proud to have been a part of it.

After college, around 1992, I bought Manna/Mirage either at Tower Records in Atlanta or as one of my first purchases from Wayside Music. Either way, it fits historically into a very fruitful time of discovery for me. In recent years, I have befriended various people either in or otherwise associated with the band and its releases. It was gratifying to follow the several years it took to put together Baker's Dozen, a 12-CD plus DVD box set documenting the Muffins' history, complete with a thorough booklet, lovingly packaged and sold by Cuneiform, and released to widespread acclaim in the fall of 2022.

Dan:

I had never heard of The Muffins until Steve chose to include Manna/Mirage in our discovery blog. So I took a couple of listens to hear what I had missed for the past 45 years. Like several others of his choices that were new to me, I was pleasantly surprised. I've always favored instrumental groups because they oblige bands to create wordless images that evoke a listener's emotional and cerebral responses. That's a daunting challenge that my favorite jazz groups seem to surmount effortlessly through their preparation, skill and imagination. Groups like Soft Machine, who straddle jazz and prog, and artists like Frank Zappa, Can, and Happy the Man never seem to run out of ideas despite the absence of lyrics to guide them. 

The Muffins add to the challenge by choosing very long compositions. "Amelia Earhart" runs almost 16 minutes, and "The Adventures of Captain Boomerang" goes for 22:46! They survive the challenges by varying meters, intensities, and combinations of instruments. It's impressive how they stay together through all of these variations. Of the short tracks, I like the laid-back vibe of the opening "Monkey With the Golden Eyes." Any prog group bold enough to feature flutes and vibes gets my approval. 

Good to know that someone cared enough to produce Baker's Dozen. Bravo!