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 February
26-March 3, 2004
music
Fear of Heights
Reluctant Philly rocker Alan Mann gets his due.
by A.D. Amorosi
The scene: Philly, 1976. The city's most noted poet-rockers,
Marty Watt and Kenn Kweder, were moving from Dylan to the punk
verse of Jim Carroll and Patti Smith. Springsteen was still
almost cool, having proved you could have bad hair and still be
edgy.
Alan Mann entered gracefully. He released two albums, two EPs
and three singles of jarring, sax-driven, new wave-ish ska and
rock filled with dire poetry that Rimbaud would love. He topped
it off with a nervous vocal take on Lou Reed's monotone and
released the vinyl on his own or through tiny local independent
labels.
He died not so gracefully, in October 1987, during a fire in
his South Philly apartment.
He fell out a window. Or jumped. Some blamed his rumored
heroin habit. Others pointed to his nihilism. And was it
prescience or paranoia that led him to write a song about
falling out a window years before?
That's the jerky version of things. The scene and its
supposed saints of that time are long forgotten by most, long
felt by others and unknown by anyone after.
You can hardly find Alan Mann on Google. Auctions at eBay are
devoid of his musical legacy — such as 1976's eponymous LP; No
Deal No Sleep, a 1981 EP released by then-manager (and now TLA
Video GM) Rich Wolff on Contender Records; and early-'80s
WMMR-rotation singles like "Christmas on the Block" or "Fear of
Heights."
"Alan was concerned with language and the power of music for
change, a very serious cat," says Kweder. "We'd talk
alliteration, the rhythm of words within lyrics, symbolism,
metaphor. I rarely talked that type of "shop' with other
songwriters. And he was recording and releasing his own music
during a time when hardly anybody did those things."
Because, in an era of fakes who put on shows for the press,
Mann was not Mr. Congeniality.
"He was the embodiment of punk bohemia," says longtime club
owner David Carroll, who booked the radical pessimist at Artemis
and Hot Club. "He was so nihilistic it was refreshing." Carroll
laughs that Mann not only didn't court press, he avoided it.
Independent artists from the past — "the world's forgotten
boys" as Iggy Pop would say — occasionally get their due from
the outside world. Mann, now, could finally find a place the way
Mission of Burma and Nick Drake have.
"Alan may still make it," says historian Tom Sheehy, a former
publicist at Mann's home base, J.C. Dobbs. "Some indie rock
street-comber will find the treasure in Alan. Having never
achieved success in his lifetime, he's ripe for the claiming."
These mystery achievements — along with the fact that so
much of Mann is shrouded in secrecy and rumor — have made him
into Philly's Robert Johnson.
Before he became a fixture on the Philly music scene, Mann's
life looks like a series of escapes — supposed estrangement
from strict Jewish parents, a rejected scholarship to Juilliard
(or was it Berklee?), leaving a monied background to busk on the
streets of Europe.
"Playing guitar on street corners was crucial to him," says
George Manney, a drummer who joined Mann's bands in 1978. The
two met through Tony Bidgood, a former Stray Cats manager who
funded several Mann singles.
"Straight man" Manney drove the band to gigs at Max's Kansas
City, London Victory and Emerald City — not to mention, he
says, pre-show junk-copping stops.
Saxophonist Randy Dance, however, was in on Mann's twist on
sobriety. "We were all about the drugs, so our work ethic left a
lot to be desired," laughs Dance. He joined Mann and Manney in
1980, in time to record, in one night, the six songs of No Deal
No Sleep.
"Those songs are good examples of the era, a little rock, a
little ska, a lot of exuberance and minimal finesse," says
Dance. "But we were really disorganized and late. Perhaps that
was our appeal."
The big time, in 1980, was elusive. Nothing came of N.Y.C.
showcases where agents were supposed to show up. "There wasn't a
lot of management savvy around. We were stuck in neutral," says
Dance.
But success was close.
In early 1982, WMMR came knocking. After crowning The Hooters
and Robert Hazard with radio attention in years previous,
programmer Charlie Kendall decided Mann was next in line.
"Observing Charlie and Alan was an exercise in witnessing the
interface of the guru and the student," says Sheehy. "Charlie
believed in the music of Alan Mann, and he backed it up with
significant airplay on his radio station."
Mann became a draw. Sad, strange singles "Fear of Heights"
and "Christmas on the Block" became radio staples. Their June
1982 show at Ripley's got filmed by Manney's pals from Prism,
the city's primary cable outlet. "He played our Ripley's set in
between movies and sports shows for what would be the first
"live' Prism TV show," says Manney.
"We're playing these WMMR 93-cent nights at Ripley's on snowy
Mondays and all these people showed," remembers Dance. "I could
get in places for free. It was cool. Insane, really."
Months later, it was over. "Like one of those VH1 specials,"
Dance says.
"I can attest, personally, that drugs became the most
important thing to him," says Dance who admits to similar
problems at the time. "But Alan played the outcast role to the
hilt — anti-social, a lot of secrecy surrounding him."
Paul Mick was Mann's friend and a former writer for the
newsletter Musicians, Artists, Poets and Performers in the
Delaware Valley, or MAPP. He says Mann was recalcitrant due to
his upbringing. "Alan grew up down the street from me in
Huntingdon Valley, in an even snobbier section," says Mick.
Loved but disapproved of, some say, by his prominent family,
Mann turned inward. His antithetical, bohemian lifestyle made
him Philly pop's most reluctant never-was. Mick was the last
media person to approach Mann for an interview. "Alan's grip on
reality, in my opinion, was ebbing away."
"That's why there's no press [besides] his obituaries," says
Carroll. "He was too paranoid to want you to know him. I knew
he'd go out that window some day."
One close cohort, Janet Bressler, knew Mann went beyond the
addictions. She knew a Mann who as passionate about music and an
open-hearted, generous artist. "Alan offered up his talents and
his band to assist others in achieving dreams, big or small,"
says Bressler. Between bands, she would join Mann at Dobbs to
sing early '60s covers. "I'll never forget how this made me
feel, to be treated as a compadre at a time when it was very
difficult for a woman to make any inroads on the music scene."
Bressler didn't forget. She's gathering locals together for a
tribute concert on what would've been his 50th birthday. Though
younger musicians never got a chance to know Mann in the first
place, Bressler thinks of it another way. "Rather than say no
one under 40 knows of Alan, I'd say they simply weren't lucky
enough to be there."
Alan Mann 50th Birthday Celebration with Kenn Kweder, Peter
Stone Brown, Stewkey, Jimi Mooney, George Manney, Allen James,
Randy Dance, Monk Manley, Flamin’ Harry McGonigal, John Torres,
Lisa Bell, Janet Bressler Band featuring the Laster Bros., Joel
Hornikel and the Planets, Craig Elkins, Scott Bricklin, Don Lee
Van Winkle, Dorothy Haug, Matt Sevier, Tom Gillam, Jamie
O’Donnell, Patrick’s Head and more, Sat., Feb. 28, 7 p.m., free,
Tokio,122 Lombard St., 215-592-8893,
www.fype.freehomepage.com
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