Oh Man, Man Man!

ORIGINALITY CORNER

Photo by Mike Persico

I was talking with a guy named after a sausage and often referred to as “Captain Schnitz,” in my kitchen the other night. In some strange and backwards manner that I can’t quite recount, the conversation turned to Man Man. “Who?” I asked.

Though perhaps a bit late to the game, I found out shortly thereafter - totally esoteric, totally hilarious, and totally talented artists. I decided that if Frank Zappa and Phish had a lovechild it would be Man Man. Based out of Philly, members Honus Honus, Pow Pow, Critter Cat, and Chang Wang, Organ “Turkey Moth” Freeman, and Jefferson perpetuate the beauty of dissonance.

A year ago, they released the album Rabbit Habits on ANTI-Records; two weeks ago they released a video of the title track ( posted below). It opens with an underage girl, bows in her hair, on a blind date with an older man. The geeky looking assumed predator continuously pulls chocolates from her ear then stuffs them in her mouth. A few oinks later she goes to the bathroom and comes back as a werewolf. The man freaks and runs. As she wallows in the loneliness of being a teenage girl werewolf she meets…a teenage boy werewolf! What are the chances? They proceed to have the time of their lives eating ice cream cones made of bunnies, surfing off a van, and munching a dead bird on a park bench. The hairy couple stumbles upon her original date while he pulls chocolates from another girl’s ear. The werewolves go after him. In the end, he is dessert. Its in a class of music video all its own.

Man Man is known for their live shows, dressed in white and faces covered with war paint. Aside from the typical instrumentation (bass, guitar, and drums), they accent their sound with pots, pans, xylophone, bottles, whistles, sax, French horn, flute. Their stories depict very real situations, but with a funny and, at times, morbid spin. And their sets are a continuous climatic jam, often sounding like they are composing the soundtrack for Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes.

When in the studio, Man Man uses various objects and trinkets to capture the exact effects they are after. On “Poor Jackie,” the second to last track on Rabbit Habits, the percussion falls apart – instead of recklessly ringing bells and whistles and pounding on drums, they slowly push a bunch of crap from a stool. They have even been known to record a dog barking in a bathtub and fireworks exploding in a garbage can.

You gotta see (or, I suppose, hear) this shit to believe it.

by Genette Nowak

The video: