The undecipherable Karen Mantler

[Guybrush]

Aloha, Guest.

On MB, I posted a thread about Karen Mantler which got absolutely NO replies, so I'm trying again because gods dongit she deserves more listeners.

So Karen Mantler is a jazz musician who makes songs that are humorous, self-deprecating and maybe slightly sad. I stumbled across her because she worked with Robert Wyatt on Cuckooland and so I checked her out. What I found absolutely astonished me.

She is the daughter of Carla Bley and Michael Mantler, so that's the avantgarde & musical heritage checked. Then I found she'd made four albums centered around a story arc of her cat getting sick and dying. Her debut released in the late 80s very loosely follow how she has a cat named Arnold (My Cat Arnold, 1989) which then gets sick (Karen Mantler And Her Cat Get the Flu, 1990) which unfortunately leads to Arnolds' death (Farewell, 1996) and her quest to find a new pet (Karen Mantler's Pet Project, 2000).

I listened to Pet Project. I thought this is brilliant. In the first track, she's turned the two note, two syllable calling for her cat Arnold into a musical motif. It's funny and fusiony. It's great!

However, it seems things hadn't gone great because I found a blog post from her (now long disappeared I believe) that explained how she wrongfully thought Pet Project was going to turn things around, but no one listened to it and she had bills to pay. She had gone back to waitressing in New York. This was probably a joke? Half a joke? Definitely funny in a tragic way, but a little hard to decipher - incidentally a good summary of her in general.

After a long hiatus, I was really excited when she suddenly released another album (Business is bad) with a trio in 2014. Karen sings, plays harmonica and piano and she has some help on guitar and bass and perhaps some sax.

Here's her performing the title track.

All in all its a very solid album and I actually prefer the stripped down sound of the Karen Mantler trio to her old fusion band.

Dear Karen, if you're out there. You have a steadily increasing group of followers eagerly awaiting whatever's next 

[Psy-Fi]

she wrongfully thought Pet Project was going to turn things around, but no one listened to it and she had bills to pay. She had gone back to waitressing in New York.

Probably only too true. I saw some statistics a while ago (can't remember the site where I found them) about the amount of songs, EP's and albums released by musicians/artists each day, week, month, and year worldwide and the average sales per song, EP, and LP and the stats are quite discouraging to say the least.

Back in the 80's, me and a couple of friends were visiting some friends in NYC and a couple of them left the apartment we were staying at to take a cab downtown. When they returned a couple of hours later, they mentioned that their cab driver turned out to be the drummer for 'Richard Hell and the Voidoids.'

[Guybrush]

she wrongfully thought Pet Project was going to turn things around, but no one listened to it and she had bills to pay. She had gone back to waitressing in New York.

Probably only too true. I saw some statistics a while ago (can't remember the site where I found them) about the amount of songs, EP's and albums released by musicians/artists each day, week, month, and year worldwide and the average sales per song, EP, and LP and the stats are quite discouraging to say the least.

Back in the 80's, me and a couple of friends were visiting some friends in NYC and a couple of them left the apartment we were staying at to take a cab downtown. When they returned a couple of hours later, they mentioned that their cab driver turned out to be the drummer for 'Richard Hell and the Voidoids.'

Definitely! After my studies, I worked in a kindergarten for some months while I was looking for a more suitable job. One of the guys I met there played drums in a band I can't quite remember the name of, but they were played on the radio at that time. I think he'd also toured or played concerts as a drummer for Mayhem.

In prog rock, one of my favorite singers is Richard Sinclair from Caravan / Hatfield and the North / Camel. After being a musician in the 60s and 70s, he was so broke he basically had to quit as he couldn't support his family. I wonder if he / they squatted some before he found work as a carpenter installing kitchens in the 80s.

It's always been hard on the fringes of the mainstream, it seems.

[Janszoon]

Definitely! After my studies, I worked in a kindergarten for some months while I was looking for a more suitable job. One of the guys I met there played drums in a band I can't quite remember the name of, but they were played on the radio at that time. I think he'd also toured or played concerts as a drummer for Mayhem.

Guy who used to tour with Mayhem working at a kindergarten totally sounds like the premise of an indie comedy. But on a similar note, I used to work with one of the members of The Bravery after their heyday. This was their big song:

Anyway, I'm off to check out Karen Mantler.

[Guybrush]

This thread needs some love 💕

I'm bumping it with a post of my current favorite Karen Mantler song. Well, it has been almost since this album came out.

It's Surviving You, a song about losing a loved one.

I sometimes play it on our piano here at home and I find those opening chords so deliciously melancholy.