Home To Myself (1973)
Bootleg
Betty, Mister D
The
first Harlette to fly the coup. I put this in here for this Miss
M has another Miss M singing back-up on the song, Be Happy Now
. However, she is drowned out by a chorus of other background singers.
So no real need to have this one, unless you're a Manchester fan.
This is currently out of print.
Rolling
Stone Magazine, Jon Landau
Melissa
Manchester is a dropout from Bette Midler's gang of backup singers.
I knew she would be leaving when I saw her at Miss M's New Year's
Eve concert at Philharmonic Hall. Such class, I could barely turn
my head away until Bette started pounding the floor and sashaying
across the stage.
With
her first album the Other Miss M proves herself capable of one thing
that her former employer has not yet attempted writing. In it, she
is preoccupied with her need to receive and give affection, the
loneliness of failing at it and the solitude she is left with. It's
strictly True Romance, but she pulls it off with an often amazing
elan, especially on the album's title cut.
Home
To Myself is a concept record, professionally produced (occasionally
overproduced) by Tokens' veterans and current Dawn producers Hank
Medress and Dave Appell. Its star aims for a synthesis of the styles
of Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro and, unavoidably, Miss M, although
in the latter case she avoids any obvious cross references. Not
so of her two other influences, who she mentions in one song without
self-consciousness and in an artful and intelligent way.
It
is in her old-fashioned, brazenly interested attitude towards love
and sex that Melissa Manchester carves out a distinctive niche for
herself. She sings, "If it feels good, let it ride," and
asks her friend not to talk it away, demanding she be treated spontaneously
and offering to do the same in return.
The
melodies often sound familiar, although the songs are original but
that is because she and co-songwriter Carole Bayer Sager work in
the well-defined R&B-tinged New York street song idiom. Manchester
sometimes sings flat, is occasionally repetitious, and is the sole
author of the album's haunting "Jenny," to whom the record
is dedicated. Her faults notwithstanding, this is an auspicious
debut by a promising artist working in an old-fashioned but eminently
respectable genre. (RS 141)
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