• Included among the Record Descriptions of Favorite Albums (Part 1).
• Besides being the biggest hit by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, “Blinded by the Light” may be the largest selling song by any Manfred Mann band. 

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Manfred Mann’s Earth Band – The Roaring Silence (1976):  Oh, here is an old favorite; I played The Roaring Silence all the time back in the day.  Manfred Mann’s Earth Band grew out of the British Invasion band called Manfred Mann that is named for Manfred Mann, their bespectacled bandleader and keyboardist.  Manfred Mann had many hit songs in the 1960’s, including two major U.S. hits, “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” and the cover of a previously unreleased Bob Dylan song called “Mighty Quinn”.  Manfred Mann was known for often including obscure Bob Dylan songs on their albums beginning in 1966, and Manfred Mann’s Earth Band continued the tradition, naming one of their albums after a delightfully titled Dylan song, Get Your Rocks Off (1973). 

Manfred Mann’s Earth Band covered both of the singles that Bruce Springsteen included on his debut album Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. (1973), “Blinded by the Light” and “Spirit in the Night”; plus a third song from that album, “For You” on their album Chance (1980).  “Spirit in the Night” (sometimes called “Spirits in the Night” by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band) was included on their previous album Nightingales and Bombers (1975).  Manfred Mann’s Earth Band changed some of the lyrics in “Blinded by the Light”, replacing the line “cut loose like a deuce” with “revved up like a deuce”.  Although it was supposedly due to technical problems in the recording studio rather than a deliberate mispronunciation, instead of “deuce” the word sounds like “douche”.  Another feature of their version of the song is the inclusion of a sequence from “Chopsticks” near the end.  “Blinded by the Light” became a Number One hit in the U.S. and still gets a lot of airplay on rock radio stations.  Besides being the biggest hit single by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, “Blinded by the Light” is probably the largest selling song by any of the various Manfred Mann bands over the years.  After “Blinded by the Light” hit #1, The Roaring Silence was reissued in the U.S. with a blue cover and the addition of a re-recorded version of the other Bruce Springsteen single, “Spirit in the Night”.  With some songs having fun titles like “Singing the Dolphin Through” and “Waiter, There’s a Yawn in My Ear”, The Roaring Silence epitomizes progressive rock in the best sense of the term, with jazz and classical music motifs, soaring keyboards and guitars, and searing vocals, not all of them male.