And that’s just the first CD in the Back Into The Future package.  The next two discs give you a full MAN show from London’s Roundhouse in June of ’73, as well as two previously unreleased studio tracks.  Jams galore!

On to the chronological second release in this batch of remasters, the studio album Slow Motion.  By this release in November 1974, Deke Leonard had returned to the MAN fold.  As they really cranked out albums back then, this was actually Leonard’s second album since his return.  The music on this album may very easily be their absolute best studio work.  With overall darker themes in songs like “You Don’t Like Us” and “Hard Way To Die” against the Leonard-penned ballad “Grasshopper” and the Jones-penned ballad “Rainbow Eyes”, the contrasts on this album are much richer than any prior MAN albums.  The ballads are very-heavily Beatles-influenced, in the best kind of way, and once again prove that these jam-happy prog rockers know how to write and execute more concise, poppier material with the best of their peers of the era.  In fact, there’s no good reason why “Grasshopper” is not a mega-hit, with its somber strings and heavenly harmonies.  The bonus material is primarily made up of great live material recorded in Berkeley, California in April of 1975. One of my favorite versions of the epic live staple “Many Are Called, But Few Get Up”.

And then we’re on to the third release, Maximum Darkness, a classic live MAN document recorded at the Roundhouse in London in May of 1975.  The band had hooked up with Quicksilver Messenger Service’s guitarist and MAN role model, John Cipollina, while on tour in California and he joined them on stage for this performance.  The end product is all the great MAN live goodness with one more amazing guitarist on top!  The first three songs (which make up the albums first 25 minutes, or original vinyl’s first side) aren’t even MAN songs, per se; the first (“7171 551”) being a song from Deke Leonard’s solo venture, Iceberg, while the next two are Quicksilver songs that the band chose to play with Cipollina (“Codine” and “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You”).  The second side contained the MAN fan favorites, “Many Are Called, But Few Get Up” and “Bananas”, each clocking in at over 10 minutes.  And I’ve got to say that these guys go up another coolness notch for using Vonnegut’s “everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt” in “Many Are Called…”  The reissue gives us two more songs from a ’75 Berkeley show, one of them being an epic 24-minute “C’mon” romp!