CoronaVinyl Day 465 (M): No Strings by Chris Mancini

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Today's CoronaVinyl category is "M," and I listened to Chris Mancini's 1983 album No Strings.

I got this album as a part of a box of records my neighbor gave me, and he used to work in the music industry, which is why this is a promo copy of the album.  This is, I believe, the first time in the 3+ years I've been doing CoronaVinyl that the artist doesn't even have a Wikipedia page and the album isn't on Spotify.  This was both frustrating and extremely intriguing.

From what I can gather from internet sleuthing, Chris Mancini -- who is not to be confused with the actor, writer, and podcaster of the same name -- is the son of famed composer Henry Mancini, and this appears to be the only album he released, though he has apparently continued to work in the music industry as a producer, singer, musician, and publisher, including work on multiple soundtracks and Academy Award and Grammy shows.  The "No Strings" name now makes more sense, as a nod to his father's composing background.

I had never looked at the album in any meaningful way before today.  The back of the album gave me some pretty solid hope, as it lists the musicians who played on the album, aside from Mancini (who played guitar and some synthesizers, and obviously sang).  The album was produced by E Street Band keyboardist -- and one of the keys (pun intended, motherfuckers!) to Bruce Springsteen's iconic sound.  He also plays keyboards on No Strings, and check out this list of other musicians who play on the album:

• On drums:  former Vanilla Fudge, Cactus, and Rod Stewart drummer Carmine Appice; KISS collaborator and future Late Night with David Letterman band drummer Anton Fig; and Toto drummer and session wunderkind Jeff Porcaro
• On guitars:  Rick Derringer; session guitarist and co-writer of many TV theme songs, including "Believe It Or Not" from The Greatest American Hero, Stephen Geyer; and session legend Waddy Wachtel
• On bass:  Rose Royce bassist Lequeint "Duke" Jobe; and Toto bassist and session wunderkind Mike Porcaro

All in all, the album fell a little flat, given the talent.  It's a pretty standard early '80s melodic rock album.  Don't get me wrong, there are some good songs on the album.  I guess I should have tempered my expectations, given the dearth of information about Mancini and that this was his only album.

As I mentioned before, the album isn't on Spotify.  Also, the entire album isn't playlisted on YouTube, so I just embedded the YouTube "videos" of my favorite song from each side.

Favorite Song on Side 1:  "Wild Eyes"
Side one ends with a nice early '80s rocker that could have easily ended up on a Journey album from the same era.

Favorite Song on Side 2:  "Suspicions"
The second side starts out with another Journey-esque song, with lots of "rock" synthesizers and some sneaky guitars.