Music

Bryan Adams' keyboardist is amazingly strange

by Tom Whalen

At my current place of work in a supermarket I am inundated with Bryan Adams on the wretched classic rock radio station. He’s a hometown boy who came from humble beginnings, much like Loverboy or Madchild.

My relationship with Bryan Adams is complicated. His debut single, the peppy number “Let Me Take You Dancing”, is my favourite song he ever recorded. The disco remix hit #22 on the Billboard dance charts. To be fair it also sounds nothing like Bryan Adams.

But it was Tommy Mandel, Adams’ former keyboardist, who drew my attention recently when I heard his song “Allow Me (To Destroy You)” off his eponymous 12″ EP. It’s a dingy slice of dance music, fused together with his echoing falsetto and hypnotic synthesizers.

I decided to dig a bit deeper, and that’s when I found his bizarre website.

I’m in love with this picture, not just on a personal level because we both share the same name. The little guy in the canoe rowing across, the flower, the baby head in the middle of a star?! Finally someone who understands me.

As I descend into the mind of Tommy Mandel, I immediately realize there are somehow two index pages on his site. The one you see when you go to tommymandel.com gives you links to his “new computer art”, music, and a jarring list entitled “The Ancient Rockers Hystorical Society.” If you find your way to the other index page, you will be treated to a list of his musical works like Secrets of Marital Bliss, Virtual Rock (Just Add Vocals), and CurioCity (How I Got Myself Killed). He has 13 albums for sale on CDBaby if you’re interested in any of them. His 1988 album Further Adventures bears this description: “Robots are dancin under a Surf Moon tonight.” Sounds good to me.

Almost every link I click downloads a MIDI file. This is a very good approach for musicians. Anyone browsing your website must download your music immediately as MIDI files. From what I can understand Tommy is also writing one or more operas. I clicked a link that said “My First Opera” and it downloaded another MIDI file. One of his operas has a note that says “Music blends Dvorak, Bernstein & Smokey Robinson & the Miracles.” I can’t wait to hear what that sounds like.

He’s currently in the process of writing his music biz memoirs but he can’t decide on a title. He floats a few good ones: Famous A**holes I Have Known, I’ll Never Work Again, Rocktales (One For The Road), Famous Faces-Private Places. I personally can’t decide because I love them all.

I am in love with his art. I’m speechless.

The bottom of the main page reads “This page was designed with Angel Factory.” There’s also a site map, listing every page on his website. It’s even more confusing. You are trapped in his mind. There is no map to this maze. But nevertheless, Tommy’s website brings me back to a simpler time when a website was just a humble place to dump your life onto the internet. Where a list of the albums you’ve played on seamlessly transitions into great Bible quotes and marriage advice. And in this Web 6.0 world of dynamic JavaScript applets and live content feeds, maybe that’s just what we need.

After writing this, I clicked on a random link and was greeted by this page with nothing more than the gif below and the words “Rock N’ Roll” in a green font.

I don’t think I can even begin to unravel the mystery that is Tommy Mandel.