Time May Change Me, But I Can't Trace Time

It’s a true delight seeing kids react to music. At a young age, nothing shorts out the brain in such a delightful manner as carefully sequenced notes, played together in harmonious succession. If you’re anything close to human, a fledgling musical experience kinda makes you want to dance. Such was the case for Barbara Manning, a native Californian who eventually went on to record for the esteemed Matador label and gain unprecedented critical acclaim; for her there had always existed an urge to leave a lasting impression upon music. As a child, this was dubiously apparent through her own reactions to music: such as dancing on her mother’s records. (“If I really liked a record I used to pull it out and start dancing on the record. I thought that was the idea, you know.”)
Much to her mother’s relief, the copy of Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass was saved from Barbara’s joyously vinyl-crushing dance moves and the youngster was soon satisfying her pent-up musical potential by banging atonal block chords on the family piano. However, before gaining mastery of the instrument, Barbara’s mother whisked her and her brother into a Volkswagen Bug and stormed from their native San Diego into the wooded reaches of Northern California. Such began her ceaseless journeys, and her constant relationship with change.
“We moved every year,” says Manning nonchalantly, while splurging on a mocha. Her travels have found her crisscrossing the country while living in her van, as well as numerous aeronautical jaunts to and from Europe.
“I hate planes. I used to not have a problem with planes, but now an airplane, the sound of it, the smell of it, everything makes my heart want to break.”
Heartbreak and pain, suffering and sleeplessness: all things conducive to hard times and good writing. Barbara has had her fair share of the above, culminating in 1998, a time in her life which she refers to as “the worst year in the world,” which included, among other things, the loss of her grandmother, record contract, plush San Francisco apartment and her fiancé’s engagement. Those costly blows led her to nomadic exploration of her home country, and eventually overseas, where she was to meet up with twin brothers Fabrizio and Flavio Steinbach. Together as the Go-Luckys, the trio found success in the Steinbachs’ native Germany, touring there and other parts of Europe before change’s fickle winds found Manning flying back to the States, musically rejuvenated and none the worse for wear.
Since relocating to Chico, Manning has thrown a new change into her life’s spectrum: being a student with a trade. Currently studying environmental sciences at CSUC, she’s found it a bit hard to adapt from the whimsical life of full-time musician, but like all other things, it just takes some getting used to. And with a little self-affirmation, she says she thinks she can manage.
“Things are okay, things are secure, things change all the time, but you’re okay and you’re in a safe place. I have to sort of tell myself that. That’s why I’m going back to school, so I have a tool, a degree in something someone can use…besides, you know, my great songs or whatever.”
But as a natural performer, distance from the spotlight is temporary at worst. After initially deciding not to perform in Chico, Barbara changed her mind when the opportunity came up for her to get involved with The Carnival of Hearts, or Valentine’s the 13th as she aptly references it.
“I wanted a show in Chico after not playing for quite a while, and getting here and not even thinking about doing music here. I decided to do a show that was meaningful, around a date that I could connect with. It seemed really all of a sudden significant.”
A collaborative effort, The Carnival of Hearts is an anti-Valentine’s Day Valentine’s Day celebration involving music, booths, oddities, attractions and other scandalous activities: a carnal carnival, if you will.
“I want it to be more than just music,” she explains, as her eyes widen and a mischievous look appears upon her face. “I want it to be a sensory experience, for people to come in and immediately get in the mood of everything that is twisted about love. All the parts that are just hard and bittersweet and just fucked.”
As an appropriate symbolic statement, Barbara has been deep in the construction of an icon destined for destruction: that of a large heart-shaped piñata, to be lovingly smashed by bat-wielding hands of the faithfully love-tattered attendees.
“It’s taking forever!” she exclaims in a fit of excitement and anticipation. “I made it too big. I’m spending all these hours on it knowing it’s going to be smashed to bits.
“And that’s what I want it to be about,” she continues. “All that effort and sweetness…that has that edge to it and explodes.”
Barbara wants the carnival to represent the true experience of love, but not the mushy, eye-batting puppy dog sentiments pushed so gauchely by Hallmark et al into the forefront of the pagan celebration; Carnival of Hearts will bring fair representation to the torment that is oft to coincide with the passion. However, leave the rusty razorblades and Joy Division fantasies at home, the evening is for celebrating the sometimes unrequited nature of love, and realizing that without pain no joy can exist.
“I want it to be bittersweet, so that means I also want it to be sweet, not for people to go in there in a bad mood and feel ‘time to drink my tequila and cry over the fact that I haven’t been fucked in a couple years,’ or whatever.”
A mishmash of conflicting emotions and desires, the evening is setting itself up to be a wholly unique and poignant event. Apart from a guest MC with a noted flat taste in humor and a booth set up to deliver “a good ass-whooping,” the evening’s performers will include theterminalwasteband, a musical collective in its 73rd incarnation and an increasingly rare Barbara Manning solo performance.
As Barbara sits in the seat of transformation, taking a new lease on her life, she seems fairly centered, prepared for a new chapter. Whether the popular success that she’s striven for catches up to her in this lifetime, or her destiny calls for the romantic tragedy of postmortem fame, Barbara Manning’s determination and thirst for the new will keep her spirit alight.
And maybe, just maybe, some time in the future, children will be dancing on her records.

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