Another Ziegler from jmcandrew, who has been finding a bunch of great CIDUs of late. This one apparently dates from 1979, and OP notes:
Is the joke here just that some people don’t enjoy Barry Manilow? He’s been a consistently popular entertainer for 6 decades. Seems like a swanky gathering with a grand piano setup would appreciate his type of music.
I always confuse Barry Manilow with Neil Diamond for some reason. Which definitely doesn’t help.
Comics I Don't Understand 
I think she just wants a little sax…
I think the idea is that Barry Manilow is considered very mellow, and adding a saxophone would spice things up and make things livelier.
Jack Ziegler tended to be just on the outer edge of Kliban territory, with a lot of his cartoons just being absurd for the sake of absurdity.
Hmm. Doesn’t “Ready to Take a Chance Again” have a sax on it?
Perhaps Walter does an especially bad Barry Manilow?
“I always confuse Barry Manilow with Neil Diamond for some reason. Which definitely doesn’t help.”
It doesn’t help but it is VERY understandable.
Maybe it’s that the guest only knows how to play Barry Manilow songs on the piano, so the arrival of a guest with his own instrument who actually knows how to play a variety of music is a relief?
Barry Manilow’s music has long had a reputation for being regarded as “bad”, generally in the vein of being shlocky or pedestrian.
“Achey Breaky Song” is not one of Weird Al Yankovic’s better-regarded parodies, in large part because it never winks at its own mean-spiritedness… Manilow is the second “bad” musical act mentioned in the song as being preferable to listen to instead of Billy Ray Cyrus’ “Achey Breaky Heart”, after Donnie and Marie Osmond.
I’m no fan of Barry Manilow but, as with most punching bag music acts (see Nickelback, or the genre of polka in general), his music has never lived up to its level of mockery to me.
Remembering when “I Write the Songs” was inescapable. He was broadly popular and thoroughly inoffensive, just this side of show tunes, so it was more a matter of being so ubiquitous and vanilla rather than actively disliked. The joke is that even these unremarkable upper-middle-class types might crave something hotter than one of their number affecting Manilow’s manner and repertoire.
A few years later Walter might be karaoke-ing Abba.
bensondonald (8): That’s a good description of Manilow music.
I would NOT consider mixing the two up understandable.
The interesting thing is that Manilow wrote most of his songs, but not “I Write the Songs”, which was written by Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys.
And there was definitely sax on his “2 AM Paradise Cafe” jazz album.
Not all his music was downtempo. “Copacabana” is a counter example.
“Copa Cabana” has been in rotation at work since November. I hadn’t heard it in years prior. I’ve heard enough of it now. I wonder if there are any good parodies of it.
Not really a true parody since the lyrics are unchanged. But you can watch Liza’s version: