Saturday, January 10, 2015

Roxy Music - Manifesto


I realize that it seems to be the consensus that this is not a good Roxy Music album.  I totally disagree with that.  I think this is a terrific Roxy album, and I always have.  Maybe because they hadn't really released a new album since I started liking them.  maybe because my first Roxy album was Viva! and it had been three years since they released a new record, which back in the 70's made you wonder if maybe they hadn't just broken up.  So when this came out, I was excited and I bought it before I ever heard a single song.

I know that it's popular today to call that "blind buying," but man, that's just a stupid way to look at buying records if you ask me.  I knew who they were, and I had liked every record they had made so far, and I was sure that this one wouldn't be any different.  I mean no different in my appeal, but I knew it would push their sound to another direction (fortunately for me, it wasn't Avalon, which is a real snoozer).  I remember putting this on my turntable and loving how the sides were split up as East Side and West Side, instead of Side One and Side Two.  I mean, how artistic of them!

The sparse, slow opening to Manifesto that just slowly adds instruments to the slow, funky jam hooked me immediately.  This was the kind of stuff my friends that complained I listened to too much "harder, faster" could mellow out to, and I wouldn't fall asleep.  It's interesting to me that the opening song of the side, and the closing song, Stronger Through the Years, both have a slow, jammy instrumental feel to them.  Brian Ferry certainly has plenty to sing in both of them, but I just loved the fact that it seemed like the side opened and closed with extended instrumental parts.  They're actually shorter parts than I remember, but then a record is only twenty minutes a side or so!

I think Angel Eyes was a single in the US, and I think that they used a different version on the cd releases.  I like the record much better.  I think Trash is a suitably punkish bit of weirdness and I can remember playing this side while I got dressed in the morning before school.  At least i was getting dressed to get ready to go somewhere.  I think in 1979 we had something like 186 school days and I missed over 150.  I didn't like going there.  I had better things to do.  this caused me to eventually have to go back after my friends all left, but I had a job anyway and that was a big chunk of my school that last year.  Plus, I met my wife then, so things worked out really well for me (my undying gratitude goes out to Ron Schuff and Tom Madzy for seeing past my teenaged assholiness and finding a way for me to get a diploma).  What a great side, though!  I think back then for awhile I even wanted to live on the East Side of Cleveland because I thought it would be cooler than the West Side (wrong!).

The West Side of the album is a little more danceable, and I can remember that I used to have a portable radio/cassette player and I taped this record and played it on that little boombox in the first car my wife and I owned.  There wasn't a radio in it, and I bought it from a friend for 75 bucks out of two paychecks.  It was a real piece of shit 1970 Torino, but it had a 351 Cleveland and a Posi rear end and would just light 'em up if I wanted it to.  We'd put the radio in the back seat and blast Ain't That So (which was kind of like the songs on the East Side), and I know my wife really liked Dance Away, which was a real, blatant attempt at American Top 40, but I don't think it really made it that far up the charts.  In fact, outside of me playing my cassette or the record at home, I hardly remember hearing this album at all.  I played it a lot though, and I'll bet that my friends think it was a bigger hit that it was because I played it so much!

We used to play softball every weekend.  We'd have total coed games, and no one ever kept score.  We'd get a keg or just cases and cases of beer and go out and play for hours.  A lot of the people actually were on "serious" softball teams and played in leagues, but Sunday's were for fun.  I remember people liked my little boombox, a Panasonic mono thing with like an eight inch woofer and a one in tweeter on it.  You could heat that thing all over the field, and the batteries lasted forever in it.  It just worked better than those big, bulky things that were icons of break dancers of the late 70's, early 80's.  That big woofer just whomped out the sound!  I think I probably played this pretty constantly from 1979 right through about 1982.  It was just the kind of record I could listen to all the time, and listening to it now reminds me that I should probably play it a little more often.

I've had mine since 1979, so it's made a few moves, but I think it always got played at least on my old Dual so it seems to be in pretty great shape.  Maybe partly because of that old cassette?  I don't know, it's in real good shape though.  Nice and flat and plays nice and quiet.

4 comments:

  1. I agree with you that Manifesto is an excellent album, more so than what critics gave it. I tend to think also that this album was an new era of Roxy Music, if memory serves me well it was the last Roxy Music album which Paul Thompson played drums on. I do have the Dance Away on 45 and B side was Trash 2 which sounded more punk rock than on the album version. The Reprise issue has a more polished Angel Eyes but upon getting the CD of the Atlantic Years which came out on Atco (!) that Angel Eyes is the more rock sounding. I wonder if this version is on the LP.

    That said, I like the first side slightly more, with Still Falls The Rain and Stronger Through The Years. Although the cool dance Ain't That So is a nice side 2 opener.

    The next album Flesh And Blood was kind of a letdown for myself and while Avalon is nice mood music. Somehow I bought the two singles off that album More Than This and Take A Chance On Me.

    Final thought: most of the Reprise album reissued I ended up finding as cutouts at the long gone Camelot Music store, which Manifesto was one of them. Despite the critics saying otherwise, I think it's an A album (or at least A-)

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  2. I really liked "Dance Away," even bought the single -- and it peaked around Number 80 in the States. "Ain't That So" is OK too, but I don't think I ever heard any of the rest of this. I'll be watching to see if you review FLESH + BLOOD, which to me sounds best if you just play the "hits" and "My Only Love." And you guys are right -- AVALON's a snooze, but it's so smooth! I even liked "More Than This" and "Take a Chance With Me." But of course all this was considered an anti-climax after their wild early years. I love Roxy's driving "The Thrill of it All," but I can't take weird stuff like "Street Life"....

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  3. I won't be going past 1979 with Roxy Music, because while I saw them on tour after that, I thought Flesh & Blood and Avalon were spectacularly produced turds. My friend Mike had them and the singles weren't bad, but they weren't good, either. I think all their albums up through Manifesto are interesting, and generally fun, but Flesh & Blood and Avalon are music for very old people who need some quiet because they can't hear themselves think.

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  4. Hey, I AM an old person who can't hear himself think....

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