Roxy Music - Stranded

I still listen to college radio.  I've always liked it, since I was a kid and stayed up late, well past my bedtime listening to my pillow speaker and looking for stations that played Rock songs I had never heard.  That's where I found out about things like Punk Rock and it's even where I first heard bands like Roxy Music.  I'd lay money on it that WCSB is the first place I ever heard Mother of Pearl from Stranded.  WMMS eventually played it, but it was one of those late night songs.  I mean, they played Love is the Drug during the day and that was about it.

The college stations would play popular albums but they'd always play some oddball song that I had never heard.  That's how I found out I really liked a band like Roxy Music.  I know I never heard the brilliant A Song for Europe on a commercial station, but I've loved this song since high school because some kids used to play it on their shows.

Then it seemed like a lot of the music I liked kind of disappeared from college radio.  Hey, I'm not a kid anymore and I'd expect that to happen. Things go away, and they really kind of should.  If Styx, Supertramp and Foreigner had moved out of the way then there would have been room for plenty of bands that deserved their shot.  Not on the college stations, but regular commercial radio.  Things should fade away and become a niche, I think.

College stations are a great place for niche music because the DJ just plays what they want to play anyway, which is really pretty cool. So I was saying that all these bands that I grew up with that were on the fringes of major label life back then had kind of faded away and I was getting around to saying the only place I ever hear these songs now is at my house or maybe my car.  I was pretty resigned to this and I really don't mind because I think it's the natural way of things.

Lately though, I've started hearing these songs crop up now and then on college radio.  There's even shows dedicated to older, guitar driven Rock and I'm pretty surprised how many of the songs I always loved are being discovered by another generation of people, and by people I mean people that aren't my kids or relatives.  I was listening the other day on some trips around town for work and I heard Brownsville Station.  I heard Johnny Winter.  I heard Artful Dodger and Blue Oyster Cult from their first album.  Now to me this stuff isn't all that obscure because I've been listening to it my whole life, but to someone in their twenties this isn't exactly the stuff packing the bins at the used record store.

It's not just one show these days.  There's a few people doing it.  Hell, I even heard Gentle Giant (hey kids, they suck - you can really stop that now!).  I was pretty damned floored when I heard Phil Manzanera's wicked guitar opening to Mother of Pearl the other day, though.  It was almost like hearing it for the first time.  It was just so unexpected and, shall we say, Out of the Blue.  I really liked hearing it and it just got me to decide I should go home and listen to Stranded because it's been too long.

I really love Manzanera's playing throughout this album.  On Amazona he sounds like he just learned something new and he just seems to play with a joy most players don't (or maybe just can't) get across.  I've always felt Street Life and Song for Europe were two of Roxy's absolutely best songs and the aforementioned Mother of Pearl is one of my favorites.  This is the first record without Brian Eno and I suppose it isn't quite as adventurous as the first two albums but it just seems a little more solid than the first two.  Like most Roxy albums, I like it a lot.

Getting back to the radio thing, I think it's cool that there's a few shows playing things that college radio actually used to play long ago.  Hell, I've heard The Yardbirds and Rose Tattoo in the same hour.  That's pretty cool.  There's hope for the future yet, but I hope these people are still listening to new stuff, too.

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.

Roxy Music - Viva!

I seem to be stuck in an old part of my record collection right about now.  Maybe because I ordered some stuff and it hasn't come in and I'm trying to make sure I have the funds for it when it gets here (if you order records at your record store and don't pick them up for weeks or months, then you're a dick and they should make you prepay, and if you still don't get them in 30 days, they should put your records out in the sale bin). I guess that listening to old stuff kind of gives me more ammo for these posts, though.  Because they've been a part of me for so long, I might actually have something to say about them, whereas a new record I tend to kind of review it, and lord knows I suck at that!  Viva! Roxy Music is one of those records I've had since I was in Jr, High.  So I should be able to think of something to say about it.

I remember reading about Roxy Music, and I think I had heard Love is the Drug a million times (it was a big hit here on Cleveland FM radio), and I liked how they were described as Art Rock.  I figured back then that anything with that kind of label meant that the music was more mature, and I was more likely to be able to pick someone's brain who knew way more about Rock music than me if I knew something like this.  I had no idea what to expect when I bought this (it was the first Roxy album I ever bought), but the cover looked like modern art and Rock 'N Roll to me, and I loved how the back cover says Viva! Roxy Music - The Live Roxy Music Album.  It seemed serious to me, and I wanted to listen to serious music.  I don't know why I wanted to listen to serious music, in the bicentennial parade in our town I helped a friend tape a big smoke bomb to his bike seat, and we lit it right before the part of the parade where the most people would get blasted with that awful smoke while we rode our bikes around the float our families had made.  Parents were pissed, but they had to admit, it was pretty funny to see kids in Tricorn hats riding in this giant plume of stinky, yellowish smoke.  So I wasn't taking anything else seriously, but I wanted people to know that I took my responsibilities as a Rock Fan seriously, no matter the appearance of frivolity my life actually consisted of.

The best thing about this album is how loud it sounds.  It always sounds loud, even if you're listening quietly.  It sounds loud because the audience is loud.  It sounds loud because when you turn it up to make it easier to hear the quiet parts, the loud parts come in really loud, the way Rock 'N Roll shows should be.  I was never afraid of the Art Rock label again after hearing this record, because I figured it meant killer guitar solo's, pounding drums and weird, wild electric violins.  I was all in (and I still am).  I love the beginning of this record.  The crowd is chanting in unison (I've never been to a show where that happened), and then the crack of that snare drum and it's so obvious that this band means business as it launches into Out of the Blue. Then that crazy finale with the electric violin - you have no idea how many nights I spent playing this record over and over.  I had no idea that this was  actually a somewhat less adventurous (or arty) band than they had been.  All I knew is that this was one of my favorite records, and it still is.

I think the two things that I always thought were as much art as rock were Both Ends Burning and In Every Dream Home a Heartache (did you know that's about an inflatable doll?  do you know what pervs do with those things?).  Now I don't think my parents ever quite caught on to the adult subject matter of the former (because they just tuned it out, not because they were 14 like me), but I know they heard my little GE stereo blasting Phil Manzanera's epic solo after the line, but you blew my mind... I played that all the time, and it just had to be loud for that Maximum Rock Effect.  In fact, my old record (which has been replaced due to abuse) was easy to find where that part of the song was, because I often just played that if I was in a hurry.  Swimming took up a lot of my time, and I hated that I couldn't listen to music while I swam up and down the pool!

Both Ends Burning always just slays me when the girls come in and just shred their vocal cords.  The juxtaposition against Bryan Ferry's always in control voice is perfect.  I knew that that had to be the part that was art.  I know now that just because it's music makes it art, but hey, cut me a break.

I'm still kind of proud of myself for starting my Roxy Music journey here.  There's none of the FM staple songs on this album.  It's a really weird song selection, and it's a pretty short album so you'd think they could have squeezed Love is the Drug on it if they had wanted to.  But those were different times, and I think that Roxy felt (rightly) that these were great performances in their own right, and that people should listen to the record as a whole and get to know a different side of them.  Obviously, no one would ever do that these days!  I mean, how many 14 year olds even listen to anything but a song or two by any artist?  And how fucked up is that?  That means that a 14 year old today is missing out on the hairs standing up on the back of their necks when the girls shred Both Ends Burning.  That kid never learns to love the absolutely epic, weirdly kind of Country meets Progressive Rock 10 minutes of pure delight that's If There is Something.  I feel bad for those kids, and I know with my kids I spent a lot of time trying to explain why it's important to listen to an album.  Not to just play songs.  Because listening to an album is where one day, you find out that the quiet, moody Chance Meeting is one of the songs that has burned into your psyche.  It would be such a shame to not have that happen to you.  It's like trampling through a field of tulips in Holland so you can see a dandelion.

Well, that's enough of that old man shit.  My record is exactly the same as my old one was, except it's playable and sounds terrific.  I think I replaced it in the mid 80's, and I'm pretty sure mine is an original pressing.  It's got the yellow ATCO label like my old one did, and even the cover is in great shape.  I seem to remember wishing there was more stuff written on that cover for me to read while I listened, though!