Tag Archive: roxy music


The prettiest stars of Glam Rock

Filed under: Books, Gender, Music — Leave a comment
October 31, 2016

SHOCK AND AWE – GLAM ROCK AND ITS LEGACY by Simon Reynolds (Faber & Faber,2016)

“Got your mother in a whirl ‘cos she’s not sure if you’re a boy or a girl” – David Bowie (Rebel Rebel)
“Even the greatest stars live their lives in the looking glass” – Kraftwork (Hall Of Mirrors)
“There’s something in the air of which we will all be aware yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah” – Sweet (Teenage Rampage)
“Whatever happened to the heroes?”- The Stranglers (No More Heroes)

glamIt’s fair to say Glam Rock has never really been taken all that seriously. Being casually dismissed as a joke genre is partly what drove Simon Reynolds to write this impressively weighty tome.

In so doing, he proves that this musical phenomenon deserves to be more than just an amusing footnote in the story of popular music. The author doesn’t claim that all the music tagged as Glam (or Glitter is you’re American) is of a universally high standard yet, even at its most crass and commercial, Reynolds endorses the viewpoint of Noel Coward who once wryly observed : “It’s extraordinary how potent cheap music is”. Continue reading →

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The pitfalls of over analyzing song lyrics

Filed under: Books, Humour, Italy, Modern Art, Music — 4 Comments
December 5, 2015

Image based on the top 30 words used in songs based on 1 million recordings.

In this year’s  BBC John Peel lecture, Brian Eno said that one of the failings of modern-day music critics is that they pay too much attention to song lyrics. As part of Roxy Music, Eno played on two of the greatest pop singles of all time – Virginia Plain and Pyjamarama – where the words add to the atmosphere but when considered apart from the music are ,at best, enigmatic, at worst, plain jibberish.

Even when songs do have an obvious meaning or tell a story, they should not be viewed in the same way as poems or works of fiction. This is why the ‘Rock In Translation’ slot of Italy’s Virgin Radio makes for such a torturous listening experience. On this, a woman earnestly reads the translated lyrics to popular tunes as though she were helping to impart some meaningful insight into the human condition. Lines in the vein of “come on baby rock me all night long” are rendered into Italian as though they were some kind of profound comments on the nature of loving relationships. Continue reading →

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WHEN SHOULD ROCK BANDS QUIT?

Filed under: Music, Television — Leave a comment
July 11, 2012

Remember them this way – Roxy Music on the gatefold sleeve to For Your Pleasure.

Rock bands are like TV sit-coms, they usually go on for too long and become tired or formularic.

Roxy Music are a prime example.

In a review of the 10 cd box set of the band’s complete studio recordings in this month’s Wire magazine, Mark Fisher sagely notes that  “if they had stopped after the first two albums, their career would have been immaculate”.

Their self titled debut and For Your Pleasure were and are amazing records which they never bettered in their post-Eno years.

I got to thinking which other long running bands would have benefited from quitting while they were ahead.

For instance, REM should have called it a day after Automatic For The People and wouldn’t it have been better if the Stones had parted company after Exile On Main Street or if The Who had ended on a genuine high with Quadrophenia.

Did punk bands like The Ramones, The Damned and Gang Of Four really need to make any more records after their trailblazing debuts?

I’m sure you can think of your own examples.

There is of course another category of bands such as The Cranberries and Coldplay that ought to have been strangled at birth, but that’s another story!

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BACKTRACKING #12 : ROXY MUSIC

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April 27, 2011
2 - Roxy Music - Virginia Plain - UK - 1973--

The single

Part of an irregular series of bite-sized posts about 7″ singles I own – shameless nostalgia from the days of vinyl. (Search ‘Backtracking’ to collect the set!)

Roxy Music – Virginia Plain b/w Pyjamarama (Polydor, 1973)

Originally two separate singles, then a double A-side to die for. Neither song featured on their classic albums – Roxy Musc & For Your Pleasure, neither song has a chorus nor any coherent meaning but they are two of the finest pop songs ever recorded.

The band arrived  fully formed and brimful of swagger – part of the glam scene but also gloriously aloof from it.  The innovative qualities of the group gradually faded when Eno left (although Stranded is also a great album) and after Ferry began to embrace his lounge lizard persona too enthusiastically, but in 1972 and 1973 this was as good as it got!

Check out the hair and gear on their TOTP appearance:

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ELECTRONIC GOSPEL

Filed under: Music — 2 Comments
September 23, 2008

A vivid and treasured memory from 1977 is that of walking into Barbarellas club in Birmingham while Talking Heads were midway through ‘Uh-Ho Love Comes To Town’. They were actually the support act to The Ramones which explains why I missed the first part of their set.

I still remember being enthralled by David Byrne who looked nervous and nerdy but curiously charismatic at the same time. The way he sang looked like therapy – a way of releasing his demons in public.

I saw the band less than a year later at the same venue – this time they were headlining (with Dire Straits as support) – and this cemented my unwavering love for the band. Continue reading →

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