„Roxy Music“

(Virgin, 1972)

There are two songs, that I have heard as a kid sometime, which went round in my head and that I hummed to myself from time to time, without actually knowing, which song from which band it is. One of them was „Centerfold“ by the J. Geils Band, featured on an album, which due to ist unbearable Kitsch-pseudo-rocks will never make it into this list. The other one is “Virinia plain” from this records.

„Virginia Plain“ was also the first charts-entry (Nummer 4) by one of the overall most important pop-goes-art-and-back-again-bands, or better a project. That a record with such an impeccably ugly Betty-Grable-cover and with guys looking so strange and far out (just take a look at their pictures on the inner sleeves!) could ever make this, can’t really be explained. But Roxy Music, unlike many other bands, were able to incorporate opposites, and to hypertextualise and solve them. Someone called them „time-travellers from a long gone age, that is yet to come“ once, and that seems to fit them well. Brian Ferry poses as the outer-space teddy-boy and croons as if the pills are slowly running out. Guitarist Phil Manzaneras’ sly grinning as well as his fly-like sunshades will sneak into your dreams at night. Bassman Graham Simpson looks like a country-side innkeeper in a catalogue for wool-clothes. If Paul Thompson, the drummer, dares to go out with tiger-head-flaps on his shoulders, then he is afraid of nothing. Sax-player Andrew Mackay carries one of the coolest fifties-waves-go-working-class and black silken shirts and Brian Eno, well, he is Eno.

I think, these contrasts, which always seemed to fall over each other in a wavelike motion, paired with an unbelievable irony make up the biggest part of the secret of Roxy Music. The rest is only to be expierenced via repeated listening, but, it will never be completely put into words, though.

A band like Roxy Music didn’t really fit ist time, but then again it did perfectly. Hundreds of other bands call their testimony, from Adam & the ants, Duran Duran to Suede. But even in the hightimes of Glam-Rock and Progressive-Art-Ensembles, the era of ever-changing musical images (e.g. David Bowie, King Crimson, T-Rex, Emerson, Lake & Palmers, etc.) and the highest glitter-platform-boots, Roxy Music remained the most adventerous and boldest musicians around. This is of course where  Eno’s tape-loops and other playthings come in – samplers or other digital gimmicks, which make a techno-hero out of virtually every ape with power-plug in the wall – didn’t exist then. But that wasn’t all.

The songs on the first LP sound very british, but if you put them into a historical perspectivem they don’t. The music reminds of a cocktail-party (not only because of the according sound-snippets at the beginning) to which a wide variety of people were invited. Rock’n’roller, Pop-musicians und arists, who are having the time of their lives together. The first song „Re-Make/Re-Model“ makes the point with its pounding rhythm, the instruments that constantly avoid each other, as well as in the lyrics, which Ferry pulls of in a sort of staccato: “next time is the best time we all know“. This is followed by a bizarre travelogue of orchestral strings, kitsch-harmonies, electronica (or what was electronica in the seventies) und strange breaks called “Ladytron”. One of the most beautiful songs by Roxy Music, if not at all, is “If there is something”, a popsong constantly revolving around its own angle, with a closing refrain and background-choir reaching musical-territory and sadly missing on all Roxy Music-compilations, chartlists and favorite. Yeah, most people just don’t know. Here, as well as with any other song, Roxy Music were ready to follow the song as far as possible without being disturbed in their vision. That makes genius classics, where other people would have produced biles of schmaltzy shit instead. Maybe because there are hidden breaks and effects in every song.

The next song on the setlist of this album qualifies the last statement about the best song by Roxy Music: it is “Virginia Plain” and that song has to be the perfect popsong out of Ferry’s hands. One, which he never again came up to again.