Showing posts with label roxy music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label roxy music. Show all posts

Sunday 5 January 2020

Log #171 - A new decade, a new Van

Eddy Bamyasi

Thinking Roxy Music were just a glam pop outfit? Think again after hearing For Your Pleasure - their second album released in 1973 and one containing as much rock and electronic experimentation as your next serious rock band.

Roxy Music For Your Pleasure
Van Morrison Hard Nose The Highway
Pink Floyd Meddle
Sufjan Stevens Carrie & Lowell
Holger Czukay Moving Pictures
Elbow The Seldom Seen Kid

Then there's Meddle. Some people's favourite Pink Floyd album. It's not my favourite but it's up there in the top 3 or 4. I'm not sure what my favourite is actually. It used to be Wish You Were Here but I probably play Animals the most. Then again The Wall is an amazing project and I've recently spent some time discovering some of the band's groundbreaking early records like Ummagumma and Atom Heart MotherMeddle's greatness lies in some excellent acoustic songwriting songs on Side 1 and then of course the epic Echoes on Side 2 which could be their greatest achievement. This track was just mind-blowing for a school kid growing up in the 70s - with its submarine sonar opening, it's beautiful theme, and the funky heavy bit in the middle. #TopClass

Talking of prog Elbow offer something a little different. This is the only album I have heard of theirs. It seems to offer a very gentle laid back version of prog rock with subtle dynamic changes employed instead of the usual pyrotechnics associated with the genre. The Seldom Seen Kid is the Manchester band's 4th album and won the Mercury Prize in 2008. This is Elbow's first appearance at the blog.

Speaking of gentle we move to Sufjan Stevens' very very gentle Carrie & Lowell album. Whispered singing and sparse instrumentation it's gentle... and lovely, although you have to be in the right mood. The album is an ode to Stevens' parents, pictured on the cover. Interesting to note as Log #171 brings us into a new decade, Carrie & Lowell appeared in my first ever blog post Log #1 back in October 2016 along with Suede, Afro Celts, Paolo Nutini, Carole King and Badly Drawn Boy.

Final word to the great Van the Man. I have no idea why I have not heard this classic Van album before. It's up there with the best of his first 8 albums which took him on a golden run from Astral Weeks through to Veedon Fleece, the album with which this one shares its tone the most. [Astral was actually his 2nd album but the first one doesn't really count and was not officially sanctioned by Morrison. Ed]. It's a joy to discover a new Morrison album from his hey day and as this one is going to be less familiar to me (and I expect other fans too who may not have gone much beyond Astral and Moondance) I feel it is going to get a fair number of appearances this year/decade.




Sunday 18 December 2016

Log #12 - New Treasure Uncovered

Eddy Bamyasi


Several times in my music listening life I've heard something for the first time which sounded like nothing else I had ever heard before. This happened with Can, Neil Young, David Sylvian, Stereolab, and Boards of Canada. I also remember getting a lift back from the North of England in a friend's car one evening and once again hearing something that sounded so different and original to my ears. The band was The Cocteau Twins and the albums we listened to on that long journey were Heaven or Las Vegas and Four Calendar Cafe. Those two fantastic albums are actually more produced and polished, and perhaps more accomplished actually than the earlier Treasure featured here which has more indie rock sensibilities typical of the era (1984). Not that there is anything very much typical about the Cocteau sound with Robin Guthrie's multi layered guitar effects and Elizabeth Frazer's ghostly vocals.
The Cocteau Twins are still the best by far at the 4AD ethereal dreamscape, thanks largely to the extraordinary voice of Liz Fraser. Somehow she's found a voice that falls completely outside 'Rock' or 'Pop'.

It's what we all looked like in the 80s

1. Arbouretum - The Gathering
2. Calexico - Garden Ruin
3. Roxy Music - For Your Pleasure
4. Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
5. Ramsay Midwood - Shootout at the Ok Chinese Restaurant
6. Cocteau Twins - Treasure

Calexico hail from Tucson, Arizona, and their music has a sense of place with their authentic Americana and Mariachi sound. I first heard them through a tremendous instrumental featured on a free CD I picked up with an Uncut magazine. The CD entitled Sounds of the New West was responsible for introducing me to many great Americana (or Alt-Country as it was termed in 1998) artists including The Handsome Family, Will Oldham, Vic Chesnutt and Lambchop.

Probably the greatest free CD ever given away with a magazine

Garden Ruin is actually a bit more mainstream than their earlier acclaimed albums Black Light, Feast of Wire, and Hot Rail and has been criticised by some die hard fans as such, but I still like it. I've chosen Lucky Dime for the playlist which has a lovely feel good vibe which really reminds me of a classic old tune but I can't decide if this is Santana's Black Magic Woman or Evil Ways or something by the Kinks, or is it the Beatles? I hope it comes to me and if it does I'll report back here later! This track isn't really typical Calexico and I wouldn't have recognised it as them without knowing, but as such indicates the tone of this album.

With such an "art" band as Roxy Music it is very easy to overlook the music and focus on their image as I did in Log #11. However after several more plays of For Your Pleasure, which is the only one of their albums I have, I'm realising they were actually good musicians and produced some excellent and original rock music which stands up well against many of their more revered contemporaries.

Really can't say I thought much of the Bon Iver album - the first I've heard from him. Very earnest navel gazing with an annoyingly high pitched voice. Maybe it's a grower if life isn't too short. His latest is one of the Best Albums of 2016 in our local Resident Records review apparently.

The Ramsay Midwood album was a favourite of tiny local pub, The Greys, which used to play it a lot a few year's back when it was regularly hosting many Americana and Roots bands. Without being too familiar with the individual tracks as yet, they all sound indistinguishable from each other but they also say that about Neil Young so it's not necessarily a bad thing at all.
Neil Young only has one solo, but it sure is a good one.
And we'll leave it there with Arbouretum who are a reincarnation of Crazy Horse if I've ever heard one!

Sunday 11 December 2016

Log #11 - Who Were Those Roxy Music Cover Girls?

Eddy Bamyasi


Back to some basics this week with some (mostly) unplugged Americana albums from The Felice Brothers and the incomparable Bonnie "Prince" Billy, plus a unique fusion of country and acid (yes, you read right) from Brixton's Alabama 3, and a look at the 70s album covers of a classic glam rock band.

Last week I mentioned The Felice Brothers in the same breath as Wilco, Tom Waits and Bob Dylan. Since listening some more and reading a bit more about them I revise that to stand in agreement with the frequent comparisons with The Band (Music From The Big Pink era), Neil Young (Tonight's the Night era), and yes, Bob Dylan (Basement Tapes era). You couldn't ask for more really could you? Lead singer Ian Felice name checks Tonight's the Night in an interview about their new album, Life in the Dark (straight on the Christmas list), and his singing and lyrics are both very Dylanesque (in reference to the extended narrative songs and punchy nasal delivery of Dylan's early years, more than the inaudible bark of now).

It's nice when an album grows on you. I've had The Felice Brothers for a few years but hadn't played it more than half a dozen times up until last week. Playing it more and sampling the new album the decision to get a ticket for next month's show became an absolute no brainer. It's gonna be a real stormer. The songs are naked and authentic with super melodies and devastating lyrics of sex, booze and guns.

The Brothers then - in The Band gear

The Brothers now - more rock indie


1. Arbouretum - The Gathering
2. The Felice Brothers - The Felice Brothers
3. Roxy Music - For Your Pleasure
4. Alabama 3 - Exile on Coldharbor Lane
5. Steely  Dan - Aja
6. Bonnie Prince Billy - Beware

The Alabama 3 album is absolutely brilliant. Great songs, great grooves, and oodles of humour. I saw them at a festival once and assumed they were a genuine American gospel band from the deep south. They are actually from the deep south... of London... and the preaching, Texas drool and stage names are all in parody. They actually started out under the name of The First Presleyterian Church of Elvis the Divine with an ambition to fuse country music with acid! And it works with great melodies and pulsating electronic gated rhythms. This album should have been massive but it's little known and the band have pretty much sunk without trace despite some commercial fame when their Woke Up This Morning featured on The Sorpranos credits.

Please be upstanding for Reverend Dr. D. Wayne Love and his Alabama 3

After hearing them at the festival and buying the album I went to see them a second time at our local Concorde2. This time around they were a disappointment with a chaotic set hampered by technical problems and bad tempers - The Very Reverend Dr. D. Wayne Love (front left) inviting a heckler outside for a fight! You never really know what you are going to get live especially with bands like this infamous for outrageous performances.

The Arbouretum album was a favourite of mine for a period of time when it came out in 2011. Their music is slow and heavy grunge with distorted guitars reminding me most of The Foo Fighters or Neil Young. Most of their tracks are quite lengthy with thick guitar melody lines. They can also do sweet and lovely as heard on the gorgeous cover of Jimmy Webb's The Highwayman. I haven't heard many versions of this famous song but this has to be the best cover out there and jumps straight on to my playlist. Great lyrics too:
I was a highwayman
Along the coach roads I did ride
With sword and pistol by my side
Many a young maid lost her baubles to my trade
Many a soldier shed his lifeblood on my blade
The bastards hung me in the spring of twenty-five
But I am still alive
I was a sailor
I was born upon the tide
And with the sea I did abide
I sailed a schooner round the Horn to Mexico
I went aloft and furled the mainsail in a blow
And when the yards broke off they said that I got killed
But I am living still
I was a dam builder
Across the river deep and wide
Where steel and water did collide
A place called Boulder on the wild Colorado
I slipped and fell into the wet concrete below
They buried me in that great tomb that knows no sound
But I am still around
I'll always be around, and around and around and around and around...
I'll fly a starship
Across the Universe divide
And when I reach the other side
I'll find a place to rest my spirit if I can
Perhaps I may become a highwayman again
Or I may simply be a single drop of rain
But I will remain
And I'll be back again, and again and again and again and again...

Bonnie "Prince" Billy, real name Will Oldham, is the embodiment of laid back, low-fi, americana/country. I don't know this 2009 album too well in comparison with some of his earlier Palace Brothers music and solo albums. This one seems more country than usual with plenty of pedal steel. I love his fragile voice and gentle guitar strumming and he is top of my gig wish list (he played a small church in Brighton a few years ago but the gig was sold out immediately before I heard). Much more on Will will follow.

Girls Girls Girls... Those Roxy Music Cover Girls

Even after listening to music for 40 years there are still new "old" bands to discover. When I say "new" I actually mean new to me as obviously Roxy Music are a very old band, but one I've never listened to before. I knew a bit about singer Bryan Ferry of course, and quite alot about knob twiddler Brian Eno, but had dismissed them as one of those throwaway glam rock pop bands of the early 70s like T-Rex or Slade. Then I got talking to someone in a pub about music (I can't even remember who now) and he recommended I take a listen to them, and to this album in particular.

There is some great rock on For Your Pleasure (their second album) and some interesting extended electronics which I feel is foreshadowing Eno's Berlin work with David Bowie moreso than his ambient solo albums. Probably only Do The Strand is a well known single, certainly the only one I recognise and as often the case that's probably a strength of the album.

Like a number of bands, including Little Feat mentioned in an earlier log, Roxy Music were famous for their album covers which featured various glamour models, some of whom were Bryan Ferry's girlfriends.



The artwork for their early albums imitated the visual style of classic "girlie" and fashion magazines of the time, featuring high-fashion shots of scantily-clad models.

The model for the debut album was Kari-Ann Muller who was reportedly paid £20 for the assignment. She also appeared in the Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service and is now a yoga teacher living in London with husband Chris Jagger, brother of Mick.
It was very ... ice-creamy, in a way. The colours remind me of a marshmallow, like something really delicious.
Amanda Lear appeared on the cover of our featured album walking a blank panther and is perhaps the most mysterious of Bryan Ferry's muses. She was reportedly a mistress of Salvador Dali and Rolling Stone Brian Jones before having affairs with both Ferry and David Bowie. Bizarrely there were also persistent rumours that she was actually a transsexual man!

But what of those rumours?
Hah hah! That was bullshit, a phony publicity stunt in order to sell records. No-one wanted a boring girl like any other. But it was the time of the Rocky Horror Show, and I was around, looking glamorous, and people always dream, don't they? The lady is a girl, and that's it.
To read more about her fascinating life (you couldn't make this stuff up) please have a look at https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2000/dec/24/focus.news

Marilyn Cole was the girl on the album Stranded. She was a Playboy model and eventually married Victor Lownes, president of Playboy Enterprises, after a brief involvement with Ferry.

Perhaps many people's favourite (certainly of teenage boys) is the Country Life cover which features two random German fans the band met in a bar in Portugal, (l to r) Eveline Grunwald and Constanze Karoli. I don't know how rare a name Karoli is in Germany but it always surprises me how often a common name does indicate a blood relationship and in this case Constanze was Can guitarist Michael Karoli's cousin, and Eveline was his girlfriend. It continues to be a small somewhat incestuous world.

Roxy fans Eveline and Constanze looking surprised on the cover of Country Life

Without looking too closely I always thought this was a shot of the girls lying flat on the grass but they are actually standing against a pine tree and posing as if suddenly caught in the glare of car headlights.
We just had to look weird and surprised.
Some album covers of the 70s (particularly of heavy rock or metal bands - Blind Faith, Whitesnake, The Scorpions etc) were pushing the sexual boundaries and this cover was banned in many countries on release which was actually saying something in those days. Incidentally does anyone remember those truly awful Top of the Pops compilation albums our parents used to buy?

Where have the girls gone? The censored version of Country Life.

I often think it must be strange to be remembered for one tiny (insignificant at the time) thing in life that happened forty years ago – literally a "15 minutes of fame".  Neither Country Life girl went on to become models. Eveline became an art teacher and Constanze is a practising psychotherapist. Rather cool to have such a dinner party subject to bring up though. Imagine flicking through a host’s CD collection and chancing across Country Life and revealing your secret!

Without doubt Jerry Hall is the most famous of the Roxy models and appeared on the Siren cover literally as a siren washed up on some rocks in Anglesey, North Wales. One of the original, if not the original, super models, Texan Hall dated Bryan Ferry for some time before meeting Mick Jagger. Her recent marriage to Rupert Murdoch was a surprise to many.

Love on the Rocks - Hall and Ferry in Anglesey

Again not looking closely enough I thought the model on the front of Flesh and Blood was one person but it actually shows Aimee Stephenson and Shelley Man casting javelins. Aimee Stephenson (the nearest to the camera) later worked in film (script writing and production). She tragically died in 2001 from burn injuries sustained from exploding fireworks on a bus in Peru (I know, it sounds so unlikely but when your time is up, your time is up, and as I said above you couldn't make this up - the bizarre and random twists of life). As for Shelley Man she is literally residing in the "where are they now" file, gone and forgotten at least as far as the internet is concerned - hopefully this indicates she is enjoying a quiet happy family life somewhere in the Cotswolds, free from controversy, rumour or tragedy.

Once more initial appearances can be deceptive with the realistic dancing "models" on the front of Manifesto actually being mannequins.

Having spent the 70s enjoying many a tryst with his band’s cover stars, Bryan Ferry finally made a long-term commitment to one of them in 1982, when he married model Lucy Helmore who starred (albeit anonymously with back to camera and wearing a medieval helmet) on the front of the Avalon album.

Ferry with Avalon lady Lucy Helmore




The above owes a debt to an interesting article on the subject from https://threeinacrowd.wordpress.com/2009/01/30/roxy-music-cover-model/
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