No dummies

In common with most, if not all1, artistes, Roxy Music had a (very) small window when they couldn't put a foot wrong. I mean when the press, their fans, friends and peers all blew smoke up their arse and praised them to the hilt. Purists will say this window remained open for about three years: between 1972 & 1975 (though in all honesty this mythical window had already started to close as early as 1973 after their third album, Stranded.)

Odd then that, somewhat belatedly, I have fallen headlong in love with an album they brought out when the window had long since been removed by the builders and subsequently bricked up. Manifesto, from 1979, came out when I was still knee deep in the new wave. However, even new wave was becoming a somewhat oxymoronic label three years after New Rose and Anarchy. If Bryan Ferry and Co. had been listening to anything by the Damned or the Pistols it certainly didn't show2 - not when you hear the singles they culled from the album - Angel Eyes and Dance Away. Which, if I'm perfectly honest, was all I'd heard from this particular period of post-Eno Roxy. Both of which I felt were insipid and left me rather cold3. 

That is until a couple of album tracks started to appear on those pesky Spotify playlists that get shared around, and this entered my psyche. It's the album opener which for its first two minutes you think is a blistering instrumental, and then at 2:30 Ferry limbers up and announces his arrival. How had I missed this?

Roxy Music - Manifesto (1979)

Ferry has intermittently got the band back together over the years for live reunions (their 40th & 50th anniversaries in particular) but there's been no new product, no new songs since 1982's Avalon. Tho' they did come close in 2010 when the old gang, including Phil Manzanera, Andy Mackay and Eno, collaborated with Bryan with a 'y' and recorded some new material. However BF bagged them for himself and put out another solo effort; Olympia - the last Roxy album that never was. 

1The Beatles would have to be excluded from any such list. Wouldn't they?

2However, the intro to Manifesto reminds me of Squeeze's Take Me I'm Yours.

3Not any more - when heard in context, and in order, they make perfect sense. Does that make sense?

I'm Losing You...

That feeling you get when you think you know everything about a song and then suddenly you hear how it was really meant to sound; i.e. the person writing and recording it in real time as he's vamping the chords on his old Joanna. Turns out James first heard this when he went to Uni in 2008 but failed to share this discovery with his old man. Fourteen years later and I get a casual text from him: "Dad, did I ever play you this?" I've known family rifts that have lasted for many years erupt over less (and I should know). If there's someone in your life who you think should hear this, and hasn't, please send it to them. Now. They will appreciate it...    

John Lennon - I'm Losing You (Demo) - 1979

Here comes the ice-cream man

Today's date has been in my diary for a while now: later this morning I will have a second shot of Astrazeneca in my arm. So that's me all jabbed up then. I know a few people reading this will also be double-bubbled too; so if you want to buy me a coffee (or a beer!) there's never been a better time to meet up...

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June 4th was also something of a red letter day back in 1979. On a sunny afternoon some 41 years ago I left my parents house with L plates on my Vauxhall Viva Rockbox - I returned a couple of hours later with said plates in a waste bin outside the Test Centre. Over a million miles later and I'm still on the road.

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But today also marks a far more harrowing anniversary. On this day in 1989 a student lead pro-democracy demonstration in Tienemen Square, Bejing, which had started peacefully seven weeks earlier, was brutally suppressed by heavily armed Chinese troops - complete with tanks. The ensuing massacre resulted in a death toll which has still to this day not been verified - but estimates put it at 10,000 minimum.

Grinding gears alert - when Blur released their eighth studio album, The Magic Whip, in 2015 it contained a (seemingly) jolly little song called Ice Cream Man. But it had dark undertones. Damon Albarn explained to Billboard magazine: "The sinister ice cream man with his white gloves. I set him in context of the (Tienemen) protest. He's a policeman and the whip is the state control. But the ice cream man is really sinister."

Blur - Ice Cream Man (2105)

When the band were promoting the album on Record Store day later that year this was how they reached out to their Californian fans - an ice cream van rocking up at various record shops selling ice cream and records. The eagle eyed among you will spot Amoeba Records - the best record store in the world, bar none. Fight me.

Boogie with a Suitcase

I bumped into my friend David yesterday. He was striding towards me wearing a resplendent salmon pink shirt and a rather smart pair of headphones. 'What ya listening to?' I enquired. 'M's first album*' he replied. 'Ah, the one with Pop Muzik on it' I said; though a bit like listing the handful of men who have walked on the moon, we all struggle after Neil Armstrong. 'That's right' he said, 'the first single I bought.' After a couple of  further pleasantries and just before we went our separate ways I asked David if he wouldn't mind telling me in a 100 or so words what he liked about Pop Muzik. 'Leave it with me' he said, before heading up Mansfield Road. This dropped in my inbox last night:

"I was quite mature, musically, for a nine-year-old. Having three older brothers who would not tolerate any teeny-bopper rubbish, the first time I heard Pop Muzik by M it seemed a little frivolous and silly. Yet the more I heard it, the more I liked it. It's got a pounding electronic dance riff behind the commercialist iconography. Ironically, I think it was their performance on Cheggers Plays Pop that convinced me I needed to acquire this little piece of pop history. And so began a growing early record collection that me and my primary school friends could listen to and swap, and progress towards the 1980s… "

David R. Thompson
davidrthompson.info

M - Pop Muzik (1979)

* 'New York-London-Paris-Munich' (It featured David Bowie on handclaps. Seriously, it did)

What Were They Thinking?

?!

When celebrities or people off the telly lend their name to a product, its chances of success are supposedly elevated to 'can't fail' status. It at least gives it a leg up; think Brut, think Cinzano. Though probably best not to think Cookstown Sausages.

In the world of compilation albums it's a slightly different dynamic. Curating a bunch of tunes and putting them in the right order shouldn't be that difficult. After all, most of us have been doing it since we were kids, right? Mixtapes for girlfriends/boyfriends: tasteful, not too cheesy; niche, not too obscure. Our much pored over C90s were a surefire1 way to win over that girl you were always overawed by. How hard can it be, we thought. Hmm, maybe some of us found it more difficult than others; like this lunkhead for instance.

However, in the age of the DJ Set, every label under the sun is putting out bespoke compilations lovingly pieced together by all and sundry2. I've got some corkers in amongst my collection, handpicked by the likes of Lemon Jelly, Faithless and Nightmares on Wax. Only last week I was banging on about these fellas. impeccable tunes, impeccable running order, impeccable artwork. Definitely worth the admission money and an hour of your time any day of the week.
But if early seventies proggy folk noodlings don't float your boat, then maybe the chaps pictured here are more to your liking: if soul deep cuts & Blue Note jazz are your thing then actor Martin Freeman and record label impresario Eddie Pillar's crate-digging should bring any Saturday night to life. Or gently ease you into your Sunday morning, depending.

Again, great tunes, great running order. But, the artwork. Man alive, those sleeves! What were they thinking? When two self proclaimed mods of a certain age decide to put themselves on the front cover, then trying to recreate a tacky 1972 Kays Catalogue photoshoot is never a good look. What were they thinking?

Bobby Womack - How Could You Break My Heart? (1979)

1. I'm kidding. When hormones are involved, there is no such thing as surefire - no matter how many mixtapes you bring to the table.

2.  File Bob Dylan under 'all and sundry' at your peril; in the world of celebrity endorsed albums - these are the benchmark.

1979

It's long been acknowledged, between me and Steve anyway, that the 70s actually started in 1968 and probably kept going till around mid-1983. Culturally, musically definitely, and sportingly - mavericks ruled the world in concert halls and football grounds the world over. So when you talk about 1979 be under no illusion that the 1970s still had plenty of gas left in its tank.

Some stonking albums came out in '79. I particularly remember buying Joe Jackson's Look Sharp, Valley of the Dolls by Generation X (produced by Ian Hunter), this classic by Graham Parker and The Damned's Machine Gun Etiquette. It was also the year In Through the Out Door - Led Zeppelin's swan song was released, and the Clash's eclectic mixed bag, London Calling.

Tom Petty was busy too. Together with his band the Heartbreakers, he released Damn the Torpedoes the day before his 29th birthday. And if you were to press me for one song from today's featured year (go on, press me) I reckon it would have to be this:

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers - Refugee (1979)

You Can't be too Strong

Phonogram RIP

Unlike other stand alone record labels, Phonogram was never a label per se, but an umbrella company with a host of catch all labels in its stable including Philips, Mercury, and Vertigo. As with so many other labels and imprints it was subsumed by Universal Music; any identity these labels retain today is purely nostalgic. Which is probably why I paint them.



One of Vertigo's star players from the seventies was the maverick Graham Parker. His silky skills provided the perfect counterpoint to the emerging punk and new wave. I love this song.

Graham Parker - You Can't be too Strong (1979)

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Postscript 12.11.19

I've been meaning to post this for a while - it's just Parker and his acoustic guitar recreating the same song 40 years later (he replicated the whole album that way as an anniversary type thang).