Dressin' fine, makin' time

I'm still not 100% sure why, but I listened to a lot of Roxy Music and, indeed, Bryan Ferry whilst laid up in hospital; morphine painkillers make you do strange things, that's all I can say. One song I kept coming back to time and again was a solo single Ferry brought out in 1974 on the Island label. I remember buying it as an ex-jukebox 45 (with the middle missing) from Grantham Market fifty years ago, can you believe. If memory serves it cost me the princely sum of 25p; money well spent if you ask me. At the time I couldn't get over the sheer ferocity of the riff that runs all the way through it - guitar, keyboard and horns joining forces to make up a relentless wall of sound.

Imagine my delight when I discovered (still in hospital) Ferry and his band recreating the track note for note at one of the BBC live sessions they used to put on regularly at St. Luke's in Shoreditch, central London. And what a band it is. Look left and you'll see ex-Womble & Sex Pistol Chris Spedding and look right, just behind the fabulous backing singers, you'll spot a young and ridiculously talented guitarist bunking off from school, seemingly. His name is Ollie Johnson and he helps bring The In Crowd to a new audience whilst the ever urbane front man just stands there leaning on his mic stand looking amazing in his made to measure sparkly black jacket*.

Bryan Ferry - The In Crowd (Live from 2007)

* He's come a long way since his retro pilot chic days. Here he is playing the very same number at a Roxy gig in 1976 c/w Phil Manzanera on guitar.

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?

Johnny's always running around

Johnny & Mary Antonia*

As the excellent Mad Men slowly begins to exit stage left in front of my very eyes (86 episodes down, only six to go), I've been forced to seek solace in another Netflix boxset: Lovesick, starring the ever charismatic Johnny Flynn, is my kind of show. It's funny. It's sad. And it is, for the most part, believable; pretty much. All the characters and their back stories are interwoven perfectly - making it a real ensemble piece. The writing is slick and it's always on the button. So much writing these days, especially comedy writing, is a bit like tuning in an old radio - sometimes the reception is good, other times not so. Lovesick is consistently 'locked on'.

I won't give away any plot spoilers, but if you watch the 45 second trailer below it will, I'm hoping, pull you in. And please don't think it's in anyway akin to the Richard Curtis school of lazy, tepid Rom Com - it's way, way, better than anything Curtis could ever conjure up (with the exception of About a Boy, and, in any event, that was Nick Hornby). No, Lovesick is a genuinely very funny and moving show that will definitely keep you out of mischief for a while. I'm on Series 3 so will be a few lengths ahead of you if you do decide to jump in.

Oh, and did I tell you that the soundtrack is none too shabby either? Take a look.
The episode I've just watched had a quirky take on Robert Palmer's Johnny & Mary. It's by Todd Terje with guest vocals by Bryan Ferry. I know what you're thinking but, believe me, it does actually work really well. Palmer's quirky 1980 single has been slowed down somewhat and been given a slightly sinister coat of menace.

Bryan Ferry & Todd Terje - Johnny & Mary

* Johnny Flynn plays Dylan, Antonia Thomas plays Evie