From: owner-avalon-digest@smoe.org (avalon-digest) To: avalon-digest@smoe.org Subject: avalon-digest V12 #471 Reply-To: avalon@smoe.org Sender: owner-avalon-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-avalon-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk avalon-digest Monday, September 29 2008 Volume 12 : Number 471 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [AVALON] Press the red button for 1972 (Long) [Jocelynfiske@aol.com] To leave the list, mail majordomo@smoe.org with: unsubscribe avalon-digest ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2008 10:51:54 EDT From: Jocelynfiske@aol.com Subject: [AVALON] Press the red button for 1972 (Long) Just back from a Barcelonan sojourn to see that I missed the documentary of the year. Having read the reviews on here I was salivating to see it for myself. Now I'm the kind of gal who slurps the froth off her hot chocolate, licks the butter cream filling out of Victoria sponge cakes and reads the last page of a whodunit to see whodiddoit. Egged on by the Hear the New Roxy Album snippets I was all prepared to fast forward to the 'best bit' if I was ever lucky enough for a recording to plop into my lap. But lo! Last night I found out what my red button was for. After years of it lying dormant on my hand control, I discovered a time machine lurking in my digital box. It not only took me back to the BBC's previous week's programming (the Roxy docu was second from last on the list and had disappeared by the time I got up today) but it transported me directly to a Life on Mars 1972. Thankfully, as well as being impatient, I am also a Ludite, and so wedged on the settee between friends, a curry and a dog named after a secret agent, I was forced to watch from the beginning and thank god I did. The highlight for me came quite early on, when Eno was rambling on amiably about the early days and finally finding his instrument in the studio. I was mesmerised by a demo or unmixed track of Ladytron - certainly not what ended up on the album. Oh my god, it was like hearing it for the first time. Then the surprises kept coming fast and furious. Black and white stills that the entire 6th form and I had collected for my infamous Roxy scrapbooks flickered on the screen, but new shots from the same sessions. The hooded Dietrich eyelids, the dodgy front molar, the cat-like MacKay, the thundering Geordie hod-carrier with not yet bulging biceps and the strange little Mekon who only had to flutter his Biba eyelashes for hundreds of Roxy girls' pants to miraculously head south. The years fell away likewise. Fatty Jonesy (who scrubs up as a decent greasy gangsta) captured the moment perfectly as did Siouxsie who said that Roxy represented hope. Don't forget 1972 UK was a grey, grim economically depressed place to be. Roxy escapism was perfect timing and explains why Roxy were the house band for thousands of disenfranchised working class youth and not just the art school dilettantes that Ferry imagined would be his audience. Even wet Brummie plonker wannabee John Taylor got it right when he said that Roxy was a lifestyle decision - and very probably the quickest way for a teenage lad to get laid if he could disguise himself with a died raven black fringe and a spotted cravat to match his pubescent face. Readying myself for the horror of what was to be Gary Tibbs I wonder at how we all see people differently. I just saw a bloke who had lost his hair but had the good sense to wear what was left of it really close (mullets and demi-perms just don't work). He had a bit of middle aged pudge but still had a young looking face. But, horror of horrors, who is this needle sharp harpee bearing an uncanny resemblance to the bastard child of Rick Wakeman and my Auntie Hilda? Bloomin' Nora it's altar boy Eddie Jobson all grown up. Almost as shocking as Bonnie Langford as a MILF. Talking of which, Kari Anne stole the crown for best preserved cheekbones - sack Davina McCall and give Kari the gig for face of L'Oreal, sort out the frizzy barnet, dump the ethno-boho look and stick her on the next Roxy cover and she'd be fab. Really interesting to hear that Bryan chose Bob Clearmountain to mix because of his work with Chic and that Roxy came full funky circle. Funny how everyone from Nick de Ville and Tim Head to Andy has all ended up looking like college lecturers, which most of them have actually become. Fabulous turn by a deadpan Andy recounting the Bryan Ferry is a c-word Sid Vicious story. But best of all, Dame Anthony Price wearing one of Ernie Wises' less successful rugs and breaking in an upper deck for Janet Street Porter declaring in his best Frank Howard manner "About time girls - no one else is doing it!" How I would love to spend an evening ensconced with him in a gloomy nook of the Shadow Lounge soaking up his bitchy one-liner put-downs. Wonderful to see TGPT so relaxed in front of camera (not his favourite place to be) and so magnanimously diplomatic in his account of leaving the band "it just wasn't on my compass point". Phil, however, was prepared to admit to his post-Eno petulant stamping of foot tantrum when "his friend left the band" and how he wasn't prepared to accept Jobson. I remember every week the NME writing that Roxy were on the verge of breaking up from the moment Eno left to the moment Roxy actually did break up. And Eno was so refreshingly good blokish, honest, articulate and mature. The only bits that kind of past me by were Ferry's links but only because they were the same stories trotted out. Bracewell would have made a wonderful off camera voice over and whoever edited the whole shebang made a great job of it. Which brings us to 'the best bit'. Well, it was Manifesto wasn't it? The track not the album. Fine to show case the rhythm track and Guy Pratt's playing and even a bit of Phil twiddling but no evidence of the other players there yet. But definitely felt like Roxy. And definitely made me want to hear more - soon. But just as the tongue in cheek subtitles took us from "meanwhile three years later" (Roxy's second coming) to "meanwhile 18 years later" (Roxy's reunion tour) I was expecting a title to come up over the studio outtake as "meanwhile 20 years later". Maybe the economic gloom that threatens us all worldwide will make the time right again soon for some Roxy dreaming? Jocelyn ___________________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, mail majordomo@smoe.org with: unsubscribe avalon ------------------------------ End of avalon-digest V12 #471 ***************************** ======================================================================== For further info, mail majordomo@smoe.org with: info avalon-digest