Roxy Music - Remake/Remodel

When I think about Roxy Music, there is always this hesitation. It’s like, I really like them, but it took me a while to like them because I was prejudiced against them for some reason. I can remember a time when I knew the reason, but now I don’t. I do know it has a lot (everything) to do with some sort of jealousies involving my ex, Rob Roy. Whatever our relationship was, forever how long it lasted, for whatever aftermath remained, and whatever damage was done, one thing remains: Rob Roy was my musical soul mate. We spent the majority of our time playing, speaking of and buying/trading music. We both had a deep and abiding love for Britpop. I met him once briefly at a friend’s house, but then truly remember falling all over myself for him at my first Morrissey show here in Raleigh, Nov 16, 1997 at the Ritz. I then spent the next 3 or 4 years laying my soul to waste for him.

We were so off and on for so long, it’s hard to say when it all started, but we both know when it ended. We lived together so many different times and attempts, but it was the second to last time, in Cary, that we had our last big stand. It was the longest time we made it, but it was the hardest. The most damage was done then. However, I do remember one special occasion we had decided to drive all the way out to Carrboro to the Visart video store to rent music videos, because there was nowhere in Raleigh to find the kinds of concerts we wanted to see. On one occasion we rented Peter Gabriel’s Secret World Live and Roxy Music’s Musikladen, live from Bremen, Germany.

By this point, I had overcome my unfounded prejudice against Roxy Music, (save one song, to this day I can barely tolerate to hear, “Virginia Plain”. This song is so awkwardly uncomfortably bad to me. The vibrato of his voice, the tempo, I don’t know what it is, but I just straight up dislike it as a song in general.) We made a special trip to my parents’ house, who had 2 VCR’s at the time and made our own copies of these two videos before returning them to Carrboro. We spent many times of the next few weeks and months watching Musikladen. This song always sticks out.

I cannot accurately tell you the myriad of things about this song and video that please me, but i can name a few. It may be the saxophonic hijinx and acrobatism of Andy MacKay, but then again, it may be his pants of extreme excitement, with codpiece of proportionate mystery. It might be the overall bewildering Riff-Raff-itude of Brian Eno. My god. How can you love someone so much but yet be so terrified of them? It seems weird to me that I didn’t like Roxy Music for a while there, when I have such a deep Eno connection with the whole U2 thing, and all.

But i think what does it for me, what REALLY does it for me is not so much the fact that i want to do Brian Ferry six ways to sunday, (i always have, and always will, no matter how old and crusty he gets,) it just has to be the reign of fire he lashes upon us with his Rockin' Piano Hands at about 5:00. Few things in life have truly seemed as cool to me. In fact, that became a kind of private joke between Rob and I, if you misbehaved, Bryan Ferry would shoot you would his ‘Rockin’ piano hands’. We would often replay this part and pretend to fall over dead from being shot.

We had some good times.



Side note, in more recent times, this song also makes me think of the first time i met Frank Black after a show (incidentally) also in Carrboro at the Cat's Cradle which, as my livejournal confirms, was Jan 30, 2001. He covered this song that night, and I remember being super-psyched to hear it. Forever coincidentally between us, this was the first time i officially met you, although neither of us can remember and it wasn't the first time we were 'together'!

(ps - did you piece together that at this show the pixies opened for U2 and the next time we were 'together' was when you opened for Frank Black? THEN we met again because of U2... how's that for fate, sucker?)