In Every Dream Home A Heartache

The only convincing love story of our time. Or was that Lolita? At least Dolores Haze was alive and breathing, and that’s passe now. Indeed, the most convincing love story of our century must needs be with something inflatable, deluxe and disposable. Bryan Ferry was, in 1973, prescient about the unbearable loneliness and ennui of millenial living. So he was a bit off on the technology; he was still thinking of inflatable dolls in the literal sense, the digital inflation of our fantasies not having come to be yet. Still, old fashioned plastic or new fangled digital, he’s captured the soul of modern man, all alone in his spotless environment with nothing to interact with but his own breath. Could we all be any sadder, isolated and immobile with our shiny toys and 3D Evil Monster Porn? Or does this nationwide state of existential boredom even exist? I don’t think it really does, but it’s one of our talking points as a culture. Most of us can still – despite spending too much time alone watching unnaturally inflated women do unspeakable things – interact with one another and even experience (and share!) basic emotions. It’s vaguely romantic, I suppose, to imagine yourself as the only living being surrounded by others so hopelessly disengaged they can only invest themselves in lifeless shiny objects. You can both feel sorry for such characters and envy them – they have their dream homes and everything in the world but their souls are empty. It’s not exactly a new theme either. Wasn’t pretty rich people’s ennui what Gatsby was all about? (Seriously, tell me if it was, I’ve never read it.) What’s new is how, the culture vultures cry, we are all disappearing into a vortex of virtual ‘reality’ in which solipsism and masturbation have replaced all desire or ability for human interaction. That’s just silly of course. Like I said, most of us young moderns have the rational thinking skills to make a distinction between real and not-real life, and are comfortable taking our pleasures in both worlds. The idea of modern youth quietly going insane alone with an iPad is just the most recent iteration of out-of-it older people freaking out about how the younger generation is all going to hell because women’s ankles! novels! automobiles! the waltz! not wearing a hat in public! flappers! rock and roll! women voters! men with long hair! contraception! drugs! free love! gay marriage! the internet! and all the other things that everyone thought would lay society low but didn’t. So no, we haven’t all collectively taken leave of reality just yet. But that’s not to say we’re not without our slivers of loneliness, disengagement and ennui. There’s always some sense of hopeless romantic sorrow in the story of one man and his inflatable doll, because he’s pathetic and yet we can relate to him, because he reflects our own pathetic little obsessions, and if he happens to look like Bryan Ferry then it’s romantically pathetic and kinky hot.

If There Is Something

All I can say is, if you haven’t been educated about Roxy Music, I feel sorry for you and if you don’t get it, you probably don’t deserve to. I used to feel a need to make people understand, not just this but everything, me in general. Then I realized that either they do or they don’t and if they don’t there’s nothing I can do for it. I’ve also learned that loving something – whatever thing it is – is terribly lonely because nobody hears or sees things the same way and the way that thing makes me feel can’t be communicated. Even the people who share my tastes with amazing 95% overlap still hear and see and understand things their own way. Which is why you just have to accept that your relationship with your music is essentially a private matter for you to enjoy and not bore other people with. I’ve spoken before about my conviction that the act of listening to music is a communication between yourself and the artist, in which they feed their vision directly into your soul, making for a one directional and lopsided but no less real for it relationship. That’s not a way of looking at it that I’ve heard from anyone but myself, but I suspect I’m not the only one who feels that way, or who’s found that their relations with, say, Bryan Ferry are more enriching than with most of the people who actually exist in real life and we interact with outside of our heads. Bryan Ferry has been a better friend than pretty much most of the people I’ve met, and certainly more important to me than nine out of ten of the men I’ve slept with. And I don’t think that’s in any way abnormal or unhealthy. I think everyone has that place in their heart for role models and imaginary friends, although a lot of people don’t talk about it in quite this way. I also suspect that for many people that special spot is filled with Jesus. If you think about it, who is Jesus but your imaginary rock star idol, and what are rock stars but re-made and re-modeled substitute Christ figures?

If It Takes All Night

“Oh here it comes, that old ennui, I hope it won’t stay long”

Every line a classic! I come back to Roxy Music again and again anyway, but this one in particular just always hits the spot and cheers me up. Because who couldn’t relate to it? It’s all about how sometimes life is so relentlessly glamorous and exciting you just can’t stand it anymore. Come on, we’ve all been there, right? All joking aside, it is a serious topic and yes, I can relate to it. It’s one of Bryan Ferry’s greatest themes, how the glamour life can leave you empty inside. We don’t all lead glamour lives all the time, but most of us do find that underneath the superficial things like champagne, glitter and neon lights – all the tempting pretty symbols of nightlife that we flock to – there’s still that universal human desire to connect somehow, with someone. Decadence is lonely, and that’s precisely what makes it romantic.

Grey Lagoons

I’m going to go all fangirl and gush how much I love Bryan Ferry in makeup, with his shiny hair and huge gold epaulets. So glamorous. As usual the appeal is not so much straight forward attraction (although, yes…) as a desire to emulate and possess. I don’t know if this is exactly normal. Does everyone else who admires opposite-sex rock stars and actors just see them as bedtime fantasies?  Am I the only one who sees them as someone I want to be when I grow up? Surely not, and surely it’s precisely the point of glam rock and perhaps rock’n'roll in general to erase boundaries like that.

For Your Pleasure

I don’t usually like to post late-life reunion videos here. It’s depressing to see the old heroes past their peak. But I have to recommend the most recent Roxy Music tour DVD. As you can see below, they performed so perfectly and beautifully that it’s impossible not to be amazed all over again. This is no lazy check cashing comeback. Roxy did the  music justice. So what if they’re over the hill…Ferry still looks handsome. If I recall it correctly, by the end of the show the young woman who played keyboards and violin earned the biggest cheers. Also, if I recall correctly, this one video isn’t from the DVD Roxy Music Live at the Apollo, but it’s similar. Here, as there, the choice of For Your Pleasure as closer is sublime. They couldn’t have played it better being young.

Flesh and Blood

Like I was complaining yesterday, it seems that I’ve reblogged every single picture of Bryan Ferry on all of tumblr. Have those boys not been photographed enough? But I’ve had enough to complain about – I just bought a new computer. And it was actually not a horrible pain-in-the-arse or cost an arm and leg, so I’m pretty happy. It’s a bit smaller than the old one, both physically and in terms of capacity, but that’s ok. I didn’t really need that much RAM anyway. As it were, that was what I was doing in between writing that first sentence and picking up with the second one. So I got distracted and have no memory of what my train of thought was in the first place. Uh, something about finding pictures on tumblr? So, yeah, sorry…

Eight Miles High

Hello, and welcome back. We’ve had a little hiatus, due to my laptop crashing yet again. Now we return to our regularly scheduled cornucopia of entertainment. BTW, that’s the royal ‘we’.

Onwards and upwards with The Byrds’ Eight Miles High. One of their best songs, that. Below you’ll find a clip from a 1970 Fillmore East concert, the song being extended into a ten minute jam that sounds nothing like what came out of the studio. I, myself, personally, find the practice of jamming intolerably dull and frustrating. But I’ve no doubt that this display of musicianship is roundly edifying to anyone who grasps the technicality of making music. I, being, shall we say, not musically inclined tend to value the cult of personality  over middling things like technical proficiency. In other words, ten minute guitar solos put me to sleep. Disagree with me if you like. I stick to my guns. In my skewed value system Roxy Music’s glammed-out cover scores miles above the trippy original. Personality being something The Byrds didn’t have much truck with, they don’t often come up on my radar. Roxy Music being a vehicle for personality, it’s their iteration I turn to. That being said, I must say something less nice. Bryan Ferry, you dance like a white guy. That being somewhat of a shortcoming for a professional rock star.

Editions of You

Two videos each featuring uniquely glamorous performances. I love a band who knows how to dress. I’m not advocating that everyone should dress like this (yes I am), but the stage bound among us should consider it part of their calling to dress impressively. Duly noted, Ferry is fabulous as can be, Eno looks like a gay cockatiel, and Manzanera looks nearly normal (Nearly Normal Phil!). Andy Mackay is wearing, in both videos, what appears to be something from the Jolly Green Giant line of fetish wear. Which I’m all in favor of. Down with flannel!

Do the Strand

There’s a difference between a perfectly enjoyable but meaningless song and one that changes your life. That last song was one I like. This one is one that permanently molded my impressionable mind. Never mind that it makes no sense. What is a Strand and how does one do it? Beside the point. The point is, when I was a vulnerable adolescent I thought Bryan Ferry was the sexiest thing god ever created. (Maybe not the but one of, for sure.) At that age we feel things with an intensity that later in life we need drugs to approximate. I was obsessed with Roxy Music to a degree that makes me squeamish to remember. It may be a function of growing up without religion – there’s that need to kneel down and worship which gets redirected towards secular figures, and makes for a passionate faith that takes place inside the head, and which is by definition impossible to communicate. Then one grows up and learns many disappointing things such as; emotional resources are finite and shouldn’t be spent on pop stars, there are pains and responsibilities that will destroy your will to live if you let them, and sophisticated men don’t exist.

Day For Night

Good news everybody! Bryan Ferry has a new album, releasing October 26 of this year. There’s been word going around for several years about a Roxy Music reunion and new album that never materialized. Turns out it did happen, and the results are coming out under Ferry’s solo flag. Titled Olympia, the new album features contributions from Phil  Manzanera, Andy Mackay and Eno, as well as David Gilmour, Nile Rodgers, Jonny Greenwood and a picture of Kate Moss on the cover. The lead single, You Can Dance, sounds exactly like something from Avalon, with an opening sample of True To Life to emphasize the point. Seems this as close to a new Roxy Music record as we’re likely to get. Not to worry, there’s surfeit of models in shiny dresses writhing sensually – it wouldn’t be a proper Roxy outing without them. Again, you can buy it on the 26th. In the meantime, here’s some Bête Noire.

Related Articles

• Bryan Ferry – “Song To The Siren” (Feat. Roxy Music, Jonny Greenwood, David Gilmour, Nile Rodgers) (Stereogum Premiere) (stereogum.com)
• Bryan Ferry Talks New Solo Album, Roxy Music (pitchfork.com)
• Kate Moss graces the cover of Bryan Ferry’s “Olympia” (theredradio.typepad.com)