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Roxy Music


EagleEye0

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I listen to Roxy Music sometimes. And some Bryan Ferry albums (the one who´s got "These foolish things" and the other with "Smoke gets in your eyes").

In the mid-seventies I listened a lot to Roxy Music. I saw them live once or twice, they were quite "avant-garde" they way, having prog Brian Eno, glam looks and Phil Manzanera on guitar made they sound real good.

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As a matter of fact-I think Roxy Music' Avalon is one of the best album's EVER! I can still to this day listen to it 2 or 3 time's in a row & not get tired of it. I do have a couple other recording's of Roxy Music/Bryan Ferry-but that one is just a favorite of mine. :)

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As a matter of fact-I think Roxy Music' Avalon is one of the best album's EVER! I can still to this day listen to it 2 or 3 time's in a row & not get tired of it. I do have a couple other recording's of Roxy Music/Bryan Ferry-but that one is just a favorite of mine. :)

Avalon is probably the most romantic album ever made.

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Roxy Music

Roxy Music were a British Art-rock group founded in the early 1970s as a collaborative project between art school graduate Bryan Ferry (vocals, keyboards) and electronic music wizard Brian Eno. The group's name was partly a homage to the titles of old cinemas and dance halls, and partly a pun on the word 'rock'. This juxtaposition of nostalgic and contemporary, even futuristic-sounding themes, was a distinctive feature of the band's style of music and general appearance.

Their first single Virginia Plain, which reached the top three in the British charts, was typical of the band's blend of highly literate lyrics and musical inventiveness, combined with a powerhouse glam rock backbone. During that decade, they emerged as one of the foremost bands of the time. Their influence was significant upon the early British punk movement, as well as the New Romantic and experimental electronic groups of the early 1980s, and is still felt today to some degree.

Eno left after the group's second album - For Your Pleasure - amidst some differences of opinion with Ferry. He was replaced on keyboards by Eddie Jobson, late of Progressive rockers Curved Air. The main element in the dispute concerned the amount of control that Ferry exercised over the band. Eno's concerns were shared by other key members such as the classically trained Andy Mackay (saxophone, oboe), the experienced progressive rock guitarist Phil Manzanera and talented and skillful drummer Paul Thompson. Manzanera, Thomspon and Mackay were permanent members. The bassist position was vacant. Instead, they hired new bassists for each record and tour. The other three members elected to remain, however, and gradually their songwriting was allowed by Ferry to become more integral to the band's direction.

In spite of this, though, right up until their final split in 1982 all of Roxy's singles were written either wholly or jointly by Ferry, with the exception of their only number one hit, Jealous Guy, which they recorded as a tribute to John Lennon shortly after his death. Bryan Ferry is also noted as a solo performer, usually of lounge-lizard style ballads, an art form which he seems to have made his own in recent times. However, his solo career began in 1973, when still very much a member of the band, and solo albums alternated with Roxy's releases. Often, Manzanera, Mackay and Thomspon took part in the recordings of some of his work. Notably when the band was together as a four-piece.

Following their fifth album, Siren, Roxy Music disbanded temporarily, to come back together with the Manifesto album (minus Jobson) which marked a return to their roots whilst ringing the changes with musical arrangements that predicted their future direction. During sessions of Flesh and Blood, Thompson briefly left the band because he broke his thumb during a motorcycle incident. Instead the album was recorded as a trio and a host with touring musicians.

Generally, their later music is slicker and musically less adventurous than that of the earlier albums; however, Ferry's apparently effortless elegance and the musical abilities of Mackay, Manzanera and Thompson, are always much in evidence. This culminated in the sombre perfectionism and beautifully sculpted soundscapes of their final album Avalon (for which Paul returned). After that all of the band members pursued simultaneously extensive solo careers.

The original line-up - Ferry, Manzanera, Mackay, and Thompson - reformed in the early 2000s and toured extensively for a couple of years. Notably, the only significant one-time member missing was Brian Eno. Manzanera and Thompson also recorded and toured with Ferry on his 2002 album Frantic

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