Pure Punk Picks
Editions Of You – Roxy Music
I was an arty fellow when I was young. I guess I still am.
Art and music were my teen obsessions, poetry and literature came later in my mid-twenties.
Music I could play, art- not so much and it seems I’m happy most flailing away at writing.
But a lot of my early music idols were visual artists such as Bowie and an original member from this band, Brian Eno. As well as Bryan Ferry, their lead singer.
Sure, Roxy Music had some links with the dreary, English prog rock scene then- but their rock (Roxy!) music was much more imaginative, original and fun.
To me they were an extension of The Velvet Underground where their roots were firmly planted in rock’n’roll but they took it on a wild carnival ride in the amusement park of the avant-garde.
Visually, Roxy Music had a look of Sci-Fi rockabilly stars. And their music had experimental sounds and synthesizer music brushing up against blaring, fifties honky-tonk, rhythm and blues sax.
Plus, psychedelic inspired guitar running along some great but fey, affected vocals closer in sound to Billie Holiday than say, Mick Jagger.
They mixed sounds and styles, visually as well as musically, from the past and present to an imagined space-age glam/glitter, pop/rock. That took the past into the future with an accurate understanding of what it takes to make great pop art.
I was a teen in the early seventies when glam/glitter rock was very popular in England but not so much in America.
While my friends were more interested in Aerosmith, Jethro Tull and Lynyrd Skynyrd. For me, it was Lou Reed, David Bowie, Iggy & The Stooges and Alice Cooper.
And one of my favorite bands before punk came around was Roxy Music. And Brian Eno, who went on to be a famous producer, inventing ambient music along the way and being, in my opinion, the most innovative, interesting music person during my lifetime- started with this band.
I had a very, small record player in ’72 when “For Your Pleasure” the album that this song is from was released. This was shortly before I bought my first proper stereo system.
And while “Editions Of You” was playing, I was compelled to leap and jump around my bedroom. I had never done this before but the music was so wild and exciting to me, that it made me react in ecstatic glee.
(Please note: this was the time in my life before any drink or drugs had entered my system.)
I believe it was during Eno’s crazed, dissonant synthesizer solo that ricochets and reels like a pinball game gone berserk that caused me to respond this way.
But the whole song is so inspiring, with several great, short solos from every instrument much like they often played on old jazz recordings. And with an energy and freshness that had such an overall, electrifying impact on me.
So, perhaps it was Alice Cooper’s rebellious, anti-social performance on television, on Don Krishner’s Rock Concert, around the same time, that I consider to be my first “punk rock” experience? Or maybe is was when I bought my first Iggy & The Stooges album “Raw Power,” with a song that I consider the first punk song because of its title, “Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell?”
But really, I know, it was probably when this song inspired me to, not sit passively in my seat, how I did countless times already, witnessing arena rock shows. This song enticed me to become fully engaged, in spirit and in body in an intense, passionate display.
So when I see now, young people moshing in the pit, bashing their bodies against each other to express their excitement and joy with the music. I can’t help but remember the first time I reacted that way to a song, which is this song, nearly fifty years ago.
Art and punk. I dunno, I guess people figure they don’t fit very well. Punk is against all the pretentious aspirations of other rock genres and with this notion, I wholeheartedly agree.
But in the very early Boston punk scene that I lived in, most of the bands I followed had members that were either going to Mass Art or The Museum School- with many punk shows going on at Mass Art. I was becoming aware then, that this music was probably never going to be mainstream, but I thought, maybe this will become music that visual artists
listen to?
Early punk was linked with the Dada art in England and in Boston as well. Dada was a powerful, anti-art movement of the 1920’s that was probably the birth of conceptual art. And I can agree with the connection, especially with Dada’s political/societal commentary, that has always been a big part of punk, as well.
But instead of focusing on all this artistic, theoretical thought- I should just imagine that I’m hearing this song for the first time- The first edition of “Editions Of You”, how I’d be reacting, right now.
(Leaps wildly across the room knocking his laptop onto the floor).
(Slimedog)
