Your Favourite Roxy Music Album

Manifesto because it was my introduction to Roxy Music, the rest followed soon after, love Roxy all the way!

 

I preordered the new album from Amazon.Ca for $25 Canadian. It went up after release day. Seems decently priced to me.

 

The regular version has a mastering from 1999 or something like that. I think I already have that.

I was referring to the version with the 5.1 mix. Sorry, but $140 strikes me as expensive.

 

Man that’s tough!! FYP - Siren was like a peak that just didn’t end, and then some would say they peaked again on Avalon...I would have to give a slight edge to Siren, and I love Eno. So FYP is close second, the combination of Ferry and Eno’s ideas in full swing. But they’re all brilliant, and my decision between those four could change any time. To me Siren is just their most complete. And it has their hit in the US

I like Ferry’s first solo album a lot, easily my favorite covers album. I also love Eno’s albums but his career took a path all of its own. Manzanara’s Diamond Head is awesome too. Lots of great listening in the Roxy Music family!

 

Eno said it was his favorite and wasn't in the band for its making.

 

I'm a big fan of Manifesto as it was the first one I heard - found it on vinyl and loved that I couldn't figure out where it was coming from, as 'art rock' was new to me.
Then a friend lent me the Street Life compilation, which features Bryan as well as Roxy Music.
As he gave it to me, he said 'he (Bryan) can't sing'. I don't agree - he definitely has his own style, does Bryan, as well as being a great lyricist.
Roxy's albums takes you to a place that most don't - yes, the later ones are slick, but if there weren't any memorable songs they would be a waste of time - which is why I also love Avalon as an album. I love that they can create so many great atmospheres in the songs.

 

Oh, it's For Your Pleasure, no contest ... Do The Strand, Editions of You, In Every Dream Home ...

 

country life is my favourite.
That album just pops and sounds so far ahead of it's release date. I was playing thrill of it all for a mate in his thirties (he didn't know who they were). I said when do you reckon this was recorded. He thought it was something from the ninties.

 

Ha! My choice - Manifesto - is at rock bottom!

Oh, well. It says a lot about a band when an album *that* awesome is overshadowed by all the others in their catalogue!!!

 

I love the last three albums. Some folks seem to think they aren't as good as the early ones because they're more laid back is all i can think there .....

 

Currently, my vote goes to Stranded.
It's usually whichever of the first four releases I last listened to.

 

Love this band. Just finished listening to all of their albums (plus Eno, Manzanara and Ferry solo) for the first time over the last 3 months, it's been an enjoyable experience to say the least. At the end of the day the best in my book is For Your Pleasure, but the three that came after are all really close. So is their first album and Avalon. So it all really depends on my mood. Manifesto and Flesh + Blood are also really good (I love the first half of Flesh + Blood) they're all great.

There's only one way to play For Your Pleasure and that is LOUD

 

So tough.......any of the 1st 5 could be a favorite of mine on any given day. I'll go with Stranded.......simply for Street Life, Serenade, Amazona, and Mother of Pearl. This was the first one I bought from them based on Lester Bangs great review of it in CREEM magazine.

 

Man now you're making me want to change my opinion! I love Stranded too. Amazona is great, very interesting tune. I have the box set which sounds awesome. I'm going to finally listen to the B-Sides collection this weekend

 

...is the correct answer!

OMG...every time I look at these poll results, I'm like, WTAF, how can Avalon be winning, let alone by such a wide margin? My only guess is that most of those 162 people have never heard any other Roxy albums, and hence have no idea what the band is supposed to sound like. Because Avalon is about as close to the monotonous pulse of a life-support machine as music ever got. IMO.

 

Even though it's not the same as earlier Roxy Music they still made a great album in Avalon. I've played it as much as the other albums. It might not be as interesting but its a solid listening. It was a great album to end a career with. Looking back to how they started, and how they ended, it's a stark contrast.

Bryan Ferry's solo album Boys And Girls however...I think that one is boring. Some good songs, Slave To Love especially, but it sounds so uninspired and lifeless to me. Maybe I haven't spent enough time with it yet but that's my thought on it.

 

This is a tough one for me. I love the first 5 almost equally. I’m picking Country Life by a hair, but I could have just as easily picked For Your Life or Stranded. It drops off pretty radically for me after Siren, with Flesh & Blood being my favorite of the last three. None of those come anywhere close to the first 5 for me though.

 

Tough one as their two periods are quite different.
Although a great album which I love, I am surprised Avalon is polling the highest; probably Country Life (or Siren) for me.
Have Ferry's solo albums ever been polled on here?

 

I actually find it more enjoyable than Avalon. Maybe that's because there's no longer any pretence that it's Roxy.

 

Have been cleaning and listening to my used Roxy records over the last few weeks. For Your Pleasure I will always count as my favorite: freewheeling, inventive, the band sounds like they're having a blast and the material is for the most part very strong.

Stranded I think is where the bloom comes off the rose a bit, so to speak. It was their second album that year, their first without Eno in the band, and they sound a little tapped for ideas in parts. Still, "Street Life" and "Amazona" are two of their very best cuts, so it's worth having just for those. Country Life I have to say is also a bit patchy-sounding to me, despite the presence of some very good tracks ("Out Of The Blue", "Bittersweet").

All this to say, I guess I really prefer the earlier incarnation of the band when Eno was a member.

Now, what songs does the B-sides collection consist of? Have never heard them.

EDIT: Ah, I found the box tracklisting on Discogs. Didn't know they had this many B-sides, particularly that early on (I've only heard "Virginia Plain", of course, which is brilliant). Would love to hear these, or even have them pressed to vinyl someday: Roxy Music - The Complete Studio Recordings

 

Yeah, it should be a fun listen. Actually, most of the essential stuff from that comp is on The Thrill Of It All compilation, which should be easier to track down. The only things missing from that really are the alternate single mixes, but it does have the 12" mixes of Angel Eyes and Dance Away.

1. "Virginia Plain" – 2:56 (A-Side non-LP single, 1972)
2. "The Numberer" (Mackay) – 3:40 ("Virginia Plain" single B-side, 1972)
3. "Pyjamarama" – 3:00 (A-Side non-LP single, 1973)
4. "The Pride and the Pain" (Mackay) (single version) – 4:14 ("Pyjamarama" single B-side, 1973)
5. "Manifesto" (Ferry, Manzanera) – 4:00 (re-recorded in 1980; "Over You" single B-side, 1980)
6. "Hula Kula" (Manzanera) – 2:37 ("Street Life" single B-side, 1973)
7. "Trash 2" (Ferry, Manzanera) – 3:09 ("Trash" single B-side, 1979)
8. "Your Application's Failed" (Thompson) – 4:45 ("All I Want is You" single B-side, 1974)
9. "Lover" (Ferry, Manzanera) – 4:26 ("Same Old Scene" single B-side, 1980)
10. "Sultanesque" – 5:21 ("Love Is the Drug" single B-side, 1975)
11. "Dance Away" – 6:29 (12-inch single extended remix, 1979)
12. "South Downs" – 5:10 ("Oh Yeah" single B-side, 1980)
13. "Angel Eyes" (Ferry, Mackay) – 6:37 (12-inch single extended remix, 1979)
14. "Always Unknowing" – 5:21 ("Avalon" single B-side, 1982)
15. "The Main Thing" – 7:41 (12-inch single extended remix, 1982)
16. "India" – 1:46 (from Avalon; also "More Than This" single B-side, 1982)
17. "Jealous Guy" (John Lennon) (Extended Version) – 6:11 (A-Side non-LP single, 1980)

 

That's a good point. I think without those guys to bounce ideas off of it suffers a little more, but that's my opinion. Even though Manzanera and Mackay sounded more like bit players on Avalon you can still certainly feel their presence. I like a lot of Manzanara's guitar lines on Avalon.

One thing I will say about Boys And Girls is that it has a strong list of guitarists. Nile Rodgers, Mark Knopfler AND David Gilmour? That's cool.

 

Kind of a general question here, but what were the events that led to Eno leaving the group? (Probably covered in one of his biographies which I haven’t got around to reading yet).

Undoubtedly there were tensions between Eno and Ferry. One thing I was stunned to see, looking over the credits on the For Your Pleasure album cover, is that Ferry is credited as the sole writer and lyricist of every track. Now, I’m not saying it’s outside the realm of possibility that he wrote the album’s 8 songs, but was it that other members weren’t being credited for their contributions properly?

 

Avalon. I love most of their albums like Country Life and For Your Pleasure which are great as well, but Avalon is simply perfect.

 

I couldn't disagree more. I happen to agree with Eno that their best album is Stranded (which Eno had nothing to do with) but with Country Life being a close second and For Your Pleasure third. They really blossomed musically when Eddie Jobson joined the band. As Ferry later said, he lamented the fact that there wasn't a way to keep Eno AND also add Jobson as they both brought their strengths to the band (Jobson's electric violin and keyboard playing helped expand the band's sound enormously).

I find the songwriting on both "Stranded" and "Country Life" to be among Ferry's best and not at all patchy. While most critics point to "Siren" as their best album, that's the album that is, IMHO, a bit patchy and the band sound exhausted on some tracks but the quality is still quite high.

I've always felt also that "Manifesto" is a better album than "Flesh + Blood" which, on the whole, is their weakest album. Curiously, (or perhaps not given how New Wave gripped the U.S. at least on the East and West Coast at the time) Atco elected to keep the original version of "Angel Eyes" on the album and passed on the single version of the song (which had a dance rearrangement and was re-recorded although it was added to the album in the UK --and possibly in the U.S. but I have never run across a single copy on vinyl that had it--which may have helped sales of the album in the U.S. as well IF it received radio airplay (I don't recall hearing it but it certainly is possible it got a fair amount of airplay in the U.S. and I just didn't hear it). Either way, the album performed better than album in the U.S. chart wise.

The fact that they had to resort to two covers on "F+B" (one pretty darn good, the other interesting but hardly a patch on the original) to fill out the album indicated just how low they were on original inspiration (although curiously "Lover" was written for the album and withheld and used as a b-side. It certainly would have been better than at least one of the covers and its a pretty good track although musically it seems to fit better with "Avalon"). "Flesh + Blood" also marked the cancellation of their tour in support of the album when Ferry became ill which probably undermined the sales in the U.S. to a degree.

Curiously, "Avalon" became their sleeper hit album. It didn't chart as high as their other albums (with the exception of the first three which didn't chart well at all in the U.S.) but continued to sell even though it couldn't crack the top 40 becoming their only certified platinum album in the U.S.) but sold consistently more than their other albums.

"Virgin Plain" actually wasn't a b-side but the a side of their single. The b-sides vary in quality with the best coming from Paul Thompson (the instrumental "Your Application's Failed"), Andy MacKay and Ferry himself ("Lover", "Always Unknowing"). Some interesting, experimental and not always successful b-sides also showed up making for interesting listening if nothing else (although I enjoy the alternate version of "Trash" and "Manifesto" released as b-sides but they aren't anywhere as good as the original versions).

Jobson's musicality, the contribution musically of MacKay and Manzanera increasing contribution helped both take the pressure off of Ferry for all the original material which was a good thing as the furious recording activity of Ferry during 1973-1975 was pretty intense and the line was blurred between solo and Roxy with Manzanera, Thompson recording with Ferry for his solo stuff).