Roxy Music Live - S/D

To me it seems stodgy while Slave To Love feels slinky - but I am glad to hear there is a positive take to be had, perhaps it will grow on me.

The clip is weird! Very like I remember his ‘The Fly’ single also being weird - just loitering on a big set while bits from the film are back-projected seemingly at random. They feel very low-budget for such an expensive gentleman!

Gilmour reprises his "No More Lonely Nights" solo to lesser effect but it still works.

A little late to chime in but "Is Your Love Strong Enough" is how I learned about Bryan Ferry and then backtracking Roxy Music in the first place so it will always have a place in my heart.

Last night was good fun -- very little to add to what everyone else has already said on the thread but it struck me as a perfectly valedictory performance with appropriate side performer boosting. Just being able to see Manzanera do his thing was reason enough. I'd thankfully avoided spoilers and steered clear of this thread until now so I didn't quite know what to expect and was generally happy with the results -- I did sadly miss those early 2000s shows (which I probably grumble about way upthread), so without being able to compare them directly and having seen Ferry in 2019 I'll say I lowballed a bit and was very pleasantly surprised.

Fuck yeah…this is my ideal set…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cY8_lLbpszM

isn't there, way uptread, a list of tunes they never did live? Like it would be so amazing to hear a live "Whirlwind…"

"upthread" … this sounds great, some of the performances were used for Viva…

That setlist rules.

If that Newcastle show was used for parts of Viva, does that mean it was all professionally recorded? Is it just sitting around somewhere?

I’m pretty sure they played Whirlwind in Stockholm in 1976 but I am seeing conflicting set lists. I remember hearing it on my bootleg if that show tho.

Feel like there may be quite a bit of Roxy live material that’s never been officially released.

"Whirlwind" is in all the 1976 sets on setlist.fm. It's on the Stockholm bootleg, which is song for song the setlist I saw back then.

https://www.discogs.com/release/2830508-Roxy-Music-Why-Do-You-Think-Im-A-Funky-Chick-

Saw Roxy Music last night in Manchester. It was a great show and I never thought I’d get to see them, but my mind did wander to how much careful planning must go into tours with older performers must be well-planned. I felt it was a slightly oddly paced setlist and I was surprised at some of the major hits left out. I wonder if Bryan’s energy dictated the shape of the set - he had an electric piano he sat at, but rarely played, for several songs and there were a few long instrumental sections where he disappeared presumably for a rest. He did seem frail but I knew his voice hasn’t been what it was for years so I wasn’t expecting a miracle and I was really pleased he didn’t have backing vocalists shadowing every line like he has on some solo tours.

This seems to definitely be the last roll of the dice but it was a great great night.

def seemed to give both him and Andy a rest. Tara was Bryan's chance to go freshen up, then just after that I think there was a song where Andy wasn't needed.

Phil is told to shut it and do as he's told.

Ferry, born 1945.
McKay, born 1946.
Manzanera, born 1951.

he's a baby compared to those guys. Crucial years. Hell before his hair went white he was passing for much younger. I remember seeing the David Gilmour "Remember a Day" clip and not believing how young Phil looked.

I looked at the Manchester setlist and sure enough looks like they added Virginia Plain for the UK

I work with professors in their mid-70s who teach a 2:2 and are probably on their feet longer than Roxy Music every week with less downtime

maybe didn't spend the 70s living rock-n-roll lifestyles?

if you want to know if they spent their formative years drinking a ton and doing lots of drugs, that would be a yes

At the Manchester show too and found it really moving - seeing them for the first time while saying goodbye to them. So somewhere in Virginia Plain basically almost in tears at the simultaneous 'holy shit I'm seeing actual Roxy doing this, my god 50 years, what a thing to have done, this whole career, and thank you' Also hit hard when the collages or images of young Roxy would come up on the big screens.

Delighted at the setlist - had an idea it was going to be v smooth Roxy, but then everything except 2HB from Roxy Music, side 1, plus a lot of For Your Pleasure. in fact haha wtf is The Bogus Man doing as song 3.

(Not complaining given what I got, but the total absence of Stranded & 1 each from Country Life and Siren material felt a gap.)

Clearly there was a fair bit of support for Ferry and Mackay (and Manzanera to a lesser extent) through doubling and breaks. Ferry's voice feels barely there, I guess, but that's style choice + age dictating on top. Whenever Mackay stepped up tho' he sounded fantastic.

(This was all despite p bad sound in our section - mud & echo, so eg no space in Love is the Drug)

Ferry, born 1945.
McKay, born 1946.
Manzanera, born 1951.

he's a baby compared to those guys. Crucial years. Hell before his hair went white he was passing for much younger. I remember seeing the David Gilmour "Remember a Day" clip and not believing how young Phil looked.

Hmm, I don’t think he did. At least I didn’t notice.
I felt the sound was really good where I was sitting on the ground floor. “Love is the Drug” sounded a bit claustrophobic but I think the lower key may have helped that too.

I just read that they did Same Old Scene in the US, but swapped it for Virginia Plain here. Can’t grumble too much about that!

One thing I did notice was how overwhelmingly older the audience was. Nothing wrong with that but I expected to see more of a mix. Reminded me of when I saw Gilbert O’Sullivan.

Right, I thought it might be better elsewhere - we were up a level getting towards a corner.

And yeah I was a little surprised that there wasn't more of a mix of ages - I'm late 40s and felt unusually young for the first time in a long time. Makes sense, I guess, since they were obviously chart huge in that generation above me and even their UK reputational survival sometimes seems weirdly delicate for a few reasons, but I just thought there'd be more fans who found them posthumously.

re that last point - i am always surprised that OG Roxy vinyl is mostly affordably priced when (say) Bowie or Eno LPs cost astronomical amounts

oh yeah this was the oldest crowd I've seen at a show in a very long time. I'm 50 and felt quite young.

man seeing Roxy last night at O2 was extremely magical. they sounded absolutely out of this world. added Virginia and Jealous Guy to the set. It was like seeing Santana in the Bay or Los Lobos in LA energy.

ticket price would have put off younger people - I know it did for me and other friends in our 30s who love the records

This is fantastic (from Manchester a few days ago)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEPwaxA9XKA

"ticket price would have put off younger people - I know it did for me and other friends in our 30s who love the records"

yeah but the tickets were dirt cheap in the US

they were not. Even the cheapo seats I got were still $80, iirc.

Always thought that's Jacqui Sullivan, one of "The Sirens" along with Doreen Chanter.

maybe it was just the SF bay area; yes the tickets started out expensive but when they didn't sell they wound up on Goldstar for like $25.

they were a bit more than that on goldstar here, and they sold out fast.

Do you suppose there’s been a problem with ageism and Roxy music? Are people saying they are too old?

Nah, they just aren't the live draw in the US that they are in the UK.

Yeah, but the audience was overwhelmingly made up of fans from the band’s original lifetime in the UK.
I can imagine some fans feel they’re too old, yeah.

Oh yeah, the show I went to in Texas was like mostly an over-50 crowd. But they don't really get played on radio or have any presence in contemporary pop culture here aside from More Than This being in Lost in Translation twenty years ago? Leonard Cohen and the Rolling Stones sold out shows here, so it's not their age per se.

Their work always seemed much more contemporary to the present or "younger" than a lot of big arena acts from the '70s (at least the ones that played arenas in the U.S.), but at the same time, they're not up there with, say, David Bowie in terms of reaching a younger audience.

In the UK I think a part of it is that later smoother Roxy + public-Ferry blot out the pre-hiatus invention, fun, adventure etc - ie it's an effort to see through to a cool that's palatable to the Gen X culture class. Hypothetically - not that audience age is a problem to be solved - a tour with Eno in the line-up would have got more under 50s?

haha photo of under-40 at the Manchester gig:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otis_Ferry

i think a tour with eno would have sold out due to the novelty of it; but it also obviously was not something that would ever happen.

yeah absolutely I meant it more about perceptions of Roxy rather than viability or desirability.

haha photo of under-40 at the Manchester gig:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otis_Ferry

― woof,

he really does have awful children

Fox hunting advocate? Ok.

It always reminds me of that story (I think in the Paul Stump biog) of Jerry Hall inviting Bryan to her family's house in Texas and him just being completely freaked out by the iguanas (or some kind of infestation) in her house.

Notwithstanding his blue collar upbringing, I think Bryan has not-so-secretly always aspired to be an aristocrat.

If it was Texas it was probably geckos. They are everywhere and we leave them along because they eat bugs like roaches (also they look cool and don't bite or otherwise cause trouble).

Cockroaches iirc.

i think Bryan himself has advocated for fox hunting

Notwithstanding his blue collar upbringing, I think Bryan has not-so-secretly always aspired to be an aristocrat.

yeah I take it as the arc of Roxy/Ferry - Ferry creates a fiction which envelops him.

WHy is that kid in wikipedia

Pet Shop Boy Neil says there is ageism in pop music.

HWO CAN WE VERIFY

Would there be any more than a couple of dozen people in any city who would only have bought tickets to see Roxy if Eno were there pretending to turn some dials onstage?

I'd buy a ticket regardless of whether Eno was there, but if Eno showed and just sipped a cup of tea onstage the entire time, I'd still get a kick out of it.

Eno could just send a robot a la Kraftwerk and he coudl appear on ZOOM for three seconds and say "CHEERS DUES!"

i think a tour with eno would have sold out due to the novelty of it

Even if they had, and played the first two Roxy records in full plus Here Come the Warm Jets, I'm sure they would have sold fewer tickets in North America, not more.