Here’s a super groovy late 80’s album for you.
I think I heard Bryan Ferry on the Roxy Music
Avalon album and I didn’t even make the connection
between this guy and “Love Is The Drug.”
And while I loved that Roxy Music album,
I have never taken the plunge into Roxy
Music’s back catalog, which goes all the way back
to 1972, and would probably yield some riches.
Ferry is a guy, like Bowie, who seems
a bit untethered in time, completely mutable
and various, an artist who seems to take what
he wants from the current trends while
maintaining his singular voice and style to
do whatever the hell he wants, you know,
like recording an entire album of jazz standards.
This record, Bette Noire, has that big fat 80’s sound,
but the songs are strong, Ferry’s voice is pure butter,
and “Kiss and Tell” is a great, funky, pop classic
that, speaking of “Love Is The Drug,” seems to
borrow that groovy bass line with fantastic
results. Listening to this record is a pretty joyous
experience. I’m a little bit sad that this is the
only Bryan Ferry in the vinyl collection. But
that’s a much better feeling, in some ways, to
wish you had more of a good thing than to be
exhausted by too much of a good thing.
Notes on the vinyl edition: Bette Noire, Reprise Records, 1987, used copy on black vinyl.
In case you don’t already know: I’m listening to almost everything in my vinyl collection, A to Z, and writing at least one, sometimes two or three long skinny poem-like-things in response for each artist, and on a few occasions, writing a long skinny poem-like-thing in response to more than one artist. As a poet and a student of poetry, I understand that these things look like poems, but they don’t really sound much like poetry, hence, I call them “poem-like-things.” I’ll admit that they’re just long, skinny essays that veer every now and then into the poetic or lyric.
I had an idea last night trying to get to sleep and I want to write about here before it escapes me. It feels, having written more than 100 of these poem-like-thing-record-reviews in a row, like I might be writing a book. But part of me doubts that the casual nature of these things is worthy of such an endeavor, and I wonder what it might be like to go back through all of them once I complete the letter Z and revise these poem-like-things into actual poems. And I asked myself, what would that look like? And I said to myself, what about erasure? Not the band, but the literary technique. Those of you who know, know. Those of you who don’t know, but are curious, check out this link.
michael jarmer 