COUNTRY LIFE POLL

Hmmmmm, much thought needed

Good excuse to listen to this again!

Let me be the first of many to say Prairie Rose.

That's what I voted.

best side 2 of any Roxy album? voted "Triptych"

Possibly the most difficult poll of all. Have to think about this, but it's a close toss up between "All I Want Is You" and "Prairie Rose"

PRAIRIE ROOOSE!! hey hey.......

The Thrill of it All

6. "Bitter-Sweet" (Ferry, Mackay) – 4:50

Triptych is the outlier but it is also one of my favorite songs of theirs. A damn fine album.

triptych sounds vaguely like the bee gees "every christian lion hearted man will show you"

'A Really Good Time' but for entirely sentimental reasons.

"All I Want is You" is Roxy honing its single skills to a fine point -- not one wasted moment. It sums up in three awesome minutes why they matter.

After a bunch of listens to this album over the last few days, I'm going with "If It Takes All Night". I know it's cheesy to admit it but that song does a good job of expressing my basic attitude to life. Plus I dig its Dylanesque.

I dig its Dylanesque.

That's another Ferry Album!

;)

"All I Want is You" is Roxy honing its single skills to a fine point -- not one wasted moment. It sums up in three awesome minutes why they matter.

Totally OTM. Everyone is just killing it here... My fave Ferry vocal too - the combination pleading/sneering when he says "cut price souvenirs"

Thrill of It All

I can has:
- Wetton
- pristine formalwear
- some of Manzanera's sweetest stuff
- lucite violin

Probably "Prairie Rose," but this version of "Casanova" is Ferry at his lascivious best.

Great song, but I've preferred the slow version he's performed since airing it on Let's Stick Together.

Slow version's great, but no clavinet == no justice.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I'm very torn between "The Thrill of it All," "Out of The Blue" and "All I Want Is You"

but "Out of the Blue" always hits s certain spot for me so I might go with that

thrill.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

did not see that coming

Aw no votes for "Three and Nine"? It's a sleeper. "If It Takes All Night" is the overrated one.

A Really Good Time got hosed. And Out Of The Blue is nowhere near the best song on this record.

Prairie Rose 4EVA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"If It Takes All Night" is overrated---by who? I didn't realize it was rated highly by anyone really.

did not see that coming

i see what you did there

"Out of the Blue" is one of those songs whose lyrics can have a real deep significance for a huge number of people, I bet a lot of people love it so much because of personal reasons (at least I do).

it's a very honest and optimistic song for them. and after all, "throwaway lines often ring true"

playing this for the first time ever (right now).

starting off amazingly.

By the time you hit "All I Want Is You" you'll be wondering why the hell you haven't been listening to it for years.

might live blog this?

i absolutely the chaos that the horns brings to Roxy music.

then the sexuality starts to set in on the second song, brilliant. with that album cover you knew it was going to be there.

lol, that song is starting right now

xpost

listening to this album on CD cause i bought it years ago from BMG/Columbia House years ago. just took off the shrink wrap.

i see why "Out of the Blue" won this poll, it's a cut above.

now they are sounding like Elvis, lol.

now side two is starting, here comes back the sexuality.

"Bitter-Sweet" really only got two votes? this is the kind of stuff i really, really love. true goth at heart i guess.

i absolutely love the chaos that the horns brings to Roxy music.

how it should have read...sometimes, when i drink, things come out in words differently than they are suppose to be.

album is really top heavy, though i like the mood of the second side. "A Really Good Time" gets the mood back and then crash the party with those horns again and end it.

i can see this being the fourth or fifth best Roxy Music album. very satisfyingly for scratching that itch and happy to add it to my collection.

holy shit the thrill of it all is a monster imo

It is, but I have a soft spot for "A Really Good Time". That song just places me in Ferry's 70s world.

such a solid album. doesn't quite touch the peaks of the first three records at any point, but it's a more consistently engaging front-to-back record i'd say. when a song as arresting as 'three and nine' isn't receiving any acknowledgement, you know you're dealing with something of a very rare calibre indeed.

it's weird, i'm plenty old enough to know better, but i never listened to early roxy until very recently-- and i found it's a mammoth hole in my understanding of music. i listen to so much of this stuff, and i don't hear a 70s world. it sounds more like a an early 80's world in many ways and it is disorienting (but it doesn't sound like early 80s roxy/ferry at all, with which i was contemporarily familiar). i was a kid in the 70s, and i really wish my 70s sounded more like early roxy.

Totally know what you mean - I didn't get into early Roxy until I was in my 30s, when it all just clicked for me. And of course it should sound like early 80s - the bands of that era were deeply influenced by them. And they ran with their ideas!

such a solid album. doesn't quite touch the peaks of the first three records at any point,

Disagree, especially when "All I Want is You" is playing.

sw00ds and I discuss Country Life (and Another Time and Place) here:

http://rockcriticsarchives.com/audiovisual/soto-woods-roxy-ferry-006.mp3

sometimes my second fave roxy (which is saying ALOT), never less than fourth

gonna listen to this when I get home, thanks ILM!

One way I think about how to rate the first five Roxy albums is to think about "The Bob" vs. "The Bogus Man" vs. "A Song For Europe" vs. "Triptych" vs. "She Sells", e.g. side 2 tracks that veer on being filler. fwiw I rate them "Triptych" > "A Song For Europe" >> "The Bogus Man" > "She Sells" >>>>>> "The Bob".

actually I think most of side 2 of the first Roxy album is filler-ish---is that a challop?

Nope -- their most boring side.

As many stunning moments as the first two albums boast, the post-Eno albums are the most exciting.

absolutely agree

Side 2 of For Your Pleasure is better than side 2 of the debut but it pales in comparison to side 2 on the next three albums.

i should play this for the second time tonight because of this revival.

So I wrote a thing.

http://thequietus.com/articles/16514-roxy-music-country-life-anniversary-review

"Our man from the Orange County, Ned Raggett casts his American eye over another British classic"

Would be hilarious if you walked around dropping Orange County the way Robert Plant drops Black Country. "As a lad in the Orange County, I will always have one foot on the land and a toe in the ocean," said Raggett, wistfully eyeing the surf as he draws on a frothy mug of beer at his favorite beachside dive."

A more unlikely combination of words describing my past and current situation I could not begin to imagine.

I'm sure someone else will happily be a combination of Doc Sportello and Jonathan Franzen, though.

Astounding to me that the Roxy camp tends to underrate this album out of the original five. Eno (diplomatically) likes "Stranded" best. Ferry likes "For Your Pleasure." "Siren" obviously had the big US hit. The first was important. But "Country Life" they never talk about, despite it being front to back awesome.

I know the title references the staid magazine, but I always thought there was some Shakespearian naughty wordplay going on there, same as Eno invoking "country joys" in "Seven Deadly Finns." "Oh, the French girls with their strings of pearls/Think it's such a burning shame /That the local boys with their country joys/Never make them daisy chains."

it really is "Out Of The Blue" but this whole album is so awesome.

Casanova too low.

Scott otm

YOU THE HERO

People would have to invent a thousand bands and multiple sub-genres just to deal with what was going on in any one song on this album. The whole second side is just.....yeesh. I probably love "A Really Good Time" and "Prairie Rose" as much as OOTB but OOTB's insane deep dub phasing Mahavishnu rock is some sorta landmark in invention.

I stand by my comments of 8 (geez, time flies) years ago.

Prairie Rose 4EVA

A Really Good Time is way too low

I can't believe 'Casanova' only got one vote... it's one of my favourite tracks on here!

Would have voted 'Out of the Blue', though.

Yes, "Casanova" is great, I remember almost voting for it, fat lot of good that did.