Roxy Music 'Avalon'

I heard avalon on one of the episodes of heroes last night.

I can't picture that song being party music really.

Alfred OTM.

I could walk you through the park if you're feeling blue or whatever...

Weird, I was watching 'Matchstick Men' on A&E tonight and "More Than This" was playing in a totally blue collar bowling alley where Nick Cage and Alison Lohman were having a father/daughter game. I thought then "I'm gonna dig out 'Avalon' and give it a refresher spin" but forgot. As Bimble said, Thanks ILM!

In a way, this is an album which screams to be listened to on a Bang Olufsen stereo in a room filled with expensive design furniture, in a huge Westend flat.

Have I tried? No. Can't afford that. :)

Yet, this is New Romantics in a nutshell, but it's kind of nice really because nobody had done anything like that before.

finding the guitar line from more than this being used as the standard segue on a radio talk show here in addis was a lil surprising

love love love the album avalon, and c'mon the smoothness is the entire point of the album and title track would rank as my fave track from the album, Yannick Etienne's cries at the end are just gorgeous

Truly, this album is a gift to humans. There ought to be universal acknowledgement of that, at least. Try and imagine a world without it - you just can't.

love Ferry's keyboard work too -- the best Prophet 5 song on earth.

the best Prophet 5 song on earth

"Biko" to thread stat.

uh...4CD set?

My $0.02, despite amateurist's admonition upthread not to simply say 'it rocks' - toss off the instrumentals, and albums don't get more perfect than thi

I think they're referring to the _Thrill Of It All_ 4CD box, which is just about perfect - except it doesn't contain the entirety of _Avalon_, you'll still need it.

Robyn Hitchcock's cover of "More Than This" is stunning, apropos of nothing.

whoa, where is that from?

That box set looks good but ultimately doesn't interest me much. I like early Roxy (especially Country Life), but I LOVE the Manifesto - Avalon run (including the unjustly hated-on Flesh + Blood) SO damn much, and I have those records on multiple formats.

When I read '4CD box' upthread, I was envisioning a Funhouse-esque, super bloated, meticulously sequenced monster box of Avalon outtakes, alternate tracks, demos, etc. Now THAT would be something...

whoa, where is that from?

What, the Hitchcock cover? Originally from a single but available on one of his Greatest Hits collections from the 90s.

Crazy! Thanks man...

I used to have the 7" of Roxy Music's "More Than This". I remember exactly what it looked like. My best friend once played that song on his stereo out of the blue, too, I wasn't expecting it, wouldn't have even thought he'd know it.

Yes, Robyn H.'s cover of "More Than This" is great.

If I ever spot a copy of the CD with the "Always Unknowing" b-side, that will make the 4th copy of this thing I'll have bought, and it'll be worth it. Great song.

i'm hooked on the vocal delivery throughout this album. but particularly on the singles

If I ever spot a copy of the CD with the "Always Unknowing" b-side

That's on the rarities disc in the _Thrill Of It All_ box.

'take a chance with me' is pretty fantastic

hard to argue with the super smooth lushness of the title track. i'm really warming to this textured 80s sound. even though i may have found it irksome not six months ago.

Oddly enough I've played this more than once in the last week. Pretty much everything about it is perfect smoove.

Plus I have the More Than This 7"!

I certainly see it as Ferry passing into the New Establishment (at the exact, specific moment when that entity started to form itself, ie mid-1982 when Thatcher stopped being a mere prime minister and became an ideological reformer), cf trying his hand at falconry in the video for the title song, and his society wedding the week "Avalon" the song reached its chart peak. It marked his final moment of contemporary revelance, but it was a brilliant way to go; the kind of perfection from which there is, literally, no way back or out. Nobody could care about Ferry after that; nobody *was meant* to care.
Bryan's son protesting at Tony Blair's constituency home in support of foxhunting almost exactly 20 years later - ie the Ferry lineage now *more* old-establishment than the PM - was the logical conclusion. That's not a diss of "Avalon", far from it.

-- robin carmody (robin carmody), Wednesday, 21 January 2004

is that the final perfect moment of Carmodyism, from which there was nowhere to go?

We discuss Roxy in the eighties.

Inspired by all this I've been listening to the Boston 1979 radio broadcast today.

from the Manifesto period? how is it?

A touch muffled but an excellent performance all around, Ferry introduces each of the band bit by bit after a particular turn on a song (Mackay after "A Song for Europe" etc.). Should be pretty easy to find, search by 'roxy music orpheum boston 1979.' Some amusing moments like the funky bass breakdown in "Out of the Blue."

His intro to "Stronger Through the Years" kinda invents Jarvis Cocker (even more so than a lot of other things).

The DVD comp released in 2008 has excellent live footage from this period (especially "Still Falls the Rain" and "Ain't That So"), so I wonder if it was recorded in Boston.

np

i wish my life was like this album

expensive tailoring, cabriolets and romance as a means of anticipating regret?

plus cocaine, obv

this is a pretty cool interview with one of the guys who mixed Avalon

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/aug03/articles/roxymusic.htm

interesting stuff about Bryan Ferry's writing process, putting down ideas over a Linn Drum beat and then the band kinda embellishing the groove

(xx-post. misread "life" for "wife". don't know, maybe applicable too ;-)

Show me other records like Avalon.

OK....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aawe7ydbF0I

Thanks!

I quite like Thomas Dolby's "Flat Earth" too, it's sort of like Avalon.

Kaputt.

Marcello has a go.

I think you might want to correct that link.

What a dream: Ferry yelling OKLAHOMA WAS NEVER LIKE THIS

The more I listen to this record, the more I'm convinced that it's one of the greatest production jobs of all time. Everything on this record sounds so beautifully recorded. I understand that there are those that prefer the more unhinged early Roxy, but man am I so glad they stuck around long enough to make this one.

This one was my gateway. Didn't everyone have a cop of the cassette in their glove box?

DANCING, DANCING

The video for the title track is a little masterpiece in its own right and has aged nearly as well as the song. Something that struck me last time I watched it was the director's use of a "glowing retina" lighting trick on Ferry and his inamorata, similar to what Ridley Scott employed that same year in Blade Runner to signify that a character is a replicant. It reminded me of the scene in the film where Pris asks J.F. Sebastian how he has guessed that she and Roy are not human. "'Cos you're so perfect", he wistfully replies.

'Is it raining in New York, on fifth avenue?' - goosebumps every time

this is the best album

It is rather unworldly, or out of time or something intangible. Cinematic, even.

yes! it feels like it is shimmering...

“And the background's fading
Out of focus
Yes the picture's changing
Every moment
And your destination
You don't know it”

pretty much describes the sensation

I still feel that Ferry may wear dentures despite someone who met met confirming he did not

The chord changes and melody on "To Turn You On" make me think he was trying to write a Siren-era song with a 1982 arrangement, it feels a bit out of place on this record.