Having watched this again the other night - I was struck by how unlikeable Andy Mackay came across.... telling his little tales - smirking.. not keeping eye contact.... All the put downs about Flesh and Blood and Avalon... If The Explorers were his way of showing how it should have been ..then god help us .... Manzanera too ... jumping on the old bandwagon about how bland they thought it all was { but loving having hits and pocketing the cash}. It was fab but also quite awfull to see them back on stage in 2001 .. at times I felt like giving these two sneaky little creeps a punch on the nose .......... No wonder the recent Roxy Sessions didn't work .. It suddenly all seemed clear... it would probably have felt like a re-run in the sack with a long divorced bitter old spouse !

Yet I adore the song 'running wild' . I really do.

I wholeheartly agree. I also loved the surreal "stronger through the years" from Manifesto, a pearl of contemporary composition, but that's another story..

I have to say that I didn't find Mackay or Manzanera snidey at all. Looking back on any body of work recorded over 20 years ago is going to be like listening to a stranger anyway. Manzanera is quoted at the time of recording Avalon that he didn't like the album and preferred things to be more "rocky" so he is hardly being inconsistent.

Even taking as red that the over arching idea of Roxy was Bryan's then you only have to look at his other albums from the 80s to appreciate how important Mackay and Manzanera's own musical tastes were in giving the late Roxy albums some substance.

The first Explorer's album is full of quality music and inventive musicianship and I prefer it to all of Bryan's later work. Whether you like the singer or not is a matter of taste - James Wraith is certainly talented and has a strong voice but lacks the x-factor for want of a better expression.

Spin Me Round is also a lovely track. Probably the only song on West Side(?) I actually like besides DA.

Imo "Stronger Through The Years" was the last track to sound like Roxy, in the Biblical sense, and to a lesser extent maybe "No Strange Delight"...it was all multi-track, airbrushed whimsy after that.
I think Phil and Andy are quite right to criticize "Avalon" as they are barely featured on it, by this time "Roxy" was full of session musicians. Eg, Do you think Bryan actually asked them if they wanted "India" or the much loved dirge "To turn you on" on the album? No wonder they were angry at Ferry for putting, the cringe inducing, Yannick thingy's vocals at the end of the title track without first consulting them.
No, I said at the time that album was a collection of Ferry B-sides and I still stand by that....dreadful!

stty and nsd were great rxy tracks. i still like the avalon and f&b pop stuff, but it doesn't belong to the special stuff like stty, nsd, manifesto and the first four roxy albums and some of siren. i do, however, think alphaville is way up there. shame it was destroyed to make frantic.

"So different, so appealing.."

I personally think that Richard Hamiltons modern collage (title) seems to underwrite all what RM was generally and BF especially.

Like this 8 min clip seems to conclude..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWqSfB46HXU

Speaking of Avalon, maybe the dude just was in love..(Remember BF married in June 1982).

A friend of mine, a composer always mentions that pain and depression as the source of good songs.

I like "The Space Between" and "Heart still beating" from that album along with "Avalon". I also find YannicK Etiennes voice groundbraking and like an exciting surprise served , like with imminent cooking.

I do love Ferrys covers of other artists, but not as much as his own signatures to his songs, even if he says he's bored with it.

Boredom moves on from point blank in creative processes and like the ecclectic "Frantic", which hold so many different musical styles and moods from euphoric melancholy and future-fear, to the low-fi cover of "Irene Good Night" which seems to be re-created with an ingredient of both fun and pats on backs to every enthusiast of folk-songs, (and maybe along with a joint..).

Only David Bowie (if any) manage to break the conceptual chain of "theme record" the same way, like collages of moods, colours (of heart and soul) as Ferry does imo.

Listen to "Love me Madly"; that song probably provide a horn and string arrangement that, along with Curtis Mayfields work, will go down in history as an immaculate lesson and session for music-students of arrangements/rearrangements.

80 % of all RM songs was made by BF himself. That doesn't mean he IS the band himself, but still he seems to me the kidney.. in a kidney-pie.

Both Mackay, Eno and Manzanera makes great tunes. Listen to Manz. "That's all I know" , from "50 minutes later", a piece of heaven of it's own, and Enos "How many worlds", brings my tears on..or the co-lab."I Thought".

Still charisma says everything, and espescially when it's connected to Rock History and in my opinion to the greatest and most influential band since The Beatles.

I do not expect new Roxy materials (only a surplus), I suggested RM doing different solo-materials which might give Eno an incentive to join in.. still that is not me to decide anyway, one could dream though..

The sauce will never by any Chef be exposed in the the hails of a satisfied audiance, because when it does, the magic puffs and the clients starts making their own cooking.

This is what composing and the right-ingredient of Musical styles,and putting together the instruments, sounds and pitoresque fllashes of influential reminders is about, like making something no one heard or did before, the Collage. The sauce (source/sorcerer) seems to be the secret, I like it that way.

well, continuational story of the St.Learraine digressions...