Month: December 2023

Siren, Roxy Music, 1975, Atco

It’s not a loud noise to tell you to move out of the ambulance’s way, it’s a pretty woman on a rock to lure sailors to destruction. It’s arty, not punk.  Wikipedia says the woman on the cover of the album is 19-year-old Jerry Hall, Brian Ferry’s girlfriend at the time. I never knew.

I bought this record used in the early ‘80s because it had two songs I liked. The bass and drums in Love Is the Drug are hypnotizing. When I played it just now, I realized that the vocals and horns are very strong too. Ferry can sing. Rolling Stone put Siren in the top 500; I wouldn’t go that far. I am generally more comfortable with two or three chords with a beat and lyrics that are as subtle as a mallet. Some of this is syncopated; my sprung rhythm detector went off as I listened. Man, I even liked Sentimental Fool, which opened with a long slow instrumental intro that is sorta spacey. I admit that I have no idea what ‘jungle red’ is.

Update on rock obits

A year ago when Danny Kalb died I predicted there would be deaths to report two or three times a week. Turns out that rock and rollers by and large live longer than I thought. Three deaths were reported in the New York Times today. Denny Laine, a founder of the Moody Blues, was 79. He sang lead on Go Now!, their big hit. He was in the band for their first two albums, then in Ginger Baker’s Air Force. Paul McCartney liked what he was doing and asked him to join Wings. He left 10 years later after McCartney was arrested in Japan for marijuana possession. Laine continued to make new music as well as play concerts. The Times said had like to play music to an audience.

Scott Kempner died while living in a nursing home because of early onset dementia. That shouldn’t happen to anyone, much less a one-time member of an influential proto-punk band, The Dictators.

Geordi Walker, 64, died of a stroke. He played with Killing Joke for nearly 40 years. The obit mentioned he moved back to England (from the U.S.) to take care of his father and he had a kid named Atticus. I thought they included those details to make him sound normal, having said he was in the band Revolting Cocks.

“off white,” James White and the Blacks, ZE Records, 1979

James White is a name used by James Chance, musician and singer in New York, says Wikipedia. He played with the Contortions, whose shows often ended with a fistfight. Contort Yourself is the first song on the record. Lydia Lunch appears on the album as Stella Rico. The Blacks turned into Defunkt, which has 20 albums in its discography. See how playful this bunch is—a band that has been together a long time is named’ defunct.’ Lunch and White use pseudonyms. As I recall, Rolling Stone said sometimes the band played as James Black and the Whites.

[Tropical] Heat Wave is easy to like; it starts at 11:42 on the album. Side B is mostly jazz. For those of you who missed New Wave, White’s pose on the cover is classic. He wears a white dinner jacket, continuing the playing on words.