#87

Roxy Music

For Your Pleasure (1973)

There is a certain point at which you can no longer think about Brian Eno and the music he has made.  I took a drink at the water fountain for dead drug addict musicians that they built at that point on my way down this list.

Pitchfork loves Brian Eno, and as I trudge through the back half of these 100 albums, roughly every other one is Eno or Eno-Inspired.

This probably a function of an ineffective voting system at the Pitchfork offices.  Maybe everyone had their favorite Eno-related album and the vote split rather than producing a clear favorite.

This is Brian Eno in his producer/sound guy/keyboardist/whatever mode, but pre-solo work.  It is glam rock sass and psychosexual adolescent experimenting, parent-shocking stuff.  My god isn't sexuality subversive!  If you have never found a musical outlet for those emotions before, then by god jump on this album.  However, the person who fits this description doesn't exist.  

To be fair, ambiguous sexuality was once subversive, though it boggles my mind that Bowie and Eno found enough depth in it to make music about it for a decade.  If I had found For Your Pleasure in high school, I would have read The Stand to it and felt really cool about it and myself.  However, having the infinite knowledge of the future, and thus an awareness of other Eno and Bowie albums, I am bored by Roxy Music.

We have the benefit of not having to live through Eno's career chronologically.  Listen to Here Come the Warm Jets instead, or just listen to David Bowie.

As always, there are some good tracks, though.

MIXEN:

Strictly Confidential

Eerie and haunting, like how you feel after reading a good short horror story.  I think this Eno guy might have a future in atmospheric music.  Goin' out on a limb.  Boo, I can't find a link.

In Every Dream a Heartache

Apparently this song is about a blow-up doll.  Whatever.  The ol' build-up/payoff here is effective.  Phil Manzanera is the guitarist for Roxy Music, and when I get ahold of them again, I am going to do a piece on his now almost completely forgotten solo albums, which I adore.  This song showcases his guitaring ability nicely.  Eno is the guy in this video who looks like a Skexis from The Dark Crystal.

Editions of You

This video is wildly entertaining.  So is the song.  Boyee-yoyoy.

Next:

#86

Joni Mitchell

Blue (1971)

(every girl I have ever known well has drunkenly put this album on at least once)