Re-Model/Re-Make

I just finished Michael Bracewell's book on Roxy Music "Re-make/Re-model. It's really a revelatory read. Not just about a band, but about Pop Art, the Rockers, the Mods, Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, the Art School world of the 1960's in Newcastle and Reading and London, and the whole what is art anyway conundrum.

I just absolutely loved the book.

I think so highly of the book even in mid-read, I ordered another Bracewell book. I think he's a superb writer. He tackles the subject of Roxy Music as if they are worthy of the utmost research and respect. He makes the case that Bryan Ferry and his vision of Roxy was the perfect melding of fine art and pop art, the living embodiment of the collision of the two.

And the characters that you meet are an extraordinary lot: Richard Hamilton (the Warhol of England), Brian Eno (the avant garde prodigy) Andy Mackay ( the brilliant, classically-trained sax player in the band) Simon Puxley (the tragically brilliant intellect who did PR for the band) and of course Bryan Ferry.

Bracewell also spends a lot of time exploring the fashion of the times, who made the suits and dresses, who styled the hair, and these little details seem to assume major significance - social and cultural impact. The book changes the way you look at the world. Nice job.

Here's a clip from Roxy Music in their early incarnation at a show at the Royal College of Art June 1972. They all seem like exotic birds, or a strangely-stylized aristocratic contingent from a wildly colorful unknown island out beyond the stars. Ferry loved Motown, Ethel Merman, John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, John Cage, Muddy Waters, Gene Kelly. Eno and Mackay loved the outer fringes of the serious avant garde. The melding of all those influences made something new and totally exhilarating.

Check out this sonic blast of pure pop art adrenaline. Wow.