Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES

Disc MARCH 31, 1973 - by Esther Ripley

RICH ROXY

A splash of coloured silk, sparkling glitter and feathers is the physical announcement of Roxy's arrival at Paignton in Devon last Sunday as Eno struts onstage like a magnificent rare bird with a crest of blond hair. Bryan Ferry slicked-back hair and sleek satin, poised at the centre of the stage, and Andy Mackay in a riot of bobbled green satin like a humanoid plant from an early horror film.

And then the music. Listen to Roxy on record and you may well love them. Labels tumble from the lips - sentimental '40s, '50s rock revival, progressive, electronic, but you realise that it's not one but all blended and moulded into a new whole. Roxy attack all the senses - the taste of Roxy, the lights, the colour, the extravaganza. Every sound has its own spectacle as important as the music itself.

The show opened with three or four numbers from Roxy's new LP For Your Pleasure. We Do The Strand, in the aisle, sigh nostalgically through Beauty Queen, and lapse into silence through the insistent menacing throb of Bogus Man. Mackay screams a message from the sax and Eno, dominating the stage from his corner, answers with an eerie cry. We are warming to them. A man stands clutching a rail at the foot of the stage, rising to the music and is led exhausted back to his seat.

A burst of Ladytron and Ferry calls out to the audience. The theatre's too large, he wants to be closer to us and we tumble out of our seats and surge to the front in a sea of flailing arms. Then some words to listen to In Every Dream House A Heartache and If There Is Something with a strange power and majesty all of its own. Roxy please us with short bursts of sax and synthesizer, calm us down with romantic melody and raise us to a frenzy as they reach their climax. By the close of Re-Make/Re-Model we are stamping and screaming for more and get it with Pyjamarama and Virginia Plain.

The lights fade, the stage empties and the sound dies. It's like dropping from a coloured balloon and landing on a cold sea-front.