I am for the man who drives the hammer to rock you 'til the grave

Continuing my trip back through the 1979 album charts.

24/06/79 : Manifesto - Roxy Music

Our fourth visit with Roxy Music and they've been a very mixed bag so far - this is way after Eno left so I'm expecting some Ferryesque smoothness. 

Actually, this is spikier than I was expecting - most notably on "Angel Eyes" where I only knew the single version and the album version has some interesting weirdness in it. And "interesting weirdness" is a bit of a theme across the album - I think they just about manage to get away without it becoming tiresome, but I'm not sure the overall effect is quite as interesting as they hoped for. I'm being slightly unfair though because back in the day this would have been an album that you bought and then listened it to many times, really getting into it - and I obviously don't do that. It does feel to be a very Roxy Music album cover though.

We're at #11 in the charts this week on their fifteenth week of an impressive 34 week run, with it peaking at #7 in its thirteenth week. The top five this week were ELO, James Last (seriously?), Blondie, ABBA and Dire Straits with the highest new entry being John Williams (#25). 

Wikipedia tells us this is their sixth album and marked their return from a four year hiatus, but there's very little else of interest in there except for a couple of interesting names in the personnel list - Paul Carrack pops up on keyboards and there's Luther Vandross on backing vocals. Critically, the reviews were positive but also a bit "why bother with this when you've got their previous albums?" and commercially it did OK, if not spectacularly, with #5 in The Netherlands being its best placing - it also got to #23 in the US, making it their best placing for an album over there.

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent copy for a couple of quid - the most expensive copy is £150, without giving you the faintest idea what you're getting for your money there. I thought this album was generally OK on first listen with some interesting sounds, but I'm not going to be rushing back to it.

17/06/79 - Not for me
01/07/79 - Fun and educational

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