Story 'Bout A-Raising Hell

The Saints : No Time

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"I remember thinking 'This is obnoxious. This is probably the most obnoxious record ever made. Isn't that great?'"

Chris Bailey, The Saints

On February 21, 1977 The Saints released (I'm) Stranded. Hampered by neither the cartoon imagery of The Ramones nor the ad hoc background of The Sex Pistols, The Saints rival The Clash as punk's purest expression. Recorded live over two December days in Brisbane, Stranded is every bit as raw as the 1976 title track, which was famously selected by Sounds reviewer John Ingham as "Single of this and every week". Ed Kuepper's buzzsaw guitar dominates the proceedings, drowning out vocalist Chris Bailey's lyrics. 

Bailey says " I remember both Ed and I saying at the time 'OK. This was a good demo session. When can we record? And the response from EMI was 'No. It sounds just like your single so it must be a record.'"

EMI had just dropped the Sex Pistols and were in desperate need of a credibility.

Early reviews were favorable. Jon Savage calling the album “up there in punk Valhalla with Ramones and Raw Power”. In his B+ review Robert Christgau wrote

With its intermittent hooks, droning feedback, shouted vocals, and oldie about incest, this album from Australia achieves the great mean of punk style. Five years from now, it could sound like a classic or a naive one-shot. At the moment, it's recommended only to addicts.

In May of 1977 The Saints would move to London where they'd play a Roundhouse gig with Talking Heads and The Ramones. But the long haired Ozzies--to their credit-- would never fit in with costumed punk scene. 

40 Year Itch: From Arizona to Eldorado

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On November 1 , 1973 Roxy Music released their third album, the future UK #1 , Stranded, featuring Ferry squeeze Marilyn Cole, 1973's Playmate of the Year, on the steamy cover.

This is the first Roxy Music album without Brian Eno and yet Eno himself called Stranded his favorite Roxy Music album. By now Ferry had mastered his bored, broad-shouldered tuxedo'd playboy persona and the dramatic vibrato that quivered through tales of one night stands ( what exactly is a"G-Plan gymnastics by an everglow fire" ?) and party time wasting .

If there's one serious hitch to loving Roxy Music, it's how Bryan Ferry has taken far too much songwriting credit ( and thus the major portion of the royalties) for tunes developed by the entire band. Phil Manzanera says the band would record "the music first – all the music, including the solos. Then Bryan would listen to it and try to write a top-line tune and words. When it worked, it was absolutely brilliant. Because none of us knew what the song was going to be about until he recorded the vocal." 

Manzanera would share credit on the Stranded cut "Amazona", my second favorite cut on the album. I love how the surging solo falls apart at the end and tumbles back into Manzanera's funky groove. 

It turned out to be my first recorded track on an album and I was very proud of it. When I finished recording the guitar part, everyone cheered in the control room."

Andy Mackay shares credit on " A Song for Europe" otherwise all the credit goes to Ferry. 

"Street Life", the first single off Stranded, became a Top 10 hit in the UK. It features a solo by Roxy's newest member , 19-year old Curved Air violinist/ keyboard player Eddie Jobson, whose fiddling away beneath the "Street Life " chant halfway through the song.

You can tell by the number of clips I'm posting that I'm a big fan of this album. It's probably sacrilegious to prefer this to the two albums with Eno but I've been called worse.  The cut that truly knocks me out is the epic bipolar "Mother of Pearl". The lyrics sounds like overheard snatches of conversation at one of the parties Ferry attended with fashion models:

Divine intervention 
Always my intention 
So I take my time 
I've been looking for something I've always wanted 
But was never mine 
But now I've seen that something 
Just out of reach - glowing
 - Very Holy grail
 Oh mother of pearl
 Lustrous lady 
Of a sacred world

Roxy Music is on a roll that would propel the band through the next two years, through Country Life and Stranded. And then the band would , strangely, sit out the punk rock years while Brian Eno can be found manning the boards for Talking Heads, Devo and David Bowie. 

Is it unfair to wonder what would have happened had Eno stayed with Roxy Music? Would Ferry have deigned to sing "Baby's On Fire"?

And yes, "A Song for Europe" has to be a parody of Eurovision. What else could it be? Right?