3.
Roxy Music – Country Life
I am a huge Roxy Music fan! I was the president of the Roxy Music fanclub in Madison, Wisconsin, which only had about seven members. We used to have Roxy Music nights, once a month, we would play their albums, all the different members’ solo albums, and the live bootlegs.
I love all their albums but I think for me Country Life was kind of their most consistent and most focused one. You really start to hear some of the sophistication that Bryan Ferry would later bring to Roxy Music. The first couple of records had a lot of quirky artiness to them yet the songs were so well written and their arrangements are spot on. There are so many great songs on Country Life including the opener, ‘The Thrill Of It All’, which is just epic. I love ‘Out Of The Blue’ and ‘Prairie Rose’, and ‘Casanova’ – that’s like a dirty funk number. One of my inspirations as a drummer is Roxy Music. I love Paul Thomspon’s drumming on all the records and I’ve always looked at him as an inspiration. At the time of release they covered the album with a brown wrapper as the artwork was deemed to be offensive – the cover has this beautiful slash trashy glam vibe to it and that kind of defines what I loved about Roxy Music.
