page 10
daily nebraskan
thursday, September 11, 1980
Roxy Music albums are changing with the times
By Casey McCabe
Flesh and Blood is not the type of album that inspires
critical analysis the way Roxy Music albums of the past
decade used to.
Well times have changed, and apparently so has Roxy
Music. The experimental "art-rock" quality of their past
efforts probably wouldn't make many waves if released
today, since hordes of new bands are trying new twists
on the grounds broken by other artists. And out of all
this, little ever surfaces to reach the public's attention.
creative instrumentals and rhythms keep such songs
from collapsing under their own weight.
Ethereal feel
Ferry's keyboards have a consistantly ethereal feel
throughout the album, adding that progressive art-rock
flavor to otherwise tame arrangements. Phil Manzanera,
an excellant guitarist, is in a supportive role more often
than in the spotlight on Flesh and Blood. Yet when he
is allowed to get into the rhythmic interchanges with the
keyboards on the title track and "My Only Love," it
makes for some of the best moments.
On "Over You," Manzanera's guitar takes on the
Byrds' mid-sixties "twang" sound. All the more interest
ing. considering the following is a cover of the Byrds'
classic "Eight Miles High," which sounds nothing like the
Byrds and perhaps more like Roxy Music than some ot
Ferry's composition.
Flesh and Blood is Roxy Music's first album for the
80's. While the band still retains an enigmatic British
quality about them, they have become progressively
sleeker, better contrived and easier to listen to for those
outside their cult following.
Disbanded in 1977
This is the second l.p. for the group since reuniting
after a short disbanding in 1977. Back in place are lead
vocalist Bryan Ferry, guitarist Phil Manzanera and Andy
Mackay on sax.
Again Roxy Music comes off as less of a band and
more of a vehicle for Ferry, whose emotive, crooning
voice sets a standard for any fast mellowinf, slightly ec
centric, romantic ex-rocker. This is a label that admitted
ly covers few in the music business (though Paul McCart
ney could certainly fit the bill).
Because FerryRoxy Music have a talent for creating
a certain musical mystique, they can get away with songs
that hover perilously close to a middle of the road format.
Roxy's hits have been relatively few in America, while
they enjoy almost a reverence back home in England.
Their "hits" here in the states have progressed from
"Leve is a Drag" off Siren, a pulsating string a double
entendres, to "Dance Away" from Manifesto, a grand
oise ballad of lost love.
Well-produced song
Taking a gradiose step further is "Oh Yeah," the single
offering from Flesh and Blood. A lush, well-produced
song, it features Ferry drawing out the melancholy high
school lyrics for all they're worth. It seems to be a song
about itself (the chorus goes "they're playing 'oh yeah'
on the radio) and follows a formula that Ferry seems
fond of; falling in love in the first stanza, getting more
intense in the second stanza, then getting burned and
reminiscing about it for a grand finale.
Ferry wrote the eight original tunes on the album
and they all deal with jaded, one-sided love affairs. Lines
like "..jf only dreams came true I could even pretend
That I'll fall in love again" or "your sweet lips tell me
there's no chance no more romance-over you" permeate
the album. Only Ferry's effectively haunting voice,
J I .. , - - ,
1 - :1
Album cower courtesy Atlantic Recording Corp.
'Flesh and Blood' the latest effort from Roxy Music
Paintings' deceptive simplicity laments destruction
By Penelope Smith
Art professor Gail Butt's exhibition of
paintings demands more than a casual
glance. It requires a relationship. The
viewer must allow himself to be multisen
sorily permeated with atmospheres of
coolness and of heat, impressions of
dampness clinging to a March wind and dry
summer breezes.
The works require an examination of
form and technique and seem at first to be
purely simple and spontaneous. If one
sits and looks, one sees the turbulence of
paint and raised lavender lip that is a storm
cloud. Beneath the cloud are soft undulat
ing washes of sunlight, their fineness accen
tuated with indistinct pencil pattern.
These paintings seem to stress order and
the beauty of cyclic rejuvenation in the
universe. But in addition in the paintings
the viewer must deal with Butt's canzone
or songs of "Lamentation" for what he
sees as the destructive drive of 20th
century America.
Butt spoke of the motivation and the
meaning behind hii paintings and poems.
Artistic motivation
A great deal of his artistic motivation
tnd what he calls "the emotional stand
ing support" in his life he owes to music
and his awareness 'and perception of
natural forces, whether in his garden or
watching the skyline.
Butt said he thinks that one of the
more important sets of paintings in the
exhibition is the series of five 'missa"
or masses, that were inspired by musi
cal Baroque masses.
"I've been working on the ' "mass"
or "missa" series of five works on and
off for about 30 years now," explain
ed Butt. I've come to believe that some
of the best music has been put into masses.
Partly because of religious motivation,
partly because people such as Hadyn did
not feel compelled to please secular
audiences. v
"I began to concentrate on Hadyn's last
three masses for my paintings. In the early
50s I could only get two or three of the
five basic movements painted; I could
never visualize or complete the entire
thing."
'Ideas of color and life
Butt said depression helped stimulate
the completion of the masses by helping
him to search for meaning beyond the
"obliteration" and "void" he mentions
in the canzone.
"life goes on in whatever gastly or
peculiar way, but there is a parallel
support mechanism, whether God or cul
tural," he said. This is the first .time I've
gotten all five completed. They are light
chromatica, ideas of color and of life."
For his series of seasonal "Skies" Butt
decided to get his feet "off the earth" and
move into "color and joy."
"When you move to the Great Plains
the first things you notice are our skies.
They're the most beautiful part. For
example, October with its purple and azure
blues and creamy clouds...
The "skies paintings use abstract im
pressionism which Butt describes as softer
than expressionism, and his own Western
interpretations of calligraphy utilizing
color and bold decisive brush strokes to
create a sense of atmospheric force.
These sky paintings are often in three
horizontal layers. Butt said that the hori
zon is a major theme of Midwestern artists.
He has created his own horizontal quality
with the space above the clouds, the storm
clouds and the wind and rain below.
Butt said he does not agree that reality
is m the "edges" of a work. This is exem
plified in the calligraphic form of the
paintings, wherein a cloud is not in the for
form of a cloud per se, but it possesses
the essence of a cloud.
c Symbolic meaning
"A painting is very much internal. It
has how and when and why and where, but
it also has symbolic meaning.
What makes i storm or the sun is light
and color," said Butt. To make the sun
a circular compass line is idiotic and meaningless.
"When I first came here I ran into a
quotation from Francis Bacon that put
me onto this.
He said, I don't enquire the form
of a lion' or an oak, enquire the form of
cold and hot."When-we define form'as
edges or recognizable shapes we ignore the
true meaning of form."
Butt said form originally comes from
the Sanskrit word "dharma" and means
"law" or "order."
"Form only exists in our minds. If you
pour concrete and take the form away you
still have the steps he said.
The anzone accompanying the paint
ings are a result of the sympathetic and em
pathetic feelings Butt has for people
around him. There are many superficial
things that bother him, he said, such as a
decline in workmanship and service,, but
what concerns him the most is the disin
tegration of society.
Butt, an oriental art historian, spent
some time in Japan and the difference in
the two cultures helped him to under
stand our own culture.
"In the Orient I learned the belief that
every Individual lives three simultaneous
existences; - the personal, the family or
peer group, and the state oi cultural
There is a feeling of strong coEapse in our
country, and we are experiencing the pro
gressive degeneration of the family
ButtV work is now showing -at the
Sheldon Art Gallery. .