Roxy Music - The Music We Never Forgot

By Author: Isaiah Henry
Total Articles: 220
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The 1970's were a time of change. Political and social reforms, restrictions and regulations were on the rise. Every country in the world had a little upheaval, a bloodless coup of sorts, a cultural revolution. You are a twenty something member of society with money to burn and a love of music and dancing. You take time to prepare yourself, now with the week behind you and those stresses moving farther away from you, you deserve to relax. You get your best suit out of the closet dressing with care like a European prince about to give a oratory.

You take almost an hour to set your hair right and you Jung in to the Chevy Nova owned by you and you go to pick up your girl friend. These kind of carefree youth and dare devils with no care attitude were common in the 1960's but this attitude came to an end by the end of the said decade. There was a vast change in the style of cloths. The suits became more formal and got to be stitched to suit the size of the person. The hair style also changed with more contemporary looks and permanent curls. As in every other field, music ...
... also underwent a radical change. In the 1960's music was as diverse as the societies then existence. It was a time when rock and roll became popular world wide and new musical hits sprang up every other day across the world.

Hippies, a take on the term 'hipster' which was a term for those involved in the 1940's counter culture, were the misguided children of the sixties. They loved music almost as much as they loved mind-altering states. The political fueled music of the time was their theme song of the era. With the seventies coming strait a head music took a shift to the experimental, the invention of electronically produced music from something called a 'synthesizer' guided music to new developmental peak.

Many bands came out of England to do nothing but play a few pubs in their native city. At the most, these bands might have a cult following in an obscure country like Libya but few truly made it. Roxy Music was a band that had an eclectic formation; drawing from art students and even a person that was not musically trained however, had the use of a synthesizer. This motley assortment had quite the eclectic following as well. When they first debuted in 1972, their sound was called avant-garde, their look bordering on glam rock. This was Roxy Music and soon they wowed Britain and Europe even South America had a fan base for them. Although it was not until they covered a John Lennon song that they became a 'hit' in the US.

Their way of music was influential to the younger set, inspiring a counter culture of their own, known as the British punk movement of the late 1970's and early 1980's. One cannot put the entire blame on Roxy Music but they did sow some seeds. If you cannot remember any of their songs, remember that punk spawned modern alternative rock and the top 40 you hear every day. So, think about Roxy Music next time you listen to your favorite radio station.