Well I didn't anticipate that, when I wrote about my second copy of this CD, the first copy would be coming up so soon. But that's the nature of random selection. Truth be told, I can't actually find my first copy right now.
Why did I never hear this album until 2000? Because I'd read that the first two Roxy Music albums were the groundbreaking ones — I think that was in your copy of The Boy Looked at Johnny, actually. And Bryan Ferry had said the second album was his favourite. So I bought the second album, sometime back in the '80s, and thought it was pretty good, but not overwhelming. I thought, if the first album was in the same class, I probably didn't need it. But it's not, and I did.
Usually a revolutionary film or album seems revolutionary at the time it's released, but thereafter, once the world has realigned to take account of the revolution, it comes to seem more tame. Hindsight is a great deadener of impact. By the time I heard this album in 2000, I had heard just about all of Eno's subsequent solo material and more than half of Roxy Music's. But nevertheless, when I first heard this, it sounded extraordinary. I remember playing it late at night, and having to put it on again immediately afterwards, at the expense of my beauty sleep. And raving about it in emails to people who I knew didn't care about such things, just because I had to tell someone.
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