Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) with guest Vincent Caruso. Vincent is a writer and community manager at the Illinois Policy Institute, a nonpartisan state-based think tank focused on fiscal policy and good government. Vincent is on Twitter at @vin_jc.

We wish you a Ferry Christmas and a Roxy New Year as Political Beats closes out its third (!) year of existence with a tribute to one of the most influential art-rock and glam-rock groups (though were they really “glam?” The topic is discussed!) of all time, Roxy Music. This is a band that is thought by many to just be “that group Brian Eno started out in,” but in truth it’s always really been lead singer/songwriter/pianist Bryan Ferry’s baby. And he steered them — with the help of superlative art-school weirdos Andy Mackay (saxophone & oboe) and Phil Manzanera (originally their roadie, who quickly became their lead guitarist) — through a series of legendary albums in the early to mid-1970s and a later turn-of-decade revival as a much softer, dancier band. There is something immediately disarming about the unapologetic eclecticism of early Roxy — the first two albums with Eno that sound like they’ve been put together with a staple-gun like a glam Frankenstein’s monster, and the three later ones where the band came even more into their own — but it you like incredible musicianship, a deeply committed lyrical approach (centered around the ennui of the era of post-European dominance and the emptiness of romance), and an occasionally ridiculous sense of humor . . . well, then it’s quite likely you know about Roxy Music already. If for some reason you don’t, then get ready to have your mind blown like an inflatable love doll. And then after that Ferry turned the band into suave, smooth balladeers putting out albums like the legendary Avalon, a record (as Jeff says) seemingly designed solely for middle-aged people who have seen it all and are tired of it all but still keep coming back for more against their better instincts. Come join us on our final episode of 2019, and we hope you too will feel the thrill of it all.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.