An Evening With Roxy Music

Growing up in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio’s East Side, I was around 15 when my father bought a new AM/FM/Cassette radio with built-in speakers. It was modern for the times, one of the first machines that later became known as “ghetto-blasters”, those portable radios you could take with you anywhere. This one was sleek, small and silver, with a cassette deck sandwiched in between the two speakers. It had a six-LED panel display above the deck that pulsed with the dynamic gain of the audio output. At some point, the radio was handed down to me, at least to borrow.

I’ll never forget the feeling I had when I first started listening to tapes with it. My sister, 12 years my senior, had moved out of the house, and I inherited her room. Even though I was sleeping there, it still felt like her room, like I didn’t belong there. I tried to put a few things on the walls to make it my own, but nothing to seemed to look right, and in the end it became, for me, a small bare space to while away some anxious teenage hours. At least I had a private place to feed my introversion, giving me a reason to close the door and shut out the world, if that’s what I wanted.

Alone one night, I cut off the lights and stuck in a tape of Roxy Music’s “Flesh And Blood”, sort of a debut listening party for one. One old saying says the first cut is the deepest, which for me developed into a notion that the first album from an artist you bought was usually the one you enjoyed the most, no matter the order of release.

The music was powerful and dramatic; rich, stereo boost gave the red LED lights plenty to get excited about - I was instantly transfixed. The combined experience of sight and sound sent chills through my spine when the deep drums opened the title track. There have been moments in life when you get that feeling, when a song or a piece of music really hits you – hard.

For me, it was the epitome of aural entertainment, and I felt special, like I had a secret that no else could touch. Sparks might as well have been flying from this silver radio, I was so mesmerized by the sound.

To this day, the memory of that first listen is still embedded in my brain, regardless of whether I’m listening to what became one of my favorite records or not. I hope it never feels any different, because, in the right situation, that’s what I believe music can do.