HEART STILL BEATING

Flush from the listening pleasures of Viva! Roxy Music, I decided to expand my Roxy catalog with another live document, Heart Still Beating, recorded in France in 1982. Suffice to say that's ten bucks I won't see again; if Roxy's heart was still beating in 1982, you wouldn't know it from this lifeless performance. Nowhere in their prior catalog, including Flesh + Blood, is there an indication that Bryan Ferry and the band could walk through the music with so little passion. Andy Mackay is a virtual nonentity, his half-hearted squeaks no better than David Bowie, while Phil Manzanera fails to step forward and fill the void. But the real disappointment is Ferry, who hardly skims the surface of the roiling passion beneath such classics as "Editions of You" and "Love Is The Drug." Even on the more recent material, which constitutes most of the show, Ferry is on auto-pilot, allowing himself to be upstaged by his own backing singers on "Avalon." And don't even get me started on the cover! So it seems I've taken one for the team, which isn't bad if it saves at least one person from making the same mistake I made. If you need to hear Roxy Music live, listen to Viva! If you're still hungry for more, listen to Viva! again, ad infinitum, until the hunger goes away. Under no circumstances should you consider Heart Still Beating a viable alternative. It's the lamest Roxy Music album I own, and that includes The Atlantic Years. It may be better than The High Road, but this is a road best not taken.