Ultravox part 1

My last post did not bring on a Gary Numan binge--it brought on an Ultravox binge.  I have always been fascinated by the shifting membership of Ultravox and what the various members did outside of the band, so I think I will spend a few posts exploring that.  I'll start with the first album, Ultravox!, from 1977.  Led by John Foxx, Ultravox brought forth a unique mix of Roxy Music-like art rock, punk dyanmism, and lyrics by turn introspective, ominous, and futuristic.  The album's masterpiece, "The Wild, The Beautiful, and The Damned" has been playing in my head all week:

How do I love this song?  Let me count the ways:

1. That is a dramatic intro!

2. Billy Currie is playing an electric violin, a la Eddie Jobson in Roxy Music.  Association score!

3. That's a vaguely Celtic melody and chord progression, which carries with it a certain grandeur.

4. I have always thought this was one of the first cyberpunk songs, coming years before the term was even coined, because of these lyrics: "We read the latest of the neurojournals / flicked through some catalogs of fear."  Neurojournals, now that is futuristic!  (But my whole perception may have been based on misheard lyrics, as all of the lyrics websites have "the latest venereal journals" instead of "the latest neurojournals;" I think I'm right, though, and if I'm not, well, my lyrics are better and I'm sticking with them.)

5. The next lines are, "Then we engineered a wild reunion in a Berlin alleyway / While your New York fuehrer tore our universe apart".  In my mind that sets the song in the alternate universe of David Bowie's Diamond Dogs, the postapocalyptic netherworld where "fleas the size of rats sucked on rats the size of cats."  Another association score!

6. But while Bowie rarely seems emotionally invested in his lyrics, Foxx drips vitriol when the music dies down and he sings:

"Break my legs politely, I'll spit my gold teeth out at you
Your sores are almost big enough to step right inside now [there's Diamond Dogs world again!]
I'll send you truckloads of flowers from all the worlds that you stole from me
I'll spin a coin in the madhouse while I watch you drowning"