The 1981 Listening Post - Rox (US) - Rox

 Reviewed by Jim Coursey

Released: August 30 1981 Rox (US) Rox Genre: Campy New Wave Rating: 1.5 of 5 I was cleaning out the remaining detritus from my former rental of 25 years and needed something suitable to listen to. It seems fitting to work through the odds and ends left in 1981 while working through the odds and ends of my home. What’s more, most of what is left in the apartment is pretty shitty, so even if Rox’s album didn’t make my time more enjoyable it did feel “on point.” I’m not sure what this band is aiming for, but it probably didn’t achieve it here. It’s a mishmosh of Cars-like New Wave, Journey/Loverboy hard rock, and 70s disco/soul. It’s produced by Jacques Morali, the svengali behind the Village People, presumably as he was still riding the high of 1980’s “Can’t Stop The Music” and/or the lifetime supply of milk he must have earned for his work there.[1] The songs, penned by “Rox and Ross”, seem self-consciously clever in a way that made me think of The Sparks. The most glaring example of their overweening cleverness is the cartoonish instrumental ornamentation that follows the line “she shakes her head” in “That’s What Your Girlfriend Says.” More generally, it feels like the band writes songs as if pretending to be pop stars but playing it all for yucks. The problem is that the songs aren’t very good or very clever, and the lyrics are pretty dumb. So no, they aren’t The Sparks. They aren’t Elvis Costello either, which they make clear in the song “I’m No Elvis Costello.” The song consists mostly of Mike Rox & chorus belting “C’mon, let me kiss ya!”, often followed by “maybe baby way down low”, to an understandably hesitant romantic interest. Yuck. While the lyrics are generally less chauvinistic than these, even in songs whose titles read like they may be (e.g. “Death of a Teenage Girl”), the songwriting and production is heavy on the machismo. It reads like Rox are overcompensating on straightness to offset their disco ties, [2] [3] and the results just aren’t fun in the way camp should be. ********** 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mSlXVuHhU8 2. On top of Morali, the band released their sole single “Ddddddddance” on a split 12” with the Ohio Players. 3. So much more fun to throw some mystery into the mix via someone like Ron Mael, but their lone mustachioed member, guitarist Snuffy Waldren, keeps his stache bushy to match his “hey ladies” pose on the album’s jacket.