I Want To Be A Machine ( from the album 'Ultravox'!)

This futuristic ballad draws on the legend of Atlantis and H.G.Wells ('I stole a cathode face from newscasts, and a crumbling fugue of songs') - Bowie-esque strumming precedes the chorus, which drops in with a lovely lumpen bass line and a scorching sub ska guitar rasp.  Lyrically, it is self-conscious but Foxx warbles some great imagery as he pulls us through the song to the mad Billy Currie violin wig out at the end! A curious beast, this song - part Bewlay Brothers (Bowie), part gothic folk song, part rock stomper - when I first heard this as a snotty and precocious teenager ('oh, I prefer Ultravox's early stuff'), I loved it's strange undersea futurism - Foxx's fascination with machines and robots manifested itself fully on his first ultra futuristic solo album 'Metamatic', and legend has it, that he 'experimented' with 'living like a machine' around the time Ultravox recorded their first album, driving the other band members nuts by 'denying his human side'.  (This sounds like a great way to behave like an asshole - 'I'm a machine, I have no feelings') - Nevertheless, a standout from the punky, Roxy, Bowie of their first album along with the twinkly, 'My Sex', b-side of the single from the album, odd reggae/ska bopper, 'Dangerous Rhythm')

I WANT TO BE A MACHINE

Here, in the photo used for the back cover of the neon pink Ultravox! debut album, Foxx borrows punk stylings via the ripped suit and burnt shirt cuffs and collars : on bended knees he looks like a hostage - the hint at the 'society of the spectacle' with the multiple TV screens behind him, points to the punky futurism of Ultravox's first album - despite the punk/glam stylings - the debut is a fairly straightforward, bog standard rock album - Island records drafted in wonderkid Brian Eno to produce (cynical sales ploy - he actually did very little according to Ultravox drummer, Warren Cann, and what he did do was not used on the final cut.  If you want to get the standouts from this Roxy rocker 'Slipaway' is probably the best song on the album, with an opening line that belies its shock value by being sung sweetly! ('Enter me gently I break in the light......') The rocker opener ' Saturday Night in The City of The Dead' is fast and fun, with a blues harmonica motif, while sister songs 'I Want To Be A Machine' and 'My Sex' offer the pre-cursor to the Futurist synths of Gary Numan (Numan greatly admired Foxx, who equally gave credit to Numan for popularising synthesiser music- Foxx was the real innovator though, and did it first - the last Ultravox album he sang on is a new/wave Futurist classic 'Systems of Romance')

'MY SEX' - the 'sister song' of  'I Want To Be A Machine'.  Both of these songs are drenched in Ballardian imagery and have a strange Orwellian 'double speak' running through the 'retro-futurist' lyrics.  Foxx quotes 20th Centry modernism, film and television/video being the main points of reference, but sets these references at some point in the (near) future whilst to 21st Century ears, these references now appear as vestigial elements of 'the old technology' - analogue, broadcast, 'one to many' - In 1977, these lyrics would have been taken as part of the 'zeitgeist', with video, in particular, making headway as a mass populist format, but also as a promotional tool for musicians.  Now, both of these songs sound, literally, as if they are from another world - 'My Sex', in particular, is a sad, touching,  twilight hologram from the 20th Century - 'my sex'is sexual desire/sexuality and sex - listened to as a virgin (which in my case I definetly was when I first heard it!), the lyrics and music combined to form a powerful mystique around the romance of the sexual act ('of all the bodies I knew, and those I want to know') but also challenged the macho shag machines of rock and proto- metal, as well as the 'certain certainties' of the womanisers of  Blues ('SHE is mine'/SHE left me') and black pop (HE's so fine/'SHE is hot'). In 'My Sex', Ultravox play with the nuances of sexual desire and sexuality by removing gender references - ambiguity is the key, stark imagery sung in a blank, sexless way - like a machine would sing  - sex and sexuality is conflated with poetic imagery - the mongrel on the leash (libido), an image lost in faded films (old age), modernity - 'neon outline', 'highrise overspill'.  Ballard overload! The city becomes a metaphor for sex - buy sex, sell sex, sex and death ('Crash').  This is delivered in the most deadpan, 'unsexual' manner - like a replicant from Blade Runner expressing romantic love. A conundrum, a metaphor, a contradiction - a small modern masterpiece - try not to be seduced by those luscious string synths that build the main part of the melody! Lah, dah dah - Dah dah dah, darah dah dah! The tinkly piano adds the beauty to the flat Foxx voice - a song about feeling and desire, sung by one who can't feel anything - perhaps 'My Sex' is more relevant now than it was over a quarter of a century ago when it was recorded.