With Fernando Márquez “el Zurdo” as vocalist, the Spanish band La Mode made only two albums. The first one came out in 1982 and is a masterpiece called El eterno femenino. The album’s title was apparently a quote from Goethe’s Faust. Lofty art references abound in La Mode’s lyrics.

El tema número 3 de El eterno femenino lleva por título Aquella canción de Roxy. That Roxy song.

En la canción se nos cuenta una historia; una historia de amor. Como se anuncia ya en el título, la ficticia banda sonora corre a cargo del grupo británico Roxy Music, uno de los más influyentes de la segunda mitad de los años 70, y referencia explícita en el presente tema de La Mode.

No sabemos qué canción de Roxy exactamente es la que suena en “el transistor” durante el encuentro amoroso narrado por el Zurdo. ¿Quizá Love is the drug? Es muy posible… Pero eso queda para la imaginación de cada oyente. Each listener is to decide which Roxy song precisely is the one that the singer-narrator is telling us about.

Aquella canción de Roxy is a treatise in some punk and New Wave’s recurrent themes: the night, the thrill, the sleaze, the cruising for a bruising, the fleetingness of love and of youth itself... And there is Mr. Roxy Man himself, Brian Ferry, giving his blessing to our two young lovers, as well as providing the incidental music to their torrid affair.

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