Tonight - September 1984

Remember 1974?
Back when all David Bowie wanted was to adapt George Orwell’s ‘1984’ into a Ziggied-up musical?
The end result was ‘Diamond Dogs’, a crackin’ album. 10 years later ‘Tonight’ was everything ‘Diamond Dogs’ wasn’t. The phenomenal success of ‘Let’s Dance’ and the resulting tour transformed Bowie into a mainstream pop commodity once more, which apparently is where the cash was in the early 80’s. I was looking forward to this album because I like a bit of 80’s cheese and I loved the last batch of singles.
But ‘Tonight’ feels rushed out to feed the market. And boy do the songs suck!

What’s Good
The album opens well with ‘Loving the Alien’. As songs about religious intolerance go it’s not at all bad, although I’d take a radio mix over the 7 and a half minute album cut any day of the week. Talk about out staying your welcome, SHEESH!
‘Blue Jean’ is a pretty good pop song. Albeit one with more saxophone then I personally enjoy.
Interestingly these are the only tracks on the album that are solely credited to Dave-oh. Maybe it would have been smarter to release a double a-side and spare everybody concerned a whole album?

What’s Bad?
I guess the Bow-ster was having a hard time writing songs at this point because the rest of the tracks are covers, old songs from Iggy Pop’s ‘Lust for Life’ (which of course Ol’ D.B. produced) and one ‘collaboration’. The collective result is a reggae album. I’ve said it all before but it bears repeating: hands up who wants reggae from David Bowie?
Where did all the hands go?
Nothin’ wrong with reggae, but it’s something the man just do not do well.

And did I mention there’s a Tina Turner duet?



Leiber and Stoller cover ‘I keep forgettin’ ‘ was voted worst song of all time by one Bowie fansite (the seemly defunct teenagewildlife.com). Which seems a little unfair when you consider most of the tracks on ‘Young Americans’.
But it seems like a downright injustice when you listen to the cover of Brian Wilson’s Beach Boys gem ‘God Only Knows’. The Bowie version is so, so bad. It kills the gentle beauty of the song with over the top BVs and a horn section. It’s so bad that I broke a golden rule of ‘two thousand and Bowie’ and vowed never to listen to it again during the very first hearing. I’m telling you, it actually manages to tarnish the original. Dave-Oh hasn’t sounded this dreadful since he covered ‘Across the Universe’.

How many good tracks? 2 out of 9
How many evil tracks that suck the joy out of life? 1 out of 9
How many highly embarrassing examples of the worst of 80’s pop trash? 6 out of 9

Bowie-o-meter: 10 Ziggys - all looking shame faced. That’s 10 for every good song and minus 10 for every act of musical sacrilege.

So there you have it, ‘Tonight’: highly regrettable and mostly forgettable. NEXT!

The alternative Let's Dance

If post-disco-white-boy-funk isn't your cup of tea, you might enjoy these versions of the first 3 killer tunes from 'Let's Dance'.

First up:
'Modern Love' gets the haunting slide guitar and girly vocal treatment from The Last Town Chorus



And now for the original Iggy Pop version of 'Little China Girl'.



Last but by no means least, my favourite of the 3:
M. Ward's acoustic folk take on 'Let's Dance' as featured in the fantastic New Zealand indie flick 'Eagle Vs Shark'.

Let’s Dance – April 1983

After all that ‘Berlin trilogy’ stuff (yawn) our chum David seems to have his sights set firmly on being a global pop phenomenon in 1983. So he hooked up with Disco Legend (or should that be ‘Disco Leg End’ by ’83?) Nile Rodgers to unleash ‘Let’s Dance’ on an unsuspecting world. The single rocked a million dance floors and the album proved to be his biggest global hit since ‘Station to Station’ in 1976. The title track is still an iconic groove, but how does the rest hold up 25 years later?
Well, for an album with an open invitation to dance for a title it’s surprisingly down beat…..

What’s Good
2 words: MODERN FREAKIN’ LOVE!
Wait, is that 3 words or 2 words with a little gramma 2.0?
Either way, ‘Modern Love’ is the bendy parts on a bee’s leg. It is the Wrath of Khan. It is finding you’ve learnt Karate when you thought you were waxing an old man’s car. It is a single mum scribbling in a café all day only to find she has written the biggest seller in the history of children’s literature. It is your best friends baby daughter.
Well maybe not. But it’s good. It’s really really good.
Okay so it’s cheesey. But cheesey-like-good-cheesey, not cheesey-like-bad-cheesey.

‘China Girl’ is a good little pop song. Plus it’s nice that the Bow-ster put it on this album just so Iggy Pop could continue eating, (or so the story goes).

I really like ‘Let’s Dance’ but I’ve heard is so many times growing up that it’s impossible to dissect what makes it good. Just like ‘Space Oddity’ and James Bond movies on a bank holiday weekend. It should have it’s own English Heritage blue plaque.

‘Without you’ is a pretty nifty tune and was a single in some countries.

What’s Bad?
Everything else. ‘Richoet’ is a song of 2 halves: it starts out decent enough but becomes another bout of flippin awful Bowie reggae. Who would ever dance to this?
‘Shake it’ is more upbeat but pretty naff. The other 2 tracks are just forgettable filler.
And I could have done with out 7 and a half minutes of the title track, ta.

How many Good tracks? An uninspiring 4 out of 8.

Bowie-o-meter: 50 Ziggys.
10 for every good song, an extra 5 for ‘Modern Love’ and an extra 5 for being the first Bowie album this year that my wife let me play in the car.

There’s nothing wrong with calling your album ‘Let’s Dance’ and filling it with slightly dour songs. But what is disappointing is how forgettable most of this album is, especially when compared to the first 3 “killa choons”.
Are these really the best 8 songs he could come up with at the time?
If so, wouldn’t it have been better, artistically speaking, for Ol’ Dave-oh to wait until he had a few more songs you could hum?
‘Let’s Dance’ is yet another Bowie album with some brilliant obvious singles but very little else in it’s favour. Sadly as it was a platinum seller, he didn’t learn a thing from this disappointing album. As we’ll see with his next long player: ‘Tonight’.

Christiane F. – April 1981

The Bow-sters next release isn’t really a proper album. It was released as a tie in with the movie of the same name, which tells the true story of a young drug addict and Bowie fan in 70’s Berlin. Dave-0h even makes a cameo as himself.

The album’s two songs of interest are a version of ‘Heroes’ which is mostly sung in German and a natty live version of ‘Station to Station’.

The rest of the album features the best songs from ‘Station’, ‘Low’, ‘Heroes’ and ‘Lodger’, making it a nice little retrospective of the years that Ol’ D.B. was either influenced by or working in Berlin.
Track listing wise it’s “All Chilla’ and No Filla’ ”, making it every German’s favourite Bowie album. And a pretty good purchase for anybody unfamiliar with this period of his work and not to sure where to start.

Scary Monsters – September 1980

After sharing creative credits on his last 3 albums ‘Scary Monsters’ sees a more independent David Bowie, apparently determined to mold himself into a Pop Star once again. ‘Low’, ‘Heroes’ and ‘Lodger’ had done for him what ‘Kid A’, ‘Amnesiac’ and ‘Hail to the Theif’ did for Radiohead. They freed Ol’ D.B. from the public’s previous perceptions of his work and sound, sold OK and even introduced him to some new fans along the way. But just like Radiohead, after 3 albums of ‘experimental music’ Bowie found himself in a brand new pigeon hole, and one which appeared to bar him from mainstream success.
According to producer Tony Visconti Dave-oh abandoned his ‘Berlin’ loose approach of developing songs in the studio, often writing lyrics at the last minute. Instead he worked alone to craft his songs, coming to the studio ready to go. The resulting album sounds a lot more focused and a lot more pop orientated then anything since Pin Ups in 1973. But is it any good?
I’m glad you asked.

What’s Good?
‘Scary Monsters and Super Creeps’ is a typical Bowie single and could have been on any of the last 3 albums. It’s infectious, memorable and still sounds a little bit edgy even 28 years later. And it kicks off the most consistent runs of decent songs of any Bowie album.
‘Ashes to Ashes’ is personally my favourite Bowie single and helped to kick start the music video revolution of the early 80’s. But don’t hold any of that against this sublime pop tune which overshadows the whole of the rest of the albums, and to an extent, the whole of the rest of the guys career.
‘Teenage Wildlife’ is a piece of work; both immediately up lifting and condemning. It features some interesting lyrics in which D.B. slates the New Wave kids who had named him as an influence and were busy racking in the pop £’s.
And ‘Fashion’ is good fun. “BEEP BEEP.”

What’s Bad?
Whilst there’s nothing bad on the album, a few of the songs are pretty forgettable. There’s certainly nothing special about ‘Kingdom Come’ and ‘Because your Young’ and it’s a shame they are lumped together towards the albums close. The only track I really didn’t like was ‘Up the Hill Backwards’, mostly because of the chorus line backing vocals. Perhaps it sounded fresh in 1980, but it’s pretty crud now.

How many good songs?
6 out of what the track lists says is 10. But really it’s just 9. So er, 6 out of 9 then, right?
Bowie-o-meter: 80 Ziggys.

Scary Monsters was a UK number 1 album and is the album that ALWAYS gets a name check when David Bowie releases anything new (“His best album since Scary Monsters!”). So it did a good job of getting our boy back into the main stream, shifting the units AND influencing those all important music journo’s.
28 years later it holds up pretty well. Some of it now sounds a bit ‘worthy’ (this was the decade that brought us super star charity singles by the truck load).
But overall it’s still a very solid album.

Lodger - 1979

Ol’ D.B. spent 1978 touring ‘Low’ & (shudder) “Heroes” before going back to the studios with Messers Eno & Visconti to work on ‘Lodger’. The album is considered the 3rd part of the ‘Berlin Trilogy’, which is daft as it was produced in New York City and Switzerland. This time around there are no instrumentals and things are a bit more pop orientated. At times the album has a playful tone. Production anecdotes abound of band members swapping instruments and songs being contracted out of the shared chord sequences. ‘Lodger’ is one of the more forgotten Bowie’s albums. It’s easy enough to get hold of the CD re-issue, but it’s not an album that gets talked about much. Unlike Hunky Dory and “Heroes” which are both rubbish, as regular readers know well ;-)

What’s Good?
‘Red Sails’ romps along like it really does have the wind behind it. Weirdly the instrumental synth section sounds just like the music in the bar in Superman 2.
‘Boys keep swinging’ is sing-a-long light hearted fun about the wonders of masculinity. ‘Look back in Anger’ is flippin nuts, one of the best Bowie songs I’ve ever heard. Apparently the NME described it as the “low point of the album” which is proof that they don’t know nothing.

What’s Bad?
“Heroes” ended with some pretty bad world music, and ‘Lodger’ picks it up and stretches it out a bit with ‘African Night Flight’ and ‘Yassassin (Turkish for Long Live)’. Hands up who wanted a David Bowie reggae song? (Please leave the internet if your hand is raised).
‘Red Money’ is a bore and a disappointing closer to an otherwise pretty good album.

How many good songs?
6 out of 10? Not bad

Bowie-o-meter: 70 Ziggys.

Lodger is a fairly average album with it’s share of stand out moments that make it worth a listen, but you’re just as well down T’other day Rueben described this and ‘Heroes’ as ‘Bowie in the studio cranking out albums when he should have been taking some time to figure out his next move.” The man has a point!

“Heroes” - 1977

“Heroes”

See those speech marks? Apparently they’re ironic. Hmmmmm.

Following on from the triumphant experimentation of ‘Low’, “Heroes” was released just 10 months later. The album is the only one of the ‘Berlin trilogy’ that lives up to it’s name as it was recorded and fiddled with in West Berlin, a mere stones throw from the dreaded Wall. The same wall David Hasselhoff would one day tear down with his bare teeth during his frantic search for freedom.
“Heroes” followed the previous albums format with one side devoted to songs and the other to heavily Eno influenced instrumentals. The title track is one of the best loved Bowie singles and was named his best song ever last April by Mojo magazine.
It was the NME album of the year back in ’77 and has 5 stars on the American ‘Allmusic’ guide.
I flippin loved ‘Low’ so I came to this with my tongue hanging out, eagerly expecting to lap up more of the same.

What’s bad about it?
First track ‘Beauty and the Beast’ gets things off to a very under whelming start, featuring dire lyrics and a terrible (and terribly loud) female backing singer. Closing track ‘The Secret Life of Arabia’ is equally naff, a piece of cod-world music with more nonsense lyrics. Any album book ended by these two duffers would have a hard time. The rest of “Heroes” is an even split between decent stuff, some of it very good, and dull filler. Ultimately it’s the filler tracks that are the biggest problem with the album, making “Heroes” a highly forgettable album.

What’s Good?
Who doesn’t love the title track? The production job is a land mark in rock history and the song itself isn’t too bad either.
‘Joe the Lion’ is a crackin’ song, as desolate as “Heroes” (the song) but with out the star crossed lovers. Apparently it’s a tribute to an artist who had himself nailed to his VW Beetle in 1974.
‘V2 Schneider’ is a fun instrumental dedicated to the Kraftwerk co-founder and ‘Moss Garden’ is among the best of the Eno-Bowie instrumentals.
But 4 good tracks is a pretty poor showing.

How many good tracks?
4 out of 10

Bowie-o-meter: 45 Ziggys.

Before I knew a single Bowie album track I knew the legend of “Heroes” and it’s status as a ‘classic album’. It beats me how such a bland collection of material ever made a dent in popular culture. For me this is one of Bowie’s weakest albums yet. I can’t even think of anything pithy to say about it, it’s that forgettable.

Low - 1977

Poor David Bowie. Years of the cocaine fuelled excesses of mid 70’s rock stardom nearly wiped him out. How else do you explain ‘Young Americans’ (pause for laughter). After touring ‘Station to Station’ and finishing the publicity rounds for his first big acting job (‘The Man who fell to earth’) it seems Dave-oh wanted to keep a low profile. In interviews of the time he talks about being so reliant on his ‘people’ that he didn’t even know who to book a plane ticket. I guess he figured it out some how as ‘Low’ was recorded in Paris with all twiddly bits done Berlin in 1976. This was the start of his ‘Berlin trilogy’; three albums synonymous with synthesizers, experimentation, and former Roxy Music member come ambient daddy Brian Eno.

‘Low’ is nothing like any previous Bowie album. There are no big characters, no sweeping narratives and few songs. Half of the album is given to instrumental pieces whilst the songs that do make it are short and sketchy.

30+ years after it’s release in January ‘77 Low still regularly makes music critic lists of all time greatest albums. Stroof, Pitchfork have it as the greatest album of the 1970’s. But is it any good?

What’s good?
There’s only so much Bowie the average person can take. As much as I liked ‘Station to Station’ as this fortnight started I needed a Bowie break. I begrudgingly pressed play on track 1 I was knocked out. ‘Speed of Life’ was a revelation, all catchey hooks and synth’ cool.
‘Breaking Glass’ and ‘What in the World’ are good enough little songs in their own right, with the latter sounding like a Mario Bros remix years before the Nintendo revolution.
‘Sound and Vision’, ‘Always Crashing in the same car’ and ‘Be my Wife’ are three of the best Bowie songs ever. Each one is more infectious and atmospheric then the last. Then ‘A New Career’ breaks the tension with what sounds like Bowie making a guest appearance in The Red Hand Gang or The Kids from Degrassi Street. That’s side one. Side two is more relaxed but no less compelling.

What’s Bad?
You must have got the idea by now, this album don’t do ‘bad’.

How many good tracks?
11 out of 11. SCORE!

For my money ‘Low’ is easily Bowie’s most compelling and inventive album since Ziggy. Best of all, for every track that’s experimental or atmospheric there is a killer “choon” to balance it out. ‘Low’ is pop reinvention at it’s best.

Bowie-o-meter: 99 Ziggys, all trying to keep a low profile amongst teh freaky teens in late 70's Berlin.

Station to Station - 1976

This is a weird album, which shouldn’t work. For one thing, it came off the back of the travesty that is Young Americans. For another, it sees Dave-oh lazily going back to doing ‘another character’. Perhaps he thought it would win back his alienated fan base? It’s widely reported that the Bow-ster only had a couple of songs when he went into the studio and that he and the rest of the band were massive cocaine fiends at the time.
So this album shouldn’t work. But it does. It honestly does.

What’s Good about it?
‘Golden years’ is a killer groove and appears to achieve in one song everything that Bowie failed to do over the whole course of the Young Americans album. Probably his best single since ‘Jean Geanie’.
‘Station to Station’ is like ‘Width of a Circle part 2’, a colossal opening track that never out stays it’s welcome.
‘TVC15’ is pure rock pop about Iggy Pop’s girl friend being swallowed by a telly. Who could ask for more?

What’s bad?
Not much. It lacks some of the energy of the earlier albums like Man Who Sold the World or the excitement of Ziggy Stardust. But it feels like I’m just picking holes.

How many good songs?
7 out of 7. Not bad huh.

Bowie-o-meter: 89 Ziggys, all pretending to be trapped in a big glass box

Station to Station is a classy album where the whole is greater then the sum of it’s parts, making it one of those records that rewards repeated listening.

Young Americans

In 1975 David Bowie dropped glam rock like glitter covered filth and embraced a sound he would later describe as “plastic soul”.
You can’t blame him for getting bored with rock n roll in 1975. Listen to even the more acclaimed albums of that period now (eg Lou Reed’s Transformer or the New York Dolls) and it all sounds pretty similar. According to music journalists “by ‘75 Glam Rock was like, TOTALLY OVAH!” or something.
Besides, a jazzy soul album wouldn’t be the first jarring change of musical style in ol Dave’oh’s career.
And of course this album was written and recorded whilst on tour in America, a place where country music stations and talk radio pretty much rule the airwaves if you‘re between cities. In 1975’s ‘Cracked Actor’ BBC documentary a skinny Davey can been seen taking solace in a “black station” on a car radio and having a lovely sing song to ‘Natural Women’. Just the kind of activity British people end up doing on the long straight roads through Nowhere’s Ville USA.


But if I can understand the change in musical direction, one thing I can’t fathom is why the songs on this album are so flippin bland!

What’s Good about it?
‘Fame’ is okay. ‘Young Americans’ and ‘Win’ have grown on me. That’s it.

What’s wrong with it?
Oh so much.
At first I wondered if I just wasn’t getting it. But then the horrific cover of the Beatles ‘Across the Universe’ crashes into your speakers and howls away like a rapid dog impersonating the Rat Pat. After that it’s all very clear: David Bowie had gone completely mental and didn’t have anyone around him who could tell him to stop, have a sit down and eat some proper food.
Rueben has correctly railed against the far to prominent saxophone and backing singers in his review over at Line of Best Fit. But for me the worst elements are the songs themselves. “Weak” doesn’t begin to cover it.

How many good songs?
3 out of 8

Bowie-o-meter:
I’ll give it 10 Ziggys for every half decent song, that seems fair. So 30 in total. Pah!

This was the album where my Dad lost interest in Bowie. He describes it as “bad R n B”. He was right about it in 1975 and he’s still right in 2008.
From here until the ‘Let’s Dance’ LP I’ll be the first of the family line to chart these waters!

Cracked Actor - TV film from 1975

Having given up on the UK and decamped to the USA, Davey boy was in the middle of his massive Diamond Dogs stadium tour. The beeb got a few interviews and filmed a show. The end result was the ‘Cracked Actor’ TV documentary. Filmed in 1974 and broadcast in early ’75, it’s the nearest thing that exists to a concert film of the Diamond Dogs shows.

Watching it is a very confusing experience, mostly because the film makers don’t explain what you are seeing. For one thing David Bowie seems out of his head or bored stupid and most of the footage of him seems to come from one interview in a car travelling to a gig. There are the usual interviewees including rapid fans and some very odd young Americans who seem to think the documentary is about them.

It’s neither insightful nor very interesting, and only worth watching for the live section in which the Bowster sings a song from inside a giant blue hand. OOOOH, that’s arty!

David Live - 1974

OK, so we're not offically 'doing' live albums and videos, etc as part of two thousdant and bowie. But I happened to get 'David Live' for my birthday. So here's a little something about it and what I thought of it:

In 1974 David Bowie dumped playing live in the UK and followed the smell of cash to the USA, touring Diamond Dogs coast to coast. The tour famously started life as a theatrical feast of gloomy distopian rock ‘n’roll fun. It featured a great big set of ‘hunger city’ (the album’s setting) and Bowie singing from inside an oversized blue hand. The tour took a break in which the Bow-ster recorded the Young Americans album. When Bowie played the remaining tour dates the theatrics were gone, replaced by big suits and the sound of ‘Philadelphia Soul’.
David Live was recorded on the first leg of the tour, but the saxophone freak outs and over blown backing singers turned up loud that would dominate his next album are all present on this record.

The Diamond Dogs tracks are the best thing on the album which is dominated by over blown reworking of the classic Ziggy songs. The simple rock n roll Ziggy tunes loose their finesse under the weight of all that sax.
David Live is an underwhelming record that out stays it’s welcome.

Diamond Dogs

Ziggy Stardust didn’t really die in 1973. He just changed his name to ‘Halloween Jack’ and got a part in a Broadway adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984. Or as near as makes no difference.

The well warn story goes that after publically retiring Ziggy and sacking his Spiders from Mars backing band, ol’ D.B. wanted to do a musical adaptation of 1984. He got a few songs together (would they be ‘1984’ and ‘Big Brother’ by any chance?) but he never did manage to get the rights. Not one to sit on his hands, Dave’oh used the material he’d written to pad out his latest character driven glam rock concept album: ‘Ziggys twin brother wakes up in a nightmare vision of the future’, or Diamond Dogs to give it it’s official title.

What’s Good about it?
Everything.
‘Diamond Dogs’ is everything you could want from a David Bowie album. I didn’t even miss Mick Ronson and the Spiders. Apparently Bowie plays most of the guitar on the album himself and a lovely, scratchey, dirty, rocked out job he makes of it too. The album starts with a great little spoken word intro that sets the pace for a conceptual narrative that is a lot more central to the album then it was on ‘Ziggy’. Stand out tracks ‘Diamond Dogs’ ‘Rebel Rebel’ and ‘Rock n Roll with me’ are all thumping great pop songs. Most of the first side is taken up by ‘Sweet thing’ ‘Candidate’ and ‘Sweet thing (reprise)’ , essentially one long song, which takes the Bow-ster back to the same epic territory as ‘Unwashed and Some What Slightly Dazed’ and ‘Width of a Circle’. And very welcome it is too.

What’s bad?
‘We are the Dead’ is YET ANOTHER song along the lines of ‘Quicksand’ and ‘Time’. It’s a bit less dull then those two and sits better in the general flow of the album, but it’s nothing to get excited about.

How many good songs?
10 out of 11. But really there are only 7 songs on the album, so maybe that should be 6 out of 7.

Bowie-o-meter: I give it 85 Ziggys!

‘Diamond Dogs’ betrays it’s origins and sounds more like a distopian sci fi musical then a rock n roll album. But if west end shows sounded like this I for one would go!

Pin Ups

Pin Ups is a quickly recorded album of cover songs made to cash in on the Ziggy mania that was apparently sweeping the nation in 1973. So it should be rubbish, right? A big bloated cash cow, like that Robbie Williams swing album. Let's have a listen shall we...

What's good?
It sounds like Bowie is having fun with this record. There are lots of comical production tricks like the vary speed backing vocals on Floyd cover ‘See Emily Play’. After the fake laughter on ‘Love you till Tuesday’, the long haired pseudo hippy stuff in 1969 and the rock posturing of the Ziggy era, it’s nice to hear what sounds like people mucking about with different arrangements just for a laugh. Mick Ronson earns his keep yet again, and it’s a great shame that this was his last Bowie album.
‘The Shape of things to come’ is a strong favourite with me. It’s a good song, a hilariously stereo typical Bowie vocal performance and a nice early use of the reverse echo studio effect made infamous by Stephen Street with the Smiths on ‘How Soon is Now’ and 'Meat is Murder’.
‘Friday on my mind’ is another belter, again it's good song made better because the band sound like they are having fun.

What’s bad?
I had high expectations for this album because Rueben and my Dad really like it. But for me some of the songs are a bit boring, particularly ‘Rosalyn’. After hearing my mother in law singing away to this album whilst decorating I’ve come to the conclusion that if you know the original versions of these songs (which I don’t) it must be a more interesting and arresting listening experience. But Pin Ups is unlikely to make my top 5 Bowie albums.

How many good songs?
A very respectable 8 out of 12

Bowie-o-meter: 70 Ziggys

There’s a lot of good stuff on Pin Ups. The best songs are the ones that sounds like grown up pop fans piddling around in a recording studio. But for me the track listing isn’t consistent enough to make this an out and out Bowie classic.

Ziggy Stardust the Motion Picture

Rueben and myself had been trying to open a portal to 1973 in the corner of his lounge so we could watch a David Bowie gig form the Ziggy Stardust tour. We used science and everything, but we just couldn’t get it to stabilize. Fortunately Rueben had ‘Ziggy Stardust the motion picture’ on his Sky+ box so we just watched that instead.
And strike a light, it was an odd mix of guitar wizardry, rock n roll swaggering, embarrassing theatrics, red lights and slightly out of focus camera work.
It’s well worth seeing just for Mick Ronson who totally stole the show for us. At times he’s every bit the silly big hairded rock guitar slinger, gurning and making some quite scary faces. With his heavy eye makeup he looks a lot like Skeletor. But the sounds he makes are incredible. David Bowie HAS to dress like an alien just so you notice him when he’s next to Ronson during a solo.
As for Bowie himself the film is the best of times and the worst of times. He hits a lot of bum notes (particularly during his harmonica solo in ‘Cracked Actor’) and comes across as a bit of a berk most of the time. I’d read that the Ziggy live show was all about ‘theatrics’ but in reality these mostly consist of sudden (and silly) costume changes. But what nothing could prepare me for was the mime. Who goes to a rock show expecting the front man to pretend to be stuck behind a glass wall and flap his arms like a bird in flight during the solos? Bowie does all of that and more, whilst wearing bangles the size of footballs. He certainly had conkers back in the day, you’ve got to give him that.

The film is famous for capturing ol’ D.B.’s apparent ‘retirement’ from live concerts (or is it Ziggy’s? Or is it just his way of sacking the Spiders?) as he announces that this will be the bands last show. Watching it back in 2008 this isn’t a very poignant moment, there’s no sudden out break of mass hysteria and the release of ‘David Live’ the very next year only serve to further under mine it’s status as a defining moment in Rock history. As it is, two boys invade the stage during the last song and that’s pretty much it.

The set list itself is a bit too medley heavy for my taste (I want to hear the whole of ‘All the young dues’ and ‘Wild eyed boy from Free Cloud’ not little bits!). But generally all the big Ziggy songs are there, plus a few others. And even ‘John I’m Only Dancing’ sounds half decent with some live energy behind it.
But pity the ‘other two’ Spiders from Mars as they barely get a look in. The fuzzy red camera work is almost totally dedicated to Bowie and Ronson. We see far more of the live audience then the other two musicians, which hardly seems fair.
All in all, the filming is pretty sub standard but it does give a flavour of the time and this is pretty essential viewing for Bowie fans.

Aladdin Zane

How exactly do you follow a massive commercial and critical success?
Seems like the Beatles didn’t have a clue after Sgt Pepper and put out everything and anything they had (‘the White album’). Radiohead got fed up with guitars for a bit after Ok Computer (Kid A). Marc Bolan tried to do Electric Warrior over again but with louder backing vocals (Slider).
And so we come to 1973’s Aladdin Sane, or ‘Ziggy goes to America’ as David Bowie himself is quoted as saying some where. We find Dave’oh in ‘Search for Spock’ territory as he attempts to follow his personal ‘Wrath of Khan’ that was ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust’. I can only imagine that it was the first in a planned series of albums in which Ziggy would be found in different locations:
‘Ziggy gets to the shops and finds he’s forgotten his purse’
‘Ziggy takes a leak on his computer’
Finishing with ‘Ziggy chokes on his own elbows’, the last in the series (hello Boosh fans).

But sadly it was not to be and this is Ziggy’s last official appearance on a long player.

What’s Good?
Things get off to a cracking start with ‘Watch that Man’. It’s all whaling black lady backing singers and dirty guitar licks, as if Bowie and Mick Ronson are on stage in Vegas. ‘Panic in Detroit’ is more of the same, but a little more laid back.
‘Cracked Actor’ is am infectious and darkly cynical rock and roll romp about fading stardom. But is Ziggy the withered old has been or has he encountered some kind of Hollywood vampire? Who cares when you can hum the tune?
‘Let’s spend the night together’ is everything a foot stomping rock n roll record should be and way better then the Rolling Stones ever sounded.
‘Gene Jeanie’ is the perfect slice of 70’s glam pop.

What’s Bad?
The title tracks starts out as one of the most haunting songs that the B-boy has written and makes the hairs stand up on the back of your neck. But it ends up as jazz piano freak out - NEXT!
I’ve always hated ‘Drive in Saturday’. I’ve got nothing against Doo Whop music, but this is a boring song with some unpleasant lyrical content about watching dirty films after a nuclear holocaust. Why would anybody choose to put this out as a single? You can file this one in the same box as ‘John I’m only Dancing’ from the previous year.
‘Time’ is another dull slow number in the same self mythologizing vain as ‘Quicksand’ from 1971’s ‘Hunky Dory’ album. And it’s got some nasty lyrics that fill your mind with unhelpful images of David Bowie being rude all by himself. Most unwelcome!

How many good songs?
6 out of 10

Bowie-o-meter: 65 Ziggys.

Aladdin Sane has a much dirtier rock sound then ‘The Rise and Fall…’ and some air punching high points. But the weaker songs really let things down making it at best a very average album.

“Watch out coz here we come!”

“It’s been a while but we’re back in style,
So get set to have some fun,
We’ll bring you action and satisfaction”!

It’s been a busy old year so far and although I kept up with the Bowie albums, the blog fell off my to do list a while ago.

But Rueben would never let you down and he’s kept up with his brilliant ‘Year of Bowie’ articles over at Line of Best Fit. I’ll be posting links to those and my own precious thoughts about each Bowie alum over the next few days.

Now where were we? Oh yeah, 1973.

(Thanks to Alvin and the Chipmunks for their words of support and wisdom that meant so much to so many. C.H.I.P.M.U.N.K.!)

Press your space face close to mine

So here we are in 1972 for David Bowie album no’ 5: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (and I thought MWSTW had a some what cumbersome title!).

Stuff of note: Incase you weren’t sure , this is the album where he puts on make up and pretends to be from space. What the betting that Dave’oh was so off his box one day that he thought Marc Bolan was the saviour of mankind, only to realized upon sobering up that he had a crackin’ idea for a concept album. In doing so he finally scored a hit on the album charts (no 5 in the UK no less), got on Top of The Pops and had a single in the UK top 10 (‘Starman’). Oh and his last 3 albums were re-issued and charted as well. Let’s hear it for perseverance!

The good bits
All of it, there’s not a bad track. I first got this a year ago and was blown away. From opening track ‘Five years’ to uber album closer ‘Rock n Roll Suicide’ it’s quality all the way. None of those dodgy rhymes that plagued some of the previous albums and every single tune is a winner. The lyrics to ‘Lady Stardust’ are like a career blue print for all the bands that have meant the most to me. And did I mention ‘Moonage Day Dream’ yet?

The bad bits.
None. Not any.
I didn’t rate ‘Hang on to yourself’ when I first heard it. But it’s so good on the ‘Ziggy’ live album that I grown to enjoy the album version to.

How many good tracks? 11 out of 11. 7 of which are amazing.
How many bad songs? 0

Bowie-o-meter: I give it 95 Ziggys
(because only God gets 100, though I’m not sure why he’d want them)

Pa-ru-pa—pa-pumb. Me and My drum.

The only surviving member of the all conquering Electric Warrior T.Rex line up is drummer Bill Legend.
He’s got his own charming little web site that tells his story, complete with scans of aeroplane menu’s from old tours and photos of his church. It’s a cute little home grown site, especially the part about how much he loves being a Christian and drumming. See for yourself!

http://www.presentation-partners.co.uk/legend/Story/lifestory.html

Bowie vs Bolan round 5 : 1971, The ‘T.Rex-tacy’ edition!

So far it’s 3:2 to Marc Bolan. And ain’t no way Ol’ D.B. is going to equalize this year.

Here’s why:

So it’s ’71 and Dave’oh has released one of his best singles (‘Changes’) and Hunky Dory which is still his most critically acclaimed album some 37 years later, but which neither Simon nor I have a lot of love for. And none of it bothered the UK charts in any shape or form, despite Radio 1 airplay.

Marc Bolan on the other hand released Electric Warrior, which also remains his most critically acclaimed album some 37 years later. But unlike Bowie, it scored a UK no’ 1. And better still, it’s one of the most atmospheric and yet still fun albums I’ve heard. He also had two no’1 singles and a journo some where dubbed the nations teens as suffering from “T.Rex-tacy”.

So an easy win for Marc Bolan then.

See you next year.

In the year 1971

Whilst David Bowie was being kooky and most of the world turned a blind eye, stuff like this was making headlines:

After failing to get their at all in 1970, the Americans landed on the moon twice. They even took a car up this time to make it more interesting for the viewers at home. Bored with the moon, the Russians sent their 2nd probe to Mars which is much cooler don’t you think?

The BBC launched the legendary Open University which went on fill late night and early afternoon TV schedules with bearded men in lab coats for years to come.

The UK and Ireland both switched to decimal currency.

Andy Warhol was big news. He had a film out, set up his video factory an had an exhibition at the Tate in London which largely consisted of mug shots of people who were far to hard to ever go to an Andy Warhol show. Oh the irony.

The French Connection and Dirty Harry did impressive box office and lead to a spate of 70’s ‘dirty cop’ movies.

The troubles in Northern Ireland snowballed. The first British solider was killed in in February. 43 soldiers and 100 civilians were dead by the end of the year. The British government adopted a policy of internment without trial in the province, the consequences of which were truly terrible, as we’ll see in 1972.

The Hunky Dory Backlash (Mahbenja's 2p's worth)

So Hunky Dory;
“a sweeping, cinematic mélange of high and low art, ambiguous sexuality, kitsch, and class" (All Music Guide)?

Or, Hunky Dory;
“reminds me of how naff he was when he started.” (Rueb’s over at The Line of Best Fit)?

Let's give it a bash:

Stuff to note:
This is D’boys 3rd record company and his 4th album. But despite John Peel rinsin’ oot the crackin’ single (‘Changes’) the album still failed to chart (although the single reached no’ 66 in the USA). Exactly how does a person manage to release 4 commercially dismal albums off the back of one novelty hit record about lonely space men?
From looking around the internet (and spending a regrettable portion of my life reading the UK music press) it’s safe say to that Hunky Dory is David Bowie’s most critically acclaimed album. But the world is hungry to know how this “stylistic kaleidoscope” (All Music Guide again) coloured the last 2 weeks of my life.

Here goes:

The good stuff:
Stroof where did all the rock pomp from MWSTW go?
‘Kooks’ really did “remind me of how naff he was when he started.” But as fans of this blog know, I kinda liked a lot of that cockney stick-it-up-ya-jumper stuff, so I liked this song from the first play.
‘Andy Warhol’ struck a cord with me too, I like the chord progression a lot. Both Mick Ronson and Rick Wakeman do a brilliant job on this album and everything sounds great, especially on ‘Queen Bitch’.
And of course ‘Changes’, ‘Oh You Pretty Things’ and ‘Life on Mars’ belong in every single persons music collection. Fortunately they are on a million compilation, because….

The not so good:
The rest of this album is ruddy aweful.
Some of the lyrics…. oh dear. I thought 1967's ‘We are Hungry Men’ was bad until I heard Davo sing the following in album closer ‘The Brewley Brother’:
“Now my Brother lays upon the Rocks
He could be dead, He could be not
He could be You
He's Camelian, Comedian, Corinthian and Caricature”

Is he now? I think you can get a cream for that.

Having sold not that much of anything ol’ D.B. has a fair amount of nerve in ‘Song for Bob Dylan’.
A more honest title would have been ‘I liked you better when you sang those acoustic protest songs, and so did everybody else’. Aspiring rock stars take note: when righting a song about how a mulit million selling performer isn't as good as they used to be, please make sure that said song compares well with their work. Otherwise your kinda asking for it.

Oh and ‘8 line poem’ is a waste of space.

In conclusion:
How many good songs: a respectable 6. 3 of which are amazing.
How many bad songs: an extremely regrettable 5.

Bowie-oh-meter: 65 Ziggys.
10 for every good song and an extra 5 because ‘Life on Mars’ is just incredible. But this is my least favourite Bowie album so far (bang goes my credibility among the hobbyist music journos!).

PS. The amazing thing about Hunky Dory is how confident Dave’oh sounds, despite the failure of his previous albums. He sings like he’s really to take on the world, even during the weakest songs on the album. I guess confidence is something you need if you plan on dressing up silly and telling people you’re the androgynous rock n roll chosen one from outer space.

P.P.S. Next review will be shorter I promise.

Bolan Vs Bowie Round 4:1970

Tis the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and seventy and you can literally hear the death of flower power hanging in the air. David Bowie has released his third album (a rock monster, whodda thunk it!). Amongst other things it boasts a lovely cover, some decent tunes and one of the best songs of his entire career. All that, and still not a whiff of chart success.


Marc Bolan on the other hand….



After 3 albums of EXTREMELY mixed quality, Bolan ditched his old bearded bongo basher (Steve Perrigrin Took) picked up a new one (Mickey Finn) and released a proper decent album with tunes you can hum (‘A Beard of Stars’). To say that this album eclipsed all of his previous work would be to understate things just a tad.




Not content with this, ya boy Bolan shortened his musical duo’s name to T.Rex, let go of the pixie folk nonsense once and for all and released ANOTHER good album a few months later (‘T.Rex by, er, T.Rex). To my ears this album has aged really well. It sounds like the blue print for all of those big Brit Pop albums of the mid ninties (‘Suede’ by, er, Suede, ‘Parklife’ by Blur, Dodgy, Cast, Sleeper and all that sort of thing). It’s all there, the rocky songs, the slower songs, the song with a big string section, the end of album extended freak out and verses that end with a high pitched vocal line.




And then there was ‘Ride a White Swan’. Ooph. It’s credited as being the beginning of Glam Rock don’ cha’ know. And it got to no’ 2 in the hit parade.

Ain’t no contest this year.
1970 belongs to Marc Bolan.

Holy unnatural aversion Bow-Man!

David Bowie. He’s a big star with millions of fans all over the world, right?
So surely you can get everything he’s ever done on some re mastered reissue or box set some where, right?

Actually No.
Whilst none of the tracks from MWSTW were issuedas singles, in 1970 Bowie released ‘Holy Holy’. And unless you can track down the original single (or a dodgy bootleg), you can’t get this. It’s never been officially re issued or re-released.
The Bow-myster recorded a new version of the song during the Ziggy sessions in 1972 and that has been re issued plenty of times, even as an extra track on MWSTW. You can get it off of itunes right now.

But the original version? Gone without a trace.

Which suggests that Ol’ D.B. must have something of an aversion to this track. I wonder why?

The Man who let his mates get on with it....

It’s 1970. For young David Bowie this means another hairstyle, another new musical direction and another new album (of course). MWSTW (is it okay with you if call it that? I pronounce it ‘mwah-sss-tu-wuh’ with a nice hard ‘wuh’ phonic on the end) is album no’ 3 in the Bowie cannon and guess what…. it failed to chart. Ahhh. What exactly does a boy have to do to get a hit around here?

It seems like ol’ D.B. was starting to loose interest in the music business. According too Wikipedia he was so besotted with Angie Bowie (wife no’ 1) that he left most of the work to producer Tony Visconti and guitar whiz-banger Mike Ronson. I wonder if he was just a bit sick of trying to be a rock n roll star after flogging his guts out for several years.

The end result is a ‘rock’ album. For me this album is where the ‘two thousand and Bowie’ rules (which I hope you are following) really start to show their worth. If I hadn’t heard ‘Unwashed…’ and ‘Cygnet Committee’ from the Space Oddity album I would have believed the tommy rott trotted out by a lot of online reviewers about ‘Width of Circle’ being “heavily influenced by the likes of Led Zepplin”. When clearly it was a natural progression from his previous work.

Anyways, here’s what I liked and what I didn’t:

The best of MWSTW:
Opening song ‘Width of a circle’ is like a song sandwich with a meaty filling of shouty glam rock goodness (mind you, as I’ve got more familiar with the lyrics I’ve become less comfortable shouting along.).
‘Black County Rock’ is one of my favourite Bowie songs so far whilst and evidence for my theory that he wasn’t that interested in being ‘David Bowie: wannabe star’ during the recording of this album. According to Tony Visconti the songs structure was in place when recording started but no lyrics, so D-boy just bashed out a couple of lines and repeated then all the way through and then did a (highly amusing) Bolan impression to fill some time.
‘Running Gun Blues’ is more blues rock fun, this time about the pleasure of shooting people on your own time after getting discharged from the army (don’t worry mums and dads, it’s just a story!).
I also really like the last track ‘Supermen’, with it’s unusual backing vocal arrangement making it a strange but fun song.
Then there’s the title track, one of my favourite songs of the 1970’s. I don’t quite know how to describe it or why I like it. I first heard the Lulu version on TV in the 80’s and was fascinated straight away. I can say that it’s a welcome gear change from the (at times) generic 70’s rock production sounds on the rest of the album.

Oh hey, and this is definitely Davey-boys first decent album cover (in the UK at least).

The worst bits
You either like Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Led Zep’ and the whole 70’s heavy rock sound or you don’t. Personally, nah. It’s not for me. The tracks that fit most perfectly into that bracket (‘Saviour Machine’ and ‘She Shook me Cold’) are my least favourite on the album. They grew on me during week 2, but if not for the rules I would have given up on them.

It’s not just the production, the lyrical themes to these songs are pretty tired too. ‘Saviour Machine’ is about a super computer that starts a war because it gets bored, something that Isaac Asimov’s readers wouldn’t blink an eye at.

Lastly, I don’t much like ‘All the Mad Men’. The tune is alright but the lyrics are plain ol’ vanilla flavoured ‘dumb’. Reading other reviews I was surprised to see people praise this as Bowie’s most personal song because apparently his stepbrother was locked up in the same mental institution that graces the Amercian album cover.
I am amazed at this. To me the lyrics are the usual ‘rock n roll’ nonsense about crazy people being the only sane ones. To my mind this sort of thing only serves to trivialize mental health issues. I honestly can’t believe that somebody who had witnessed the destructive nature of a serious mental illness could knowingly write such a lot of tripe about it unless under the guise of another ‘story’. So for me this song should join the ranks of ‘The Little Bombardier’ and ‘Please Mr Grave Digger’ as one of the ‘silly story songs’ that don’t quite work.

In Conclusion
It probably took as long to read this self indulgent review as it would to listen to MWSTW. So do yourself a favour and listen to it. As with the previous Bowie albums, where it really succeeds is in creating a mood which is strong enough to carry the weaker tracks and lift it above the average 12” collection of songs. But that said, it is a 70’s rock monster so if that’s not your cup of tea (it’s not mine) you might be a bit disappointed.

How many good songs? 5 or 6 out of 9
How many bad songs: None, but at least 2 that take a lot of getting into.

Bowie-o-meter I give it 75 Ziggys.

P.S. This is my Dad’s favourite Bowie album.

P.P.S. Here are the American and German album covers in all there dubious glory.

In the year 1970....

So far we've listened to and contemplated David Bowie's first 2 albums. Album no'3 'The Man Who Sold the World' came out in good ol' 1970. Let's have a shufty at that year then shall we:



The Beatles finally found time out of their busy schedules to officially break up.

The Isle of Wight festival became a legend, as did Youth Worker David Ralph who took along some teens from the Westbrook Crusaders Christian Youth Camp he was running. In later years fans were split over who Ralph resembled more, the Dungeon Master from Dungeons and Dragons or Yoda from Star Wars. Ralph is also famous for retiring from Crusader (now rebranded as Urban Saints) on a number of occasions.




Jimi Hendrix died in London. He was only 28 years old.









Tom Hanks and the crew of Apollo 13 failed to land on the moon, but went on to have a major motion picture made about how they all nearly died. The USSR meanwhile successfully landed Lunokhod 1, the first remote controlled robot to ever set foot on an alien world. They may not have won the cold war, but they sure won the war of ‘Who is the coolest’ that year!


University Campus’s in the USA were getting pretty unpleasant what with the anti Vietnam War protests and the Black Panther rallies. The National Guard even shot 4 students, at which Senator Ronald Reagan said “If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with.”
Sheesh – how do guys like that get elected?
Of course nobody likes students, but I'm sure even the Republican Party think killing them is a bad thing.




The first wife of singer/song writer and Sheffield’s favourite son, John Shuttleworth died peacefully in her sleep.





There were 3,692,492,000 people living in the world. For February 2008 the global population is estimated as 6.65 billion. That’s an awful lot more people!
I wonder where they all live?

You're Coming With Me...

Part of the fun of this project is obviously discovering a whole vault of David Bowie songs I've never heard before. Part of this process is clearly a quest to find my favourite Bowie songs, and probably make my own definitive Bowie Top Twenty. Woo! If you asked me to do this at Christmas the top twenty would be made up off a stack of singles and maybe two tracks from Ziggy Stardust. Now, it could potentially be twenty album tracks, all songs I had never heard up to the time this mission began.

So, as I go through the albums (and I am sure Ben will be doing the same), I need to think: which of these songs are coming with me. Which songs are good enough and wow me enough to maybe feature in the fantastic twenty.

Sadly, nothing on album number one will be making that illustrious trip onwards into the pantheon of Bowie greatness. They barely make it into the same country I am building my pantheon in. However, for album number two, title track Space Oddity has a chance - its always been a favourite of mine (and not just for the memories of childhood it brings). If anything else was going as well, it would be Janine, for all its jingle-jangle goodness. It represents a real bite sized chunk of Bromley goodness, and is fast becoming a favourite of mine.

And that is what this is all about. Taking songs that have stagnated on albums and holding them up into the sun. Its like delving into a biscuit barrel and finding a chocolate digestive you never knew existed. The Man Who Sold the World is proving to be the best so far, showing just how exciting all this is going to be.

The Parsley On The Stalls

Sadly, I don't share Ben's enthusiasm for the debut album from David Bowie. In fact, I think it pretty much stinks the room out every time its played. There is something so desperately needy about his early music, attempts at popularity which fall way short of achieving his aims. Whilst The Laughing Gnome is not present, it is indicative of where his head must have been at that time, bobbing about on the fringes of music, desperate for a hit, anything to get him into the charts.

I am glad though that his first album did fail. Imagine how horrible it would have been if the public had embraced the appalling lyrics, the flimsy melodies and awful fake humour of this album. I am sure that Bowie would have tried to repeat the formula on his subsequent albums, in a series of diminishing returns. And would have more than likely sunk into nothingness. Thankfully, this across the board rejection of his early work caused him to re-examine his art and come back with something far stronger.

Space Oddity is way better. The song Space Oddity, as we all know, is a belter, full of interesting sounds and some amazing production (compare it to the demo on the DERAM sessions to see the difference a decent producer can make). whilst the album is still patchy in places, it is so full of life and vitality, at times exploding out of the speakers. Unwashed and Slightly Dazed is a real sign of things to come, starting small before an extended outro to knock the tightest socks clean off your feet.

If I had lived at the time of release, I would have never bought Space Oddity if I had heard David Bowie. In much the same way as I am unlikely to purchase the second Mika album, having been subjected to his debut. Between the albums, Bowie seems to change into a different artist, and for that we should all give thanks.


Scores:
David Bowie - 24
Space Oddity - 62

For a more detailed overview you can read my piece from the website Line of Best Fit here.

The Man Who Bought The Albums

Well everyone, a new day dawns and as of now, under the clearly defined rules we are now allowed to listen to album number three, The Man Who Sold The World. So we have two under our belts, and I will post my thoughts on those two in a moment or two.

The great thing about TMWSTW is the introduction of Mr Michael Ronson, whose contribution to the sound of Bowie is huge and should be given some credit. And so as a tribute to this incredible (and sadly overlooked) guitarist, here is a nifty video. It's cheating a bit as it is from Ziggy-Bowie, but I'm sure we can cut ourselves some slack for this, Mick Ronson doing what he did best, funny faces and all. Enjoy.

Bowie vs Bolan round 3: 1969

So far B-boy and, er B-boy are neck and neck with a round each.
DB took an early lead in 1967 but that other bloke stole it back in 1968.
They both had albums out in 1969, they were both established artists by then (of a sort anyway). So who will score big in ’69? Let’s have a look shall we:



Bowie: As you can see from my previous post I really liked Dave’oh’s 2nd album. Mind you, it didn’t chart.
But he did have a hit with the Space Oddity single. It was released to coincide with the Apollo 11 moon landing, used by the BBC in their moon coverage and reached no’ 5 in the UK hit parade. Pretty good huh.
Unfortunately his album sales put him firmly in the ‘one hit wonder’ catagorey. Oops. Hey, on a side note he got an Ivan Novello award for Space Oddity, but he had to share it with Peter Sarstedt who wrote the flippin’ dire ‘Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)’ in which he claimed to be able to see inside Sophia Loren's head. How Bowie managed to drum up enough enthusiasm to keep going after that revolting predicament I’ll never know. Imagine a room full of be-suited men telling a long haired youth
“We love your song!
It’s at least as good as one of the worst songs of this, or any other decade.
You should be proud! Here, have half an award.”



"But what was Marcy-boy Bolan up to this year?" I hear you mutter with begrudging indifference.



Bolan: ‘Unicorn’ the 3rd Tyrannosaurus Rex album was released and reached no’ 12 in the UK. His highest chart position yet (for an album anyway). Not to shabby, huh?

That is, until you hear the album.

To call it a ‘mixed bag’ would be a tad generous.
The first 4 tracks sound exactly the same as his previous 2 albums, and by now I’d had as much of this self indulgent ‘pixie folk’ tripe as I could stand. Then on track 5, joy of joys, there’s a piano and a drum kit. I don’t think my mental well being could have managed another track of fuzzy acoustic strumming and bongo sillyness.
There are some good songs on unicorn: I particularly liked ‘She Was Born to Be My Unicorn’.



But the self-indulgent whimsy is in full effect on closing track ‘Romany Soup’, which features John Peels voice phasing between from one speaker to another and back again as he reads the same section of a short story TWICE! The track makes a strong argument against LSD, they should think about using it in schools.
(Kids, if you experiment with hallucinogenics you’ll end up thinking stuff like this is cool. BE AFFRAID!)



The result: I’m torn.
Bolan had his most successful year thus far and released some crackin’ tunes. But he also released some horrible dross.
Where as Bowie released a really god album which failed to chart and he became a one hit wonder.

I’m gonna cop out and make this round a tie.

1969's David Bowie: MBJ's opinion

So this is ‘David Bowie’, the second album by (dur dur duhhhhh) David Bowie. And from the looks of things it didn’t even chart (in the UK) on it’s original release. How discouraging for a young curly haired pop wannabe. This was Dave’oh’s second go at becoming famous after his first album of novelty music-hall songs tanked and his record company “let him go”.

For the purposes of this blog we’re not even going to mention re-issues. Every other review on the inter-tron seems to view this album as a set of confusing clues as to where the Bowsters’ recording career would end up. Stuff that!

At ‘two thousand and Bowie’ we’re taking each album as it comes and on it’s own terms, so lets dig in:

How many good songs? A surprising 10 out of 10
How many terrible songs? Would you believe it, not even one.



The American cover: what a beaut!

The best moments:
The album kicks off with ‘Space Oddity’, a song which any resident of the UK under the age of 39 has as part of their shared national consciousness. So much so that I think it’s become impossible to evaluate it. The song is just to familiar to be good or bad, it simply ‘is’. All I can say is that I liked it when I was a kid because I was into space adventure stories, I found it a little bit scary and I really liked the chunky acoustic guitar break. But for the purposes of this chronological exploration of ol’ D.B.’s out put, all I will say is that Space Oddity is a crackin’ album opener.

Although the song’s arrangement is quite different from 1967’s ‘David Bowie’, it’s not a massive departure from that album because it’s a short character driven story and the ‘space’ theme would have been quite the novelty in 1969, what with moon landing hi jinks and all that. It’s not until the opening bars of track 2, ‘Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed’ that it becomes obvious how different the B-boy’s approach was to this latest batch of songs: what we have here is a fully fledged rock n roll album. And in that respect it couldn’t be more different to ‘David Bowie’ (you know, the other one).

The songs are all great and real growers. My personal favorites are the epic harmonica rock out of ‘Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed’, the traditional rock stomp of ‘Janine’ and the tight instant folk pop magic of ‘God Knows I’m Good’ with it’s story of every day people shop lifting.

Even the comedy out take ‘(don’t sit down)’ works in the context of the album. And amazingly for 1969 the 7+ minute progressive opus songs (of which there are 3, ‘UASSD’, ‘Cygnet Committee’ and ‘Memory of a Free Festival’) never outstay their welcome and are even pretty decent songs. Compare that to some of the ‘experimental’ free form tat that had been floating about since ‘The White Album’ and you can’t fail to be impressed. At least I was.

The whole album hangs together beautifully. It is more then a collection of songs, it’s a train of thought and as such it’s one of those albums that makes you feel a little bit cheated if you don’t get to listen to all 10 tracks back to back.


The worst moments:
Not much to mention at all. Some of the lyrics contain the same easy rhymes that set my teeth on edge in the previous album (particularly in ‘Letter to Hermione’). But these unpolished moments are few and they don’t ruin the songs.
The last track is an extremely self important hippy affair, but the tune is strong enough to keep you listening.

Bowie-o-meter: 80 Ziggys
A very good album and well worth a listen.

It's 1969 kids!

This fortnights album is ‘David Bowie’, the second album by (wait for it…) David Bowie. It was released in 1969, but what else was going on that year hmmm? Well, seeing as you asked so nicely:






In January Richard Milhous Nixon became 37th President of “those there” United States. The Vietnam war went progressively downhill and in October hundreds of thousands of people took part in National Moratorium antiwar demonstrations across the United States.
It was the year that British troops were deployed in Northern Ireland. It took a further 25 years to agree a cease fire.




The Beatles gave an impromptu concert on the roof of Apple Records. It was broken up by police and turned out to be their last public performance. This year they also released Abbey Road. John Lennon got so upset about the war in Vietnam that he stayed in bed all week, recorded ‘All we are saying is give peace a chance’ and sent his MBE back to the Queen. Hilarity ensued.

1969 was also the year that the first HIV strain is believed to have reached the USA.





In July NASA landed 2 blokes on the moon. In November they did it again.

The Mariner 7 probe made its closest fly-by of Mars (3,524 kilometres). But (ahem) was there life?

Oh, and the jumbo jet made it’s public debut.

Bowie vs Bolan ROUND 2

Last time I shard my distaste for Marc Bolan’s work with John’s Children in 1967 (Psychedelia-by-numbers and a naff lead singer to boot! Arrg Take it away!).
So Bowie stomped home an easy victory with a whole album and some tunes you could hum all released in the same year. Mind you, neither of 'em charted with anything.

So going into 1968 it’s Bowie 1 – Bolan 0.

Right off the bat it’s pretty easy to see who’s gonna' score big this year.
In 1968 Marc Bolan formed acoustic ‘pixie folk’ duo Tyrannosaurs Rex and released 2 (yep 2) studio albums. The first one even charted (no 15 in the UK) where as the Bowster was still yet to have a hit.









To my ears these first two Tyrannosaurs Rex albums are quite patchey and haven’t dated well. But there are some fairly decent songs in amongst the hippy mumbling, so it all compares quite favourably to David Bowie in 1968. Especially as he released…


…. nothin’. Not a sausage.
At least no albums anyway.

He did do this though......



That’s the promo for the original version of ‘Space Oddity’.
It was part of a 30 min film called “Love you Till Tuesday” which (depending on who you talk to) was either recorded in 1968 or ’69 but was so flippin’ awful that no TV stations wanted to touch it. So it stayed on a dusty shelf until the home video boom in 1984. Here’s the cover of the DVD:




Nice huh.

So all things considered, this round goes to Marc Bolan. Bringing the score to 1 all.

Everything could change in 1969!

1967's David Bowie by David Bowie: MBJ's opinion

I really liked this album. I’m under no illusions about it being a timeless rock classic, a musical mile stone or among Bowie’s best work. But still, I like it. Some how it’s got a naive charm all of it’s own. It’s not quite like any other record I’ve heard.



The best moments: ‘There is a Happy Land’ is my favorite song. The melancholy brass and piano put me in mind of Dog Man Star (the classic 1994 album by Suede). The vocal performance is brilliant, especially the gear change between the chorus and the verse. I like the lyrics and the feel of the song which is about longing for a happy place where kids can get on with being kids and are left alone to enjoy themselves. I’m a Christian and this song put me in mind of the deep inner yearning for a better place to be, which the Psalmists express so perfectly, so I found it quite an inspirational song.

‘She’s got Medals’ and ‘Uncle Arthur’ are great little numbers, full of wit and charm and from the same lyrical camp as Pink Floyds ‘Arnold Layne’ and ‘I’ve got a Bike’ (also released in 1967).

‘Come and Buy My Toys’ and ‘Maid of Bond Street’ are my other favorites. These are breezy little songs that whip by in seconds and leave me skipping back to hear them again.



The worst moments:
‘We are Hungry Men’ just stinks. I hate the way the ‘humorous’ spoken monolog comes in immediately after ‘There is a Happy Land’ and totally destroys the feeling the album had built up over the last 5 songs. The problem with this song is that it’s a short joke about saving the world from over population via infanticide and cannibalism, which ain’t that funny Dave. Maybe it could have worked if the tune was something you could hum, no such luck sadly.

‘Join the Gang’ suffers a similar fate. It’s an overlong joke about being part of ‘the scene’. Again it’s not that funny in the first place, the tune isn’t strong enough to carry it and the arrangement (including a mental sitar) is U.G.L.Y!

On the evidence here it seems the Bow-Dowg was still figuring out the craft of lyric writing back in ‘67. The words seem to be the focus of the album but he drops some terrible clangers. ‘The Little Bombardier’ has a good tune and a nice little story at it’s heart but is killed stone dead by the rhyme
“We’ve had blokes like you in the station before,
The hand of authority said “no more”,
To the Little Bombardier.”
A talking hand? Talk about mixing your metaphors more like!
A cappella closing track ‘Please Mr Grave Digger’ has equally forced rhymns. Early on it sounds like it could be something interesting with an rain sound effects accompanying Dave-o’s vocal. But it folds under the weight of the repeated terrible rhymes (locket/pocket, etc) and the story doesn’t really go anyway. The song ends before we understand what the protagonist is trying to say. (He’s killed a little girl, he’s about to kill a grave-digger. I assume Dave-o couldn’t find an easy rhyme for his motives coz he doesn’t bother with ‘em).


How many good songs? 9 out of 14
How many terrible songs? only 2 or 3, depends how I feel
Bowie-o-meter: 70 Ziggys

It may be cheesy, but I like it.

Bowie vs Bolan

To add a bit of extra educational spice I’m hoping to listen to what Marc Bolan was up to at the same time as our B-boy. Mind you, I’m not fond of Bolan’s solo stuff so I might get bored and jack it in. But in the mean time,
here’s Bowie vs Bolan: 1967!




















Whilst the Bow-ster was failing to chart with his first solo album,
Marc Bolan was busy also failing to chart with his chums in the band John’s Children.


And just as Bowie was ruining good tunes with clunky rhymes while he got the hang of lyric writing,
who should be up to the same tricks but Marcy-Boy Bolan!

Check out this Bolan lyric from Desdemona:
“Just because Toulouse Lautrec
Painted some chick in the rude
Doesn't give you the right
To steal my night
And leave me naked in the nude”

Naked in the nude? What!!!



As far as I can tell, in 1967 Bolan wrote 4 songs for John’s Children (Desdemona, Midsummer Nights Scene, Sarah Crazy Child and Go-Go Girl), a couple of which are OK.
All of which feature him giving a crackin’ backin’ vocal under dull performances from lead singer Andy Ellison.
All of which are shallow affairs about gettin’ it on with ladies and freakin’ out on drugs.
And all of which sound like cod Psychedelia-by-numbers.
We’re talking ‘Listen to the flower people’ era Spinal Tap folks!



I doubt I will ever listen to John's Children again so I do declare David Bowie the winner of 1967! Yay Bowie!









I don’t fancy his chances in 1968 though….