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.
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