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.