David Bowie

[user_787]

"After All" is such a gorgeous song.

[Dan Warburton]

There are plenty of them. He's dropped off the radar in recent times (not surprising given the quality of his output), but everything he did up to and including Scary Monsters (with the exception of Outside) is pretty damn good.

[tadk]

Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, Low/Heroes/ Lodger, Scary Monsters and Outside (maybe)
I also did like some tracks on The Man Who Sold the World, Station to Station, Let's Dance and Tin Machine

[Salty Swift]

....though he did finance 30th Century Man [Scott Walker film],
so hats off to him for that!

[schiksalgemeinschaft]

there are some excellent songs on Outside, I think it's the best of his more recent work.

[skrobek]

My favorite Bowie = the piano solo on "Alladin Sane"

because that's probably the free-est playing I'd heard when I was a kid, paved the way for Cecil Taylor for me..

ahh childhood memories

[Snow Dog]

Space Oddity
Diamond Dogs

[Borat Pri Hagafen]

I love Ziggy Stardust, and Aladdin Sane is my second-favorite.

I'm intrigued by the 'Live in Santa Monica '72' which is coming out as an official release Tuesday.
http://www.amazon.com/Live-Santa-Monica ... 916&sr=8-1

It's been out in various versions before, but I've never heard it. It retails for a stunning (to me at least) $26.99 for a single domestic CD. I want it, but I hate to encourage pricing like that. Curious if any Bowie fans have heard it. 'Waiting for the Man' was apparently in 'Almost Famous'. It's unfortunate that easily my favorite song on 'Hunky Dory', "Oh You Pretty Things" isn't featured, but overall the setlist looks good to me.

1. "Intro" – 0:15
2. "Hang on to Yourself" – 2:47
3. "Ziggy Stardust" – 3:24
4. "Changes" – 3:32
5. "The Supermen" – 2:57
6. "Life on Mars?" – 3:28
7. "Five Years" – 5:21
8. "Space Oddity" – 5:22
9. "Andy Warhol" – 3:58
10. "My Death" (Jacques Brel, Mort Shuman) – 5:56
11. "The Width of a Circle" – 10:39
12. "Queen Bitch" – 3:01
13. "Moonage Daydream" – 4:38
14. "John, I'm Only Dancing" – 3:36
15. "I'm Waiting for the Man" (Lou Reed) – 6:01
16. "The Jean Genie" – 4:02
17. "Suffragette City" – 4:25
18. "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide" – 3:17

Personnel

* David Bowie – guitar, vocals
* Mick Ronson – guitar, vocals
* Trevor Bolder – bass
* Mick "Woody" Woodmansey – drums
* Mike Garson – piano

[dave quam]

diamond dogs is my favorite by far

[jon abbey]

that's crazy pricing, looks like they're going the Rhino Handmade route, but even a bit more. I guess it makes sense if you're pretty sure your target audience is just going to buy it no matter what.

[bonusplays]

I was really into the Bowie's cocaine-addled paranoia '74 phase Diamond Dog/Young Americans-era typified by this Dick Cavett interview for a bit. Just have found it interesting, partially as a pretext to Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth, but just in general have found '74-76 to have a really rich aesthetic for Bowie.

What an odd bird. What's a black noise?

[Dan G]

I first heard the Santa Monica stuff in the early 80s as a boot. Good performance, sound quality was OK bootleg. Probably not worth spending that kind of $$$ on unless they've fixed it up a lot. Try
http://rapidshare.com/files/42014544/19 ... ca__72.rar" onclick= "window.open(this.href);return false;

Don't know if the link works or not (can't d/l rar files at work...), but if not it is easy to find another.

I was a huge Bowie fan throughout the 70s and 80s, had pretty much everything available, commercially or not...multiple shows from every tour, etc....totalling well over 150 records. Got good money for it when I sold it all, prior to the days of free boots on the web!

Don't actually own any Bowie albums now, but do have a broad selection of tunes on my ipod. Still prefer the early 70s (Hunky Dory, Ziggy, Alladin Sane) and the Berlin era (Station to Station through Lodger). Diamond Dogs, Young Americans and that dreadful live album were very low points, imo.

[err jordan]

after 13+ years of being into 70s Bowie, I finally picked up a $3 copy of the Let's Dance LP yesterday, I actually really like it, just wasn't ready til now.
Recently I got the Brutal Sound Effects/Dolor Del Estamago reissue of the Bowie " Vampires Of The Human Flesh" bootleg ( http://www.discogs.com/release/1222904" onclick= "window.open(this.href);return false; ). It's alternate takes + rough mixes from Scary Monsters. I really like it, but I might be less impressed if I had heard Scary Monsters in the last several years. Also they did a reissue of the "Neon Permafrost" live bootleg, don't have it yet. I don't think either are listed on the web page but you can definitely buy them, cheap, just write to old what's-his-name.

[barry]

Just finished the book "Bowie in Berlin: A New Career in a New Town" by Thomas Jerome Seabrook. Pretty good book about Bowie during the Low/Heroes/Man who fell to earth/Iggy pop/Lodger period.

[sound.out.light]

another vote for Low. fantastic album.

[letchhausen]

When I was 10 I had a cousin who was going to college and so "was only going to be listening to classical and Jazz"
and she gave me Bowie's "Space Oddity", "Man Who Sold the World" and "Ziggy Stardust". These records changed my
life. I loved those records and listened to them constantly and saved up enough to buy Aladdin Sane. That became my
favorite and has someone else here as mentioned, that crazed piano piece at the end of that song was a transcendant
moment for me. The camp poetry of songs like 'Time" spoke to me like nothing else out there. For me, listening to
Bowie was very far out to the AM radio world I had access to at that time. I remember meeting a teenager who had
just bought Diamond Dogs when that came out and getting a chance to listen to that over and over again at a time
when I just couldn't afford to buy it. Compared to the music of my peers which was basically the disco and pop
craze of the time Bowie's records were some far out avant garde milieu that reall sparked my imagination. Sure
"Changes" was on the radio but that was it. Other than that it was KC and the Sunshine band, endless amounts of Jim
Croce, Bread, America and hits like "The Streak", "Billy don't be a Hero","Seasons in the Sun" ad nauseum.

In a dysfunctional family situation and constantly moving, Bowie's songs also twigged to the sense of alienation
that I felt. There was a sense of struggle in Bowie's songs, from Ziggy to songs like Sweet Thing as well as a
pervasive sense of loss. Songs like Prettiest Star harked back to a past I didn't know with a sense of theater that
I found exciting, profound. Bowie's records were also interesting to me because he moved through so many styles,
they rocked, they emoted with dreary piano, they quoted the past and present, they breathed.

I remember when the 1980 Floor Show came on TV. I was in New Mexico on vacation with my father, brother and
grandparents. I stayed up to watch it thinking no one else would but the entire family stayed up. By the end
everyone was looking at me and though I was only 11 or 12, I could tell that they all felt that they had lost me. I
didn't care.

After some moves and some desperate circumstances it was a few years before I could afford an album. When I could I
found a copy of "Low" in a record store in Duluth and as I was getting older and had been spending a lot of time at
the Walker Art Center in the intervening years, I found that Bowie was maturing with me. One interestig note is
that I look back and find it interesting that some of the local reviews I read didn't know what to make of an album
with so many musical tracks that weren't songs. I was too clueless to notice. Or perhaps listening to the Beatles
"Revolution #9" for years as my "go to sleep music" had prepped me. When "Heroes" came out I found the
claustrophobic atmosphere, the teutonic reverb it was cloaked in once again providde an emotional soundscape to my
life. When the live album "Stage" was released I was fascinated to hear the songs infused with so much energy,
tracks like Speed of Life bristled with punch. I think it says something about my listening growth that I hardly
listened to the Ziggy side. Since I'd missed Station to Station I loved the versions of those songs on there.

In high school in Northern Minnesota I was an outcast, guys used to yell at me and say that since Bowie was a fag
and I liked his music, then I must be fag. I told them I'd rather be a fag than as stupid as they were. This
engendered confusion and they sulked away. I used to sit in my room listening to Bowie and painting rip offs of
Rothko and Jasper John paintings reading Prufrock and just hating the world. If only I'd known what was out there.
I was always Crashing in the Same Car.

When "Lodger" came out I found another shift, another style a travelogue of new world rhythms. Reading about "Red
Money" would eventually lead me to "Sister Midnight" and I would eventually discover god in the form of the Stooges
but that was years later. What I didn't know was that I was riding the wave of god in the form of Brian Eno since
I'd discovered Devo via Saturday Night Live but didn't make the connection to Bowie yet. Prior to leaving Duluth I
bought Elvis Costello "Armed Forces" and things were looking up, I was finding more music to listen to that didn't
punish me the way being surrounded by Van Halen or George Harrison's 'Blow Away" or the singles from Grease were.

I fled to Detroit in high school and heard the Talking Heads on the radio, Eno again. Everything he touched at that
time was pure gold for me. In Detroit I would experience FM radio, Cream magazine and a lot of things would change.
Oh, I was still surrounded by violent knuckleheads with bad taste but I knew there was a world I could exist in. My
new battles would be Clash vs Led Zeppelin fueled by Lester and company.

I still listen to Bowie, I like Stage because it surveys some of my favorites of his career though the Ryko version
is truer to the LP. The newer version mixes the songs up and I still think Bowie sounds like he's going through the
motions with the Ziggy stuff so I like it being at the beginning where I can skip it. He'd lost interest because of
the Eno led krautscapes he was creating at the time and it shows. I still love listening to the edgy haikus of Low.
The noirscapes of Heroes.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm being objective with records that shaped me and that reference particular times of one's
life; but I think I would still like Ziggy, Aladdin Sane, Diamond Dogs, Low, Heroes, Lodger. I pretty much think
Bowie spent himself after that. By the time Let's Dance came around I was listening to Flipper, Black Flag,
Birthday Party etc and Bowie seemed like a tired joke to me at that point. As bad as say, the Stones though they
started sucking much, much earlier. But he kept me going in the 70's and I think made me a more rounded and open
listener.

[Dan Warburton]

Great post, Letch! Have you heard Outside? Might kindle some of the old flames you describe so lovingly above -

[Wombatz]

My record player died on me after revisiting Lodger a couple of weeks ago. Yes, I was that underwhelmed, but still why the stupid thing would take things so personal instead of evolving along with me, I don't know ...

Have to chime in on Dan's constant hymn on 1. Outside. There is no way the guy should have gone this deep again, or maybe for the first time anyway. For my taste, it's probably that the drum'n'bass thing was perfect for him, I always disliked the jammy musicians in his group, the super-drummers, the bouncy bassists, the guitar-magazine-sidekickmetalheads on guitar. Even Mick Ronson was kinda too slick already. Belew was perfect, though he hasn't done much of worth elsewhere, but on Lodger the drummer really sucks.

Random ramblings, but 1. Outside really is what pop music should be.

[chris himself]

great post letchhausen, thanks for sharing

guys used to yell at me and say that since Bowie was a fag
and I liked his music, then I must be fag

man, this brought me right back to grades 6-7, we lived in a small town, and every time i sported my aladdin sane tee shirt this is pretty much all i heard.

[letchhausen]

Great post, Letch! Have you heard Outside? Might kindle some of the old flames you describe so lovingly above -

Thanks Dan, I haven't heard that, the only thing I've checked out fully was Tin Machine, which was not great but definitely better than the other newer stuff I'd heard of his. Thanks for the tip....