Tag Archives: David Bowie

David Bowie: Baby Universal ’97

We’re up to week four of the song a week release for the upcoming David Bowie EP Is It Any Wonder?

I mistakenly thought originally that the EP would feature rehearsals from David Bowie’s 50th Birthday party -understandable to some extent as the first song released, The Man Who Sold The World, was from that rehearsal- but have since realized that the songs being released were mostly songs made during the Earthling album sessions but never formally released until now.

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Originally released in 1997, Earthling is a damn good David Bowie album, one I feel is up there with the best he released in his later years though I still feel the one that came right before it, 1. Outside, is the best of the lot.

Thing about Earthling is that it is a heavy electronica/dance album and, I suspect, some David Bowie fans might have been turned off by him once again making a sudden shift to a different style of music. I think the album is energetic and mostly works but, I have to admit, the electronica does feel, to me anyway, somewhat repetitious after a while.

Still, I stand by what I say: Earthling is one of Bowie’s best later day albums.

So along with The Man Who Sold The World, the other two songs released to date from the upcoming Is It Any Wonder? are I Can’t Read ’97 (you can read my review of it along with listen to the song here) and Stay ’97 (you can read my review of it along with listen to the song here).

The reason both I Can’t Read and Stay are identified with the ’97 year is because they are both studio/session remakes of previous Bowie songs. I Can’t Read was originally presented on the first Tin Machine Album while Stay was originally released on the Station To Station album. The Man Who Sold The World, because it is part of the rehearsal is instead listed as the ChangesNowBowie version, which is the album that will feature a plethora of Bowie rehearsals for his 50th Birthday Party.

Anyway, the fourth song of this upcoming EP has been released and it is Baby Universal ’97. This song is another cover/interpretation of a Tin Machine song, this one from Tin Machine 2.

Instead of presenting that song right away, let me first present to you the original version of the song as it was originally released on Tin Machine 2:

While I very much enjoyed the first Tin Machine album, the second album feels like a hit and miss affair. David Bowie wasn’t one to linger long in any style or song type pattern, very much earning his chameleon nickname, and if something was very popular and worked or didn’t at all, his instincts always seemed to be to move ahead and do something new.

Tin Machine 2, thus, to my ears sounded like half a good album. There were songs on it, like the above, which I thought were freaking fantastic, while there were others that felt like they were thrown in because… why not. Tin Machine was never a popular musical experiment for David Bowie and it wasn’t surprising that after the release of the second album the band was done and Bowie returned to making “David Bowie” albums.

But, as I said, there were some damn good songs on the album and I very much liked Baby Universal. It is energetic, it moves, and it rocks.

When the Earthling sessions came about, clearly Mr. Bowie was looking back at Tin Machine and perhaps thinking about what went wrong (if indeed he felt that way) and that might be why he did such a different version of I Can’t Read from the first Tin Machine album. I didn’t like the new take all that much but, as I said in the review of the new version of the song, I didn’t like the original all that much either.

Having said all that, here’s the next release from Is It Any Wonder?, Baby Universal ’97:

I like this new version of the song well enough but, just as with I Can’t Read ’97, I feel the original version is the better of the two.

The original simply has more energy to it and I love the “Baby” chorus Bowie provides in the background.

I suppose what this shows is that even when making works which were panned by critics and many fans, David Bowie was still creating some good stuff. Yeah, Tin Machine 2 may be a lesser album overall, but I’ll be damned if Baby Universal isn’t one hell of a rocking song.

If the remake release gets people to look back at Tin Machine 2 and, perhaps, finally release a digital copy of it (believe it or not, the only way to buy the album now is by the CD or old tapes/vinyl), then perhaps this exercise will have been worth it.

David Bowie: Stay ’97

As I’ve pointed out before (here and here) the estate of the late David Bowie is releasing two “new” albums this year. The first is a six track EP called Is It Any Wonder? and I mistakenly thought it would feature “new” versions of older songs made in rehearsal for David Bowie’s 50 Birthday Party Concert.

The first song on the EP is indeed from that rehearsal and is The Man Who Sold The World (check the links above in the first paragraph). The intention by Mr. Bowie’s estate is to release one new song from that EP every week until all six are released, then release the EP itself. Later in the year we’ll also see the release of ChangesNowBowie which, if I understand correctly (now anyway) will actually feature a bunch of rehearsal songs including The Man Who Sold The World.

The second song in the weekly releases is a reworking of Tin Machine’s I Can’t Read. Tin Machine, for those who aren’t aware, was a David Bowie side project that featured two full albums and at least one official live album release before Mr. Bowie returned to being a “solo” act.

Now, a third song from the EP has been released, a very ’90’s version of the song Stay, originally featured on David Bowie’s fabulous Station To Station album. Here’s the new, 1997 version of that song:

Hmmmm….

I have to say, and it pains me to do so because I’m such a big David Bowie fan, but so far these new releases aren’t doing all that much for me.

The Man Who Sold The World was a solid version of the song but, frankly, a decently done version but nothing all that much more. I Can’t Read, on the other hand was a much more reworked version of that song, but as I said in my original post (again, the links are in the first paragraph), I preferred the original Tin Machine version. Having said that, while there are several Tin Machine songs I love, this wasn’t one of them. It’s OK, mind you, but I don’t believe it was ever one of Mr. Bowie’s strongest compositions.

This version of Stay is… jeeze. I dunno. I mean, they took the skeleton of the original song, presented below…

…and added a whole bunch of other (for lack of a better term) stuff to it to, I suppose, fit in more with the then in vogue more grunge sound that was popular.

They didn’t kill the song, but I feel like a lot, perhaps even most of the flourishes, are unnecessary and detract rather than enhance the song.

In this case, unlike I Can’t Read, I’m a HUGE fan of the original song and album. I feel Station to Station is one of David Bowie’s absolute masterpieces and, sometimes, its hard to listen to a “new” version which tries to add more bells and whistles -so to speak- to something that one views as already damn near perfect.

So far, with three songs -half the EP- released, I sadly have to say I’m not loving these new/unreleased songs but, being a big David Bowie fan, will nonetheless check out the other three songs to come.

Maybe they’ll be better but at least so far this EP is sounding like a curiosity but nothing that’s blowing my socks off.

Too bad.

David Bowie: I Can’t Read ’97

Starting with David Bowie’s birthday on January 8th and continuing each week will be the release of one new song from an upcoming David Bowie album entitled Is It Any Wonder?

The song recordings were made in rehearsal for David Bowie’s 50th Birthday party, which was a star studded event and last week the first song from that rehearsal, The Man Who Sold The World, was released (if you’re curious to hear it, here you go!).

Three days ago (yeah, I’m running late here!) the second song was released, a stripped down version of I Can’t Read, a song that originally appeared on the first Tin Machine album, David Bowie’s band side project that lasted two original albums and at least one live album before folding.

Here’s the new, 1997 recorded stripped down version of the song:

I have to say… I’m not all that into it.

Then again, I didn’t think the original version was all that great either. Having said that, I prefer the original to this version. Here is the original version:

I suppose David Bowie thought he might eventually release that new version of the song and video but subsequently decided not to. It is pretty elaborate for something that was locked away in the vaults until now!

Having said that, there’s something incredibly sad about watching this video.

I know David Bowie eventually passed away because of liver cancer, but seeing him sucking on the cigarette in that video… ugh.

My understanding is that David Bowie was a pretty heavy smoker and based on videos like this one he clearly felt it looked cool to smoke in front of the cameras. He wasn’t alone: You can’t find many films from the 1930’s through the 1970’s (and some past that point) which don’t feature the leads smoking. It was a glamorous thing to do on screen but now we know better, right?

Sorry if I’m sounding all high and mighty/moralistic, but I have a very strong allergy to cigarette smoke. There’s something in the chemicals in cigarettes -as opposed to cigars or tobacco used in pipes- that sets my sinus off and can often result in me having such bad headaches I wind up needing to lie down and/or throw up.

It’s that bad and can happen if I so much as sniff one second of cigarette smoke!

But getting back to Mr. Bowie, while liver cancer eventually took him away, he also had a heart attack and, based on some things I’ve read about his last days, also suffered from considerable shortness of breath. Did the cigarettes play a role in these problems?

I don’t know.

Given how much I love his work, though, it makes me so sad to read about what must have been very painful days leading to his eventual passing.

Don’t smoke, kids.

It may look cool, but all you’re doing is roasting your throat and lungs.

In the long run, there’s a damn good chance you’ll pay.

New David Bowie releases…

The news is a couple of days old but I should have been expecting it.

David Bowie had a thing for celebrating his birthday, January 8th, with the release of new material. Indeed, his very last album, Blackstar, was released on January 8th of 2016 and, sadly, Mr. Bowie himself passed away two days later on January 10th at the age of 69.

This past January 8th would have been Mr. Bowie’s 73rd birthday and it was announced that two “new” albums would be released featuring live material he made while rehearsing for his famous 50th birthday bash, where he had a concert filled to the brim with guest star artists (Lou Reed, Billy Corgan, David Grohl, Robert Smith, etc.) singing along to many of his biggest hits.

Frankly, I’d love to have that album but, for now, what we get -eventually- is an intriguing release featuring rehearsals for that very show. The songs will be released one each week and two albums will contain the music and be released a little later this year. Over at pitchfork.com you can read up on the details:

Rare and unreleased David Bowie songs collected on new Album and EP

Count me in!

For now, the first release is what I consider one of his all time best songs ever. In fact, I’d probably rank it as my own personal favorite David Bowie song (though there are plenty of strong contenders!).

Here then, is the first release from that upcoming album, the rehearsal of The Man Who Sold The World

Perhaps I said it before but I’ll say it again: For me, the David Bowie gateway opened with the release of the album Let’s Dance back in 1983. I went absolutely wild for that album and played it over and over again back in high school and whenever I drove around (much to the eventual annoyance of the people who accompanied me on those drives).

Back then there wasn’t an internet and you couldn’t google “David Bowie” and have at your fingertips all his albums to listen to. Being curious about his previous releases, I headed out to record stores (yeah, they used to exist back then!) and slowly began to acquaint myself with his previous albums/songs.

I was surprised to find I was familiar with many of them, including Changes, Space Oddity, and Lady Stardust (to this day I don’t know why that particular song stood out to me, but when I heard it after buying the Ziggy Stardust album, it was the song I knew I had heard before and was familiar with while the rest of the songs were “new” to me).

One day I found a cassette of The Man Who Sold The World (I’ll refer to it as TMWSTW from here on), Bowie’s 1970 album which, to my mind, is the first “real” David Bowie album. Note he did release a number of singles, including his groundbreaking Space Oddity (single and album) before that album, but with TMWSTW, it seemed David Bowie truly found himself as an artist and following that album came Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust and the legend only grew from that moment on.

Returning to TMWSTW, I loved that album to death and, in particular, the song the album was named after. So much so that I even named a character I co-created with a friend after my mishearing of a line in the song (the character has never been used formally and may never be, so I’ll keep that little tidbit to myself!).

Regardless, when Nirvana famously covered the song years later and it suddenly blew up and became famous, I was nodding my head and smiling.

Not to sound like a smart ass or anything, but the world had finally caught up to how great that song was…!

And here it is in its original album version:

And, what the heck, here’s Nirvana’s version, which really brought it to audiences!

Nirvana fans…

…you should probably check out their YouTube channel (you can find it here) as they are posting alternate takes/practice rehearsals from their famous MTV Unplugged session, which featured some brilliant “acoustic” interpretations of their works, as well as the very famous take on David Bowie’s Man Who Sold The World.

Here’s a version of it…

Many, many people were first introduced to this song via Nirvana’s version, and to many of them this is THE version of the song.

It makes sense, of course. The first time you hear a rendition of a song you wind up liking a lot winds up being the version you prefer, even if it isn’t all that different from the original…

For me, the opposite was true.

When David Bowie burst out to worldwide fame with the release of Let’s Dance (album and song), I was mesmerized by his music and immediately started to look into his back catalog.

There were many songs I discovered at that time which I already knew but hadn’t linked Mr. Bowie to them. Songs like Space Oddity, Changes, The Jean Genie, Fame, Fashion, etc. etc.

But there were other songs that hadn’t reached the radio much at that point that were incredible gems.

Like Panic In Detroit

And the incredible Lady Grinning Soul (both songs are from the album Aladdin Sane)…

There were many others (and bear in mind, we are talking about his works released up to the release of Let’s Dance).

But there was one work -you guessed it- the album The Man Who Sold The World, which really spoke to me. Unlike many Bowie works, this album had many covers because the original was so controversial. This is the cover I first saw when I first purchased the album…

Image result for the man who sold the world"

Then, a little later, I found the album with this cover…

Image result for the man who sold the world"

The original cover, and the cover that the album now has (and which you can see in the video of the song above), is this one, which, as I stated, was quite controversial in its time, though not so much anymore…

Image result for the man who sold the world"

The Man Who Sold The World, to my mind, is David Bowie’s first real accomplished album. While he had a bunch of oddball singles and the album Space Oddity before this one, it was with this album that, to my mind, everything came together.

Further, it features Mick Ronson, Bowie’s guitarist through the Ziggy Stardust era, as well as Tony Visconti on Bass (he would be Bowie’s main producer for many of his best albums, including the last he would release), and drummer Woody Woodmansey (also featured through the Ziggy era).

The album is quite dark, thematically. There are songs about insanity, supermen, and alienation.

It was the song the album got its title from, The Man Who Sold The World, that really intrigued me.

If I were to create a “best of” list of David Bowie songs, I may well say that to me this is his absolute best song.

I like it that much.

Sadly, the song didn’t receive all that much airplay or interest, that is, until Nirvana so famously covered it.

Now, its among David Bowie’s best known songs, and for good reason.

Oh, and by the way, that Nirvana version ain’t half-bad either…! 😉

Haunting…

So I’m here writing my latest book and generally suffering through the frustrations of trying to once again create something new while simultaneously dealing with all the fixes to my home and general tight time to do it all…

…and then I stumble upon this, the 50th Anniversary release -and remastering by Tony Visconti, David Bowie’s long time producer- of the first big David Bowie hit, Space Oddity.

Yeah, haunting is the right word…

The video seems to mix footage from David Bowie’s 50th year anniversary concert (that’s Bowie with the reddish hair) with footage which seems to have been taken during the Let’s Dance years (or thereabouts) in the 1980’s. That would be the more black and white-ish footage with Bowie having the much fuller hairdo.

The new Visconti mix, IMHO, is terrific. The drums in particular sound very crisp. The reverb upon Bowie saying “Liftoff” could be a little much to some, but I didn’t mind.

Terrific stuff.

Makes me all the sadder that we’ll not hear any “new” material from Bowie… other than stuff that’s already in the vaults which hasn’t seen the light of day.

I’ve mentioned it before and, what the heck, let me post it again: One of my favorite buried treasures by Bowie, the original version of Candidate, which until the 1990’s and during the Ryko Disc releases of his previous material, hadn’t seen the light of day.

Originally intended for the Diamond Dogs album, I absolutely love this version of the song!

What do critics think of Loving the Alien…?

At the risk of beating a dead horse…

From metacritic.com, a survey of the reviews for the latest David Bowie Box set, Loving the Alien

Loving the Alien (1983-1988) metacritic reviews

While most professional reviews (and there aren’t terribly many of them so far) are generally positive, I’m always intrigued by the most negative reviews.

It’s not that I’m a sadist -as I wrote, I liked the boxed set and felt the new version of the much maligned Never Let Me Down album was a tremendous improvement- but I am intrigued by those who don’t like something I may like and the reasons why they feel that way.

In that spirit, here we have Stephen Dalton’s review of the boxed set found on loudersound.com:

David Bowie – Loving the Alien (1983-1988) album review

Mr. Dalton clearly doesn’t think very highly of Mr. Bowie’s releases during this period of time and his conclusion regarding the new version of Never Let Me Down is quite negative.  Here are his thoughts, from the link above, regarding the “new” version of that album:

So is it really possible to reverse-engineer a ‘lost’ avant-rock album from a lacklustre soft-rock misfire? Arguably. On the positive side, Bowie’s vocals are now generally clearer and more sympathetically framed, especially on the sweetly romantic title track. But adding discordant drones, minor-key shifts and sci-fi trip-hop rumbles to thin material like Day-In Day-Out or Shining Star (Makin’ My Love) is more cosmetic gimmick than inspired transformation. Trying to salvage Bowie’s most derided album is an admirably ambitious experiment, but low-grade source material was always going to be an obstacle. Some turds just cannot be polished.

Ouch!

Look, I totally understand those who look down on this boxed set and, specifically, this new version of Never Let Me Down.

The fact of the matter is that when compared to the previous boxed sets, where Mr. Bowie first made his career starting with his glam rock era and following it up with some truly adventurous work (including the justifiably lauded Berlin trilogy), one can look at this era in his musical career as a step down.

And I’m not going to argue that point: It is!

Mr. Bowie hit the proverbial ball out of the park with Let’s Dance, a slick, radio friendly, and eminently enjoyable collection of wonderful pop songs.  To my mind, that was a terrific album and it moved Mr. Bowie from being a famous but rather “cult” figure into the mainstream and his success was white hot.

The problem came afterwards.

Mr. Bowie clearly lost his way following the success of the album.  Tonight the album that followed Let’s Dance, was what I consider merely adequate.  There were some terrific songs on it, specifically Loving the Alien (which this boxed set used as its name) and the ultra-cool Blue Jean.  I also enjoyed Tonight and Neighborhood Threat.  But after that?  Well… I can’t get into much of the rest.  Perhaps the album’s worst song is Bowie’s remake of the Beach Boys’ God Only Knows.  It was daring, to say the least, to take on of that band’s most beloved works and try to redo it, but Bowie here seemed so out of his element.

Which brings us to Never Let Me Down, again.  I can’t help but feel that Bowie was burning the proverbial candle at both ends at this time.  He was appearing in films and doing soundtrack songs (included on this boxed set are the absolutely terrific songs This is Not America and Absolute Beginners, along with his songs for the movie Labyrinth, which he co-starred in).  This, along with a grueling concert schedule, must have taken their toll and I’ve read (but take it with a grain of salt) that he was exhausted during the making of NLMD.

Could this be why he later stated that he didn’t feel like he had much control over the album?  Did he entrust too much of its creation to others?

One could think so, though I strongly suspect that if the album had been a hit, Mr. Bowie would welcome the adulation.

But, of course, that wasn’t the case.  NLMD was a critical flop.  As the years passed, most people had a sour view of the album and that era for Bowie’s music.

I can totally see why someone would scoff at this boxed set and feel that “fixing” NLMD is the equivalent of “polishing a turd”.

And yet…

My opinion remains.  I didn’t like NLMD upon its original release.  As I wrote in my review of the boxed set, I felt that album was too scattershot, too all-over-the-place.  Having said that, I felt there were good songs to be found here and there.  It wasn’t a complete train wreck but it seemed something was lost between the various song’s creations and the ultimate cut used.

Which, to my mind, has been fixed tremendously with this “new” version of the album.

Will this new NLMD come to be viewed as another landmark Bowie album, one initially scoffed at a la 1. Outside, which was lambasted by professional critics upon its initial release but which now many people consider among his very best later releases?

I don’t know.

But it’s the way things go, isn’t it?  Sometimes things are viewed very negatively when initially released and, over time, people come to view a certain worth to the product.  Or it may never be rehabilitated.

We’ll just have to wait and see.

David Bowie – Loving the Alien

As I’ve posted before, the main reason I was curious to buy the just released Loving The Alien box set by David Bowie was  to listen to the new mix of Never Let Me Down.

Considered by many, including Bowie himself, as his “worst” album, I was very curious following the release of a remixed version of Time Will Crawl a few years back whether the album could be salvaged. My curiosity increased when this boxed set was announced along with the fact that it would feature a complete remix of that much maligned work. While Mr. Bowie sadly passed before the album was remixed (and therefore he personally could not approve of the overall work), when early releases of Zeroes and Bang Bang were available, I found them intriguing and my curiosity piqued.

Now that I’ve heard the whole thing, I have to say I’m incredibly impressed.

I too didn’t care for Never Let Me Down in its original version. It felt like too much was going on at once. It was too busy, too scattershot. Well, the new mix of the album fixes that. The album feels far more cohesive and some songs I really didn’t like, such as ‘87 and Cry, are truly transformed into something great. Listening to this new mix of Never Let Me Down is like finding a “new” great David Bowie album. It’s that good, IMHO.

The rest of the compilation is quite good as well. You have Let’s Dance, the crown jewel of this set, along with Serious Moonlight (a live concert), Tonight (a so-so album with some great highs and some equally low lows), the original Never Let Me Down (which one can use as a comparison to the remix, if you’re not terribly familiar with it), Glass Spider (another live concert), and a bunch of odds and ends and some great singles (This is Not America is a particular standout, IMHO).

If you’re a Bowie fan, very much worth getting!

David Bowie’s Never Let Me Down redux part three

I wrote already about my interest in the new David Bowie Box Set coming out in October and focusing on his mid-late 1980’s output, specifically in the fact that it features a completely redone version of his album Never Let Me Down, which many, including Bowie himself, viewed as his worst album.  (You can read my previous ramblings about that topic here and here)

Slowly, tantalizingly, reworked songs from that album have been released.  You have the inspiration for reworking those songs with the release, a number of years ago, of the song Time Will Crawl, which I thought was incredibly good in its remade version.

Then, after the announcement of the reworked album, we got to hear the reworked version of Zeroes, which I very much liked as well.  Today, we have a third song, Beat of Your Drum.  Here is the reworked version which will appear on the upcoming boxed set:

As a comparison, this is the version which appeared on the album originally…

Ok, so far I’ve been very much impressed in each new remade version of the songs from Never Let Me Down but this time… I dunno.  I like the new version quite a lot but I have to admit: I’m not all that down on the original, so while this new version is interesting I find the difference not quite as startling as that with the previous two songs.

I’m still looking very much forward to the full album, though!

David Bowie’s Never Let Me Down remake, redux redux

Ok, third time I’m (over) dwelling on this topic that likely few care about outside of myself, but I stumbled upon this interesting article by Kory Grow and Andy Greene on RollingStone.com concerning…

How David Bowie’s biggest “disappointment” became a posthumous, reworked album

To those (1 or two out there, at least?!) curious, the article offers a history of Never Let Me Down, David Bowie’s 1987 album which he, and many fans out there, feel was his “worst” album, yet one that he also felt could be reworked/saved.  This was done with the album, albeit posthumously, and the reworked album, along with a remastered version of the original, will be released in October along with plenty of other stuff in David Bowie’s mid-1980’s Loving The Alien box-set.

What I found most fascinating about the article is they go into what exactly was done to “rework” the album, essentially stripping down everything until all they had was Bowie’s singing and then adding things to it to create these new versions of the songs.

Equally fascinating is the fact that, inevitably, there would be those who are not happy with the fact that the album is as badmouthed as it is and, further, that it “needed” any fixing.

And in this case that individual would be… multi-instrumentalist Erdal Kızılçay, who in the article offers this nugget, found in the above article:

“(Never Let Me Down, the original release, is) like 80 percent me.  I’m playing bass. I’m singing background vocals. I’m playing guitar. I’m playing acoustic guitar, keyboards, viola, trombone, trumpet, everything. And I had to arrange them and put some harmonies and (David Bowie) loved it. He really loved it. He was so proud of that album. That’s why he called me his ‘Invincible Turk.’ He praised it until the minute the reviews came in. Then he said, ‘It wasn’t me. It was the other people on the record.’”

Ouch.

I’ve noted before my love for David Bowie’s albums and further the fact that I would consider him my all time favorite musician… but as a person, I’ve read bits and pieces here and there about him which paints a picture of David Bowie -the person- as this: An almost otherworldly talented musician but something of a cutthroat when it came to relationships and projects.

Niles Rodgers, who was called in by David Bowie to produce Let’s Dance, polished the work and helped create what was David Bowie’s biggest selling album which launched him into what was his most successful era.  Yet when it came time to produce the album’s follow up, I recall an interview (hope my memory isn’t faulty!) with Mr. Rodgers where he said he was willing and eager to get back into the studio with Mr. Bowie on his next album… but Bowie snubbed him and never called.  He felt he was essentially dumped despite working so well with him.

Similarly, David Bowie famously dumped the “Spiders of Mars,” the band he had his first big hits with, and retired the “Ziggy Stardust” character while in a concert and to the shock of not only his fans but most of his band mates.  This was their bread and butter and he didn’t feel the need to inform several of his band mates this would be it until announcing it for all in concert!

Further, when he grew bored with a style of music and/or it didn’t succeed as well as he hoped (and the above quote certainly hints to that), he was quick to dump it and move on to other things.  This served him well at times, when he transitioned from the Glam Rock era to Soul to the “Berlin” trilogy but, again, it often involved cutting people he worked with -and who were making money/earning a living doing these projects- out.

He famously worked with Iggy Pop for a long time in the mid to later 1970’s, producing albums for him and, later on, doing cover songs of several of his (and Bowie) compositions, the most famous of which was China Girl.  To be clear, he did this for the nicest of reasons: To help Iggy Pop get some residuals for his works.

And yet I recall an interview given by Iggy Pop a few years ago (and well before Mr. Bowie’s passing) where he was asked about his current relationship with David Bowie and he noted there essentially was none: that they hadn’t spoken in a number of years.  I got the impression (again, if my memory isn’t faded/wrong) that Iggy Pop felt like Bowie dropped him and that was that.

The album 1. Outside, my favorite Bowie album from the later part of his career, was intended to be the first of at least two, perhaps three albums dealing with the turn of the Century.  While the album has come to be looked upon as one of Bowie’s best by some such as me, the fact is it didn’t do too well when it was originally released, both critically and commercially, and Bowie dropped the project and any possible future albums involving this subject.  For his next album, he moved right along to the electronica heavy Earthling (also quite a great album).  1. Outside was in the rear view mirror.

What does this all mean?

In the end, I suppose it is a source of curiosity if little else.

Erdal Kızılçay, in that same article, feels the remake of Time Will Crawl is awful -I don’t share that opinion- and I strongly suspect he’ll not like the remake album at all.  He’s understandably proud of the work he did on the album even if many don’t like it all that much.  Further, he states that if he doesn’t receive the proper credit for his work, even on the remade version of the album, he intends to sue.

Clearly, the man is angry about the whole thing and who am I to tell him he shouldn’t be.  I wasn’t there during the recordings and I take his words at face value.

Still, it is a fascinating look behind the curtain and, if you’re as interested in these type of things as I am, you may want to give the article a read.