Tag Archives: David Bowie

Music

Every David Bowie album ranked…

Found this article, written by F50!! and posted at “Talk Amongst Yourselves” offers a ranking for all 24 of David Bowie’s albums (minus collaborations or soundtracks) from best to what he considers the worst:

Every David Bowie Album Ranked, By a Long TIme David Bowie Fan

As with any sort of ranking of this kind, the judgment is in the eye of the beholder.  For example, I wouldn’t agree with his ranking of Reality, Hours, Earthling, and Young Americans as being quite as low as he states they are.

Frankly, I feel David Bowie (Mr. Bowie’s first album) is probably the least of the works he has released.  Let’s face it, with David Bowie we were dealing an album that was released when Mr. Bowie was an amateur without a solid direction.

Still, there are a couple of interesting songs to be found in his very early archives, including this one, also mentioned by the author of this article…

I would then put Space Oddity, Mr. Bowie’s second full album, as the next on the list.  For certain there are a couple of very good songs to be found here, including the all time classic which the album was named after and The Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud, which Mr. Bowie noted in an interview was the first song which he considered a proper “David Bowie” song…

From there I’d go with Never Let Me Down, a very disappointing album that nonetheless also featured some good songs but…well, it just felt like Mr. Bowie was alternately trying too hard and not hard enough to create another “hit” album.  A big disappointment.

From there, its up to everyone’s own taste, IMHO, where each album lies.  But of the albums released (and going by the list provided here, eliminating soundtracks and collaborations), what would be my top 5 David Bowie albums?

For as big a fan as myself, this is not an easy task.

But here goes (and they are presented in order of release and not preference. This list, by the way, reflects where my thought process is at the moment.  A year from now, who knows?).

Regardless, you can’t lose, IMHO, with any of these five albums:

The Man Who Sold The World

The Man Who Sold The World:  I consider this the first “real” David Bowie album from start to finish.  A dark, macabre work that came ages before, yet featured elements which would appear in heavy metal, goth, etc. etc. work to come years later.  By now most people know the song which gave the album its title and it is one of David Bowie’s best.  But also check out The Width of a Circle or Supermen or Saviour Machine, etc.  A very strong album.

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars:  Of all the albums David Bowie made, this is the one everyone will include on his top 5 release list and, further, likely put it at #1.  Who am I to argue?  Ziggy Stardust is an incredibly ambitious yet very “tight” album.  It is one of the earliest concept albums ever created and involves a decaying, dying earth that is visited by an alien rock God named Ziggy Stardust.  A terrific album with terrific songs from start to end.  (By the way, the song All The Young Dudes, written by David Bowie but given to Mott the Hoople to record was originally intended to be a part of this album and fits on it very nicely.  I suspect it would have fit in right after the album’s first song, Five Years.  A David Bowie version of the song is available as well).

Aladdin Sane - 30th Anniversary Remaster

Aladdin Sane: Coming hot off the heels of Ziggy Stardust was that album’s follow-up/companion Aladdin Sane.  Some have called the album “Ziggy Stardust comes to America” and they’re not far off the mark.  While not quite as good as Ziggy Stardust, this album remains one of my all time favorites.  I absolutely love Panic In Detroit, Drive In Saturday, Aladdin Sane, and the chilling Lady Grinning Soul.

Scary Monsters

Scary Monsters (And SuperCreeps):  I have to admit, though unintended, the last two albums in this list (this one and the next) could easily be substituted by any number of other great Bowie works.  For example, I’ve not mentioned at all his wonderful Berlin Trilogy of Low, Heroes, and Lodger?  Thought I know there are those who don’t like it that much, I absolutely love the admittedly more shallow/hit filled Let’s Dance.  And what of Station to Station and Young Americans?  And Hunky Dory and Diamond Dogs!  How could they not fall somewhere on this list as well?!  And that great final album, Blackstar!  Where is it?!  Well, as I said, this is my list and while those I just mentioned are terrific albums, they fall just a hair below this and the next album on my top 5 list.  Scary Monsters is, like David Bowie’s best albums, ambitious in scope and features many different -and at times very wild- music choices.  This is an album that is great from start to finish though I would point out the underrated Teenage Wildlife for special attention.  Great stuff.

1. Outside (Expanded Edition)

1 Outside:  When this album was originally released in 1995, I was shocked by how much the critics hated it.  In fact, there were very few (if any) I could find that actually liked the album.  It was a weird experience because for me the album was nothing short of amazing and featured some incredibly strong tracks (I Have Not Been To Oxford Town, Thru These Architect Eyes, I’m Deranged, Heart’s Filthy Lesson, Strangers When We Meet, etc.) and a bizarre, almost Blade Runner/William Gibson-like sci-fi concept involving the end of the century.  Over the years, it appears there has been a re-evaluation of this album and many people now seem to have recognized the album’s quality versus when it was first released.

Look, I’ll be blunt here:  I can sorta understand where the original criticism came from.  1. Outside is a very overstuffed work.  It features a plethora of songs and styles and there are oddball “segues” between many of the songs wherein a story is told by David Bowie using distorted voices.  Yes, I can see where some might have felt this was all a little too much.

But that’s what makes the album so damn good!  1. Outside is an immersive experience and, if you’re willing to give it a try and roll with it, I promise you will be amazed.  A great, great work.

*****

So there you have it, my all time favorite five David Bowie albums.  Your mileage, as they say, might vary.

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The Next Day

Frankly, it was tough getting through yesterday.  I feel exhausted because I couldn’t get all that much sleep and of course its all because of the death of David Bowie.  I couldn’t help but read the wealth of retrospectives, condolences, and examination of what made him so damn good.  It was overwhelming.  It was sad.  It was well-deserved.

As I’ve mentioned many times before, David Bowie was my all time favorite musician but as good a musician as he was, he was much more than that.  He was also a successful movie actor, a shrewd businessman, an artist, and a patron saint to those who felt outside the bounds of “normal” society.  He most certainly had his flaws as well, including heavy drug use and, some have said, a cut throat mentality regarding musical collaborators.

Moving beyond all that, to me David Bowie was and is an artistic inspiration.

While other rockers sit back and appear comfortable belting out their past greatest hits to increasingly greying audiences, Mr. Bowie kept working hard and creating new and interesting stuff, the last of which, the album Blackstar, was released a mere two days before his passing.

As I said before, I’m very tired today yet alive and looking forward to another day in which to work on my latest novel.  My story isn’t quite done yet and there’s plenty of inspiration to draw from one David Robert Jones.

Rest in Peace, Mr. Bowie.

General

David Bowie, RIP

Waking up this morning, the very last thing I expected to find on the various newsfeeds I look in on was the news that, a mere couple of days after his 69th birthday and the release of Blackstar, his latest album, David Bowie had passed away.

If you’ve followed this blog for any length of time or even casually know me, then you know that David Bowie is my all time favorite musician.  I discovered David Bowie’s music back in 1983 and while in High School with the release of his biggest selling album, Let’s Dance.  There was something about that music, suave and sexy and danceable yet also mysterious, that immediately gripped me.

So intrigued I was with Let’s Dance that I started looking backwards and buying up his catalog of past albums.  To my surprise, there were a great many songs he wrote which I was familiar with but had never put artist and art together.  You see, unlike many others I never really got into music -and music purchasing- until I got into David Bowie.

While I was familiar with and loved the works of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd and (remember the times!) the Bee Gees, but up until I discovered David Bowie I never really considered music -and albums- as something to purchase and collect.

With David Bowie front and center and his previous albums available, I realized I was familiar with many of his songs but hadn’t connected them with him.  The usual popular songs were there, Suffragette City, Lady Stardust, Space Oddity, Changes, Rebel Rebel, The Jean Genie, Young Americans, Heroes, etc. etc.  They all popped up on the radio from time to time and it was both a surprise and delight to find the man responsible for Let’s Dance had produced so much other really, really good stuff.

But what turned me from fan to David Bowie fanatic was the discovery of the album The Man Who Sold The World.

You have to put yourself in my shoes back in the mid-1980’s and understand that at that time this album was a rarity and could barely be found in the record stores (this was way before the advent of the internet and MP3 songs).  To me, The Man Who Sold The World -album and song- was and is David Bowie’s first true masterpiece and I played the hell out of it back in the day.  Even today, I considered the title track my all time favorite David Bowie composition…

And when Nirvana famously covered the song some years later and it had a popularity rebirth (or, one could argue, it was finally getting the recognition it deserved), I couldn’t help but nod and smile.

After the extreme success of Let’s Dance, however, David Bowie appeared artistically lost.  The mega-success he achieved (the album and song competed head on with Michael Jackson’s Thriller.  I believe the song displaced Beat It from its #1 position for a week or so) left him in a strange state and his follow up album, Tonight, while featuring some very good songs felt like a lesser effort.

He would follow that album up with what many, including Mr. Bowie himself, felt was his very worst album, the ironically titled Never Let Me Down.  Again, there were some good songs in the album but the overall work was terribly unsatisfying.  Perhaps sensing doldrums, Mr. Bowie moved into other directions, becoming part of a hard rock/heavy metal band Tin Machine for two albums.  Once again, there was good material to be found here, but critics were very harsh.  When Tin Machine folded, Mr. Bowie returned with Black Tie White Noise, a soulful/jazzy album that received plenty of good reviews but was essentially ignored by the public at large.  It was at about this point that whatever magic David Bowie conjured for each new musical release was gone and audiences in general seemed not as interested in him anymore.

Which is really too bad because Mr. Bowie was about to begin the last third of his career in grand style.  Starting with 1993’s Buddha of Suburbia, Mr. Bowie found his groove and from that moment on he released one album after another, until Blackstar (his eighth and last album since Buddha) which were all of very high quality.

Sure, some albums were better than others but David Bowie’s later output could never be accused of being half-cocked or indifferent.  Unlike Tonight and Never Let Me Down, it appeared Mr. Bowie was trying mightily to release works that lived up to his talent and reputation.

After the release of 2003 album Reality, Mr. Bowie would go on a tour (captured excellently on the 2010 release A Reality Tour CD and Video) and, sadly, it would turn out to be the very last major tour Mr. Bowie would ever do.  In June of 2004 and while touring, he experienced what he thought was a pinched nerve in his shoulder.  It turned out he had an acutely blocked coronary artery and underwent emergency surgery to repair the blockage.

For ten years after this Mr. Bowie kept a low profile.  Many thought him gravely ill.  Morbid rumors spread that he didn’t have long to live.

Yet in 2013 and on the date of his 66th birthday, he surprised the world with the release of The Next Day, his first album in 10 years.  The album was critically well received and I enjoyed it tremendously, but not nearly as much as the next one.

His last one.

Blackstar, in retrospect, was meant not to be so much another step in Mr. Bowie’s “return” but rather a self-made tribute, one last major work he wanted to gift his audiences before he left the stage.  Suddenly the sadness in many of the songs, in particular Lazarus, take on new poignancy.

When Mr. Bowie stopped touring, I suspected he wasn’t doing well.  And when a year passed, then another, and then another with no new music, I feared the worst.  But when he released The Next Day and looked good on the videos made for the songs, I hoped he had recovered and was about to come back strong.

But when the videos for Blackstar and Lazarus showed up, I couldn’t help but notice Mr. Bowie looked so very old in them and now, with the news of his passing, it sadly makes sense.

I noted in my review of the album Blackstar (you can read it here) that the song Blackstar reminded me of a mix between the early Bowie song Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud and Loving the Alien, perhaps the best song on the album Tonight.

I stand by that statement and further point out that in an interview Mr. Bowie stated he considered Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud to be the first song which pointed in the direction he would eventually go…

In this song, the focus is on the soon to be executed “wild eyed boy”.  In Blackstar, we turn our attention from the one who dies to the town itself.  I can’t help but feel that Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud and Blackstar, are meant to be bookmarks on the career that David Bowie had, one song circling into the other, with so many beautiful songs in between.

Rest in peace, Mr. Bowie.  Words cannot express the amount of joy you’ve given me.

Music

About that David Bowie play…

Looks like they had a preview of the musical Lazarus and Chris O’Leary for Slate offers his take on it:

There’s A Showman, Waiting in the Sky

Sounds interesting.  I have to agree with Mr. O’Leary that much of David Bowie’s oeuvre does hint at his desire to have a musical, from his earliest works to his many theatrical transformations.  Now, heading into the twilight of his career, it would appear he finally has his musical show and, at least based on this review, it appears to be a culmination of all things Bowie and set on stage.

Is that a good thing?

I wonder.  I also wonder if I’ll get a chance to see it…

Music

Blackstar…

A 10 minute long music video featuring “Blackstar”, David Bowie’s newly released single (the full album lands in early January, 2016)?

Yes please!

Fascinating, eerie, different…to an extent.  It did echo/remind me of this song/video:

Someone far smarter than me noted that on “Blackstar” David Bowie returns to the “Major Tom” mythology, this time presenting our errant astronaut -or rather his remains!- as a religious totem.

As with “Loving the Alien”, with “Blackstar” it would appear Mr. Bowie is again examining, in his own inimitable way, religion.  While I believe he may be an atheist (in interviews he has hinted at this fact, if my memory is correct), he is obviously deeply fascinated with religious ideology and mysticism.  He’s released many songs and even full albums which have, again in his own way, dealt with philosophical/religious ideas.  With “Blackstar” it would appear he’s once again looking in on this issue.

Fascinating stuff.

General, Music

Because you had to know…

…Every David Bowie hairstyle from 1964 to 2014 in one GIF:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2015/01/14/david-bowie-hairstyle-gif-and-chart-shows-50-years-of-bowie-hairdos.html

For those too lazy to click on the link, here’s the GIF, though I suggest you check out the link if you want (NEED DAMMIT!) a full chart that shows you each individual picture…

Bowie_Hairstyle_GIF

Music

Nothing Has Changed (2014) a (very mildly) belated music review

When I heard my favorite musician, David Bowie, was about to release a new “greatest hits” set called Nothing Has Changed, I wasn’t particularly excited.  Looking over the list of songs on the release, I had almost all of them, and many were “radio edits”, which meant the songs were cut down to fit radio playing times.  Sometimes these cuts were simply brutal and harmed the songs more than helped.

David Bowie Nothing Has Changed

Still, after giving the list a second look I found a number of tracks interested me.  There was the new song, Sue (or in a Season of Crime) along with three tracks taken from the aborted Toys album which I heard snippets of but was curious to hear in full (Let Me Sleep Beside You, Your Turn to Drive, and Shadowman).  There were also some interesting curios/remasters.  Of those, the one I most wanted to hear was the remastered The Man Who Sold the World, one of my all time favorite Bowie songs.

Then, at the tail end of the set were five very, very early Bowie tracks that predated his first big hit, Space Oddity: In The Heat of Morning, Silly Boy Blue, Can’t Help Thinking About Me, You’ve Got A Habit of Leaving, and Liza Jane.

Taken together, there were at a minimum ten songs I was curious to hear/have out of the 59 in the set.  Had I bought those ten songs individually, I would have paid roughly $10.29 for them…if they were all available for download (amazon.com does not allow you to buy three of the very early Bowie songs individually).  The full album, on the other hand, was $19.99.

With an approximate $9 difference, I decided to go for the whole thing.

Now, I’m a David Bowie fanatic and willing to make the investment in the overall product.  Even so, I’m level headed enough to warn those who have most of these songs and maybe aren’t as big a fanatic of David Bowie to go over the track list like I did and consider whether you want to spend their money on the whole thing or just some of the songs in this particular set.  As I said, the extra nine bucks for me wasn’t too big a hurdle but to others the price difference might be greater.  Even so, did I get my money’s worth?

Well…sorta.

I really enjoyed the three songs from the so-far lost Toys album and wish Mr. Bowie would officially release the whole thing.  As for the new song…it’s Ok, a jazzy piece that neither blew me away nor severely disappointed.  The very early works of Mr. Bowie, I knew coming in, would be more curiosity pieces than songs worth listening to over and over again.  I was happy to have them in the set, but again, they aren’t necessarily earth shakers.

The remastered works were clear and sounded great, but at least to my ears weren’t necessarily a significant step up from what you find in other recent releases.

My overall impression of the album is that it is a good, pretty comprehensive effort but one that those unfamiliar with Mr. Bowie’s oeuvre will enjoy more than “old fans” like me.

A few days back Keith Harris at the Concourse wrote a snarky column about new boxed sets…

http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/2014-music-box-sets-a-guide-for-the-bemused-and-disgus-1664336893

…and basically trashed most of the sets offered this Christmas/Holiday season, including Nothing Has Changed.  Most egregious was this statement regarding David Bowie’s more recent output:

I know a bunch of Bowie fans who, against all reason, continued to buy his albums into the ’90s and beyond, and then sold them back in disgust.

If you were a David Bowie fan up to Let’s Dance and tuned out afterwards, Nothing Has Changed should prove Mr. Harris and his supposed friends’ opinion quite wrong.  While I would agree that Mr. Bowie floundered a bit after Let’s Dance, his output since 1993’s Buddha of Suburbia has been on par, in my humble opinion, with some of his great 1970’s work, though obviously not as commercially successful.

In conclusion, if you’re not very familiar with Mr. Bowie or haven’t checked out his more recent output, you might want to give Nothing Has Changed a try.  Otherwise, consider what songs you want and what songs you need and then decide whether getting this album is worth the investment.

Music

New David Bowie album…?

According to longtime David Bowie producer Tony Visconti we’re not all that far away from having another album from the legendary artist:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/19/showbiz/bowie-album/index.html

The article has a link to another article that is about a new “Best of” package being released by Mr. Bowie which will include, apparently, at least 2 new songs (depending on which version you get) and some songs from the aborted Toys album:

http://www.nme.com/news/david-bowie/79653

Interesting stuff.

So too is this debate published at Salon.com between Simon Critchley and Rick Moody regarding Mr. Bowie’s 1979 album Lodger:

http://www.salon.com/2014/09/20/lets-debate-a-david-bowie-critic-and-an-obsessive-battle-over-maddening-brilliance-of-lodger/

I like the title of their article, regarding the “Maddening” brilliance of Lodger.  This was/is a wild album, even for Mr. Bowie.  It was the last of the so-called Berlin Trilogy and many felt it was the weakest of the three albums (the other two being Low and Heroes).

Yet as with many David Bowie works, what at first may seem like a misfire or a lesser piece can, over time, grow in your estimation.  Apparently, this is what happened to the two debating the album.  They were big time Bowie fans who were let down with Lodger when it was first released.  Now, many, many years later, they find themselves enjoying the work and “understanding” it better than they did before.

Interesting stuff, if you’re into David Bowie!

Music

The Next Day Extra

Way back in 1984 the band U2 released The Unforgettable Fire, arguably their first major, major success.  Sure, they had already captured attention with previous works, but this album shot them into the stratosphere.  As much as I loved the album, I was blown away when in 1985 Wide Awake in America, a four song EP, was released.  It featured live versions of two songs from The Unforgettable Fire (both incredibly good) and, more startlingly, two “discarded” songs which were ultimately not deemed strong enough to include in that album.  The songs, “The Three Sunrises” and “Love Comes Tumbling Down” were both, IMHO, incredibly strong works and could –should– have been in the original album.

Fast forward to 2013.

After ten years of seeming (possible) retirement from music, David Bowie releases The Next Day last March to critical adulation -and the inevitable “best album since Scary Monsters notices- and it does pretty good business.

In retrospect and while I enjoyed the album, it struck me that many people/critics were overly hyping the album…this was pretty damn good David Bowie but I wasn’t sure I’d rank it among his best later day albums.  As good as the album was, I really wished Mr. Bowie would rock out a little more, like I know he’s eminently capable of.

When the album was released, I recalled an interview with Tony Visconti, the album’s producer, noting there while recording The Next Day, there were many extra songs left over.  Enough, he stated, for another full album.

So most of 2013 passes and, lo and behold, The Next Day Extra, a “bonus EP”, is released, one featuring the entire The Next Day plus the extras EP and, for those who already had that album, the seven song EP alone.  I listened to the samples of the songs but held back on buying the album right away.  Frankly, the snippets didn’t do all that much for me.

Which goes to show that sometimes song snippets don’t tell you how good a full song might be.

Over the weekend I downloaded (legally!) the EP and, like U2’s Wide Awake in America, I was blown away.  Here was the rocking David Bowie music I was longing to hear!  Why oh why, Mr. Bowie, didn’t you include some of these songs on The Next Day itself?!  Perhaps they didn’t quite “fit” with the narrative, but they’re pretty damn good!

The snippet of “Atomica”, the first song in the EP, certainly did it no favors…the full song, again IMHO, is a great rocker:

The album features five “new” songs and two “remixes”, all of which are quite good.  I think the 10 and a half (!!!) minute remix of “Love is Lost” is better than the version on the original album while the remix of “I’d Rather Be High” wasn’t all that significantly different from the original, yet still pretty good.  Apart from “Atomica” and the remix of “Love Is Lost”, my other favorite “new” song, previously only released as a bonus in the Japanese market, is “God Bless the Girl”:

The bottom line is this: if you liked The Next Day and want a little more from it, give The Next Day Extra a listen.

Music

David Bowie’s isolated vocal tracks…

…to “Starman” and “Five Years”.  Absolutely fascinating stuff:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/07/15/david_bowie_s_isolated_vocal_tracks.html

As mentioned in the article, there was interest around the web when the isolated vocal tracks of the Queen/David Bowie collaboration “Under Pressure” was released.  If you’re curious about that, here it is.  It’s worth giving a listen to as well: