David Bowie
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars
Aladdin Sane
Pin-Ups
Diamond Dogs
David Live
Young Americans
Station to Station
Low
Heroes
Stage
Lodger
Scary Monsters
Let's Dance
Tonight
Tin Machine
Tin Machine II
Black Tie White Noise
1. Outside
Earthling
Hours
Heathen
Reality
Space Oddity was Bowie�s second attempt to break into the music world as a solo artist. Moving away from his schmaltzy pop songs, Bowie turned into a Dylan styled folkie. Well for most of the record anyway. That �most of the record� is filled with acoustical pieces where Bowie bangs out one soft sounding ditty after another. The inherent problem is that Bowie just wasn't that accomplished of a song writer yet to make these songs come to life. However, there are a few classics on here, and it�s not all bland.
The opening song propelled Bowie into stardom and you all know it: �Space Oddity.� Bowie�s genius use of a stylophone lends itself to creating a spooky atmosphere of alienation in space right at a time when space travel was becoming a reality. Its classic label is well deserved and it is still heard today. The rest of the nine tracks on the album are as previously mentioned acoustic based songs dealing with love (�A Letter to Hermione,� �Janine,� and �An Occasional Dream�) to bloated dying hippie odes (The epics �Cygnet Committee� and �Memory of a Free Festival�).
Bowie was obviously trying to channel the magic of Dylan throughout these songs and for the most part he comes up short as epitomized in the meandering harmonica jam at the end of �Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed� that goes absolutely no where. Dylan at least knew restraint. �The Wild Eyed Boy from Freecloud� is a fan favorite and a Ziggy era tour staple, but it�s dull and overly bombastic to me, filled with what seems like 4,000 string instruments and Bowie�s over the top vocals. The best song on here that doesn't deal with space is the unassuming track �God Knows I�m Good,� where Bowie gentle vocals tells of the moral plight of an old woman, and manages to make you sympathize with her.
Final Comment: I like it well enough but it won�t be everyone�s cup of tea. Perfect for lazy afternoons, one�s where you wouldn�t mind if you fell asleep in the middle of something.
Score: **�
The Man Who Sold the World (1970)
Bowie changes again on this album as he moves from hippie aspirations into the land of hard rock. Now teamed up with guitar god Mick Ronson and a rhythm section of Tony Visconti on bass and Woody Woodmansey on drums, Bowie hoped to prove that he wasn�t a one hit wonder. Most of the songs on here came out of session jams between Ronson and Visconti. Bowie for the most part wrote lyrics, smoked pot, and dealt with the birth of his son Zowie with his then wife Angela. Upon release the only attention the album gathered was from the risque cover of Bowie in a dress, and the record quickly sunk into obscurity to become a cult classic many years later.
Darkness pervades the all of the songs, dealing with madness, psychopathic killers and just plain unpleasant things. �Width of a Circle� is a sexually charged epic that is intelligently put together with some killer riffing by Ronson. I also really enjoy the jam of �Black Country Rock� and yeah the lyrics about drugs are dumb, but its got a nice groove and at the end Bowie imitates a donkey. A DONKEY! (Must have been some good drugs). Speaking of animals the end mantra of �All The Madmen� of �Zane Zane Zane, Ouvre le Chein� (open the dog) is a cool and mysterious way to end a song. Of course there is the �hit� of �The Man Who Sold the World,� who most people say is a Nirvana song, and as usual most people are wrong. Bowie creates a wonderful almost latin atmosphere where he displays his growing fascination with Nietzschean (did I make that word up?) philosophy.
The rest of the songs are unmemorable at best and annoying at worst. Remember how the opening track dealt with sexual innuendo in a smart way? Well �She Shook Me Cold� is a hard blues rocker that lacks tact and makes me cringe in its crudeness. Also, ending the album on a sour note is �The Supermen� where the song seems to go nowhere, says nothing, and just plain annoys me. It�s not like these songs are bad, it�s just that they don�t do much for me.
Final Comment: If you like brutally dark themes and blues rock this is for you. The next album is where Bowie really takes off though.
Score: **
If being a hippy didn�t work, then being some evil metal rock god didn�t work out for you either, then of course the next logical conclusion is to be a piano pop star. Well its obvious if you have a mind and the ambition to be successful like Bowie had. So here is Bowie in yet another persona, even going so far as to admitting to a magazine that he was bisexual. Now the legitimacy of this claim is up for debate, it is true that he probably did snog a few dudes back in the day, but Bowie was also shrewd and saw that his ticket sales for his tour were deadly low and being different might garner one some positive attention from the uncaring masses. Either way this is the first of Bowie�s true masterpieces.
We�ve all heard �Changes� before and it is a true pop gem. It helps that piano genius Rick Wakeman of Yes played on this album, but Bowie did write the song. Most of it though, he did have Mick Ronson (the future axe man for the Spiders from Mars and a painfully underrated guitarist) doing the arrangements, and these two people deserve as much respect for the album as Bowie does. Anyways no one can deny how catchy the tune is and how universal the lyrics are for those �tryin� to change their worlds.� I�m a big fan of �Oh! You Pretty Things� even if the lyrics are bizarre and have a dash of erotic Nazi imagery... A potent combination for sure. The stripped down verses with just Bowie and the piano...then that catchy chorus kicks in with the full band and the backup vocals. Perfection. �Eight Line Poem� is just some more of Bowie�s disconnected word play over some nice quiet guitar lines and piano. �Life on Mars� is another great song with its lengthy build up, its beautifully arranged strings and more classic Bowie imagery laden lyrics. Bowie�s vox on this track is classic, and while he cannot quite deliver the goods live on this song these days, at least we have the studio version for posterity. �Kooks� is often derided as a childish ode to Bowie�s son. I think that�s the point though, it is supposed to be cutesy and it works for me. �Quicksand� is the philosophical song with its words of �Don�t believe in yourself...knowledge comes with death�s release.� Bowie was heavily into Nietzsche and the occult at the time and it shows. Another great song though.
�Fill Your Heart� is a cutesy Anthony Newley type music hall song. Sure its dippy and sappy but it is nice to see a Bowie showing a normal �average Joe� type attitude towards love. �Andy Warhol� starts off with a snippet of modulated dialogue and laughing about its namesake. Mainly driven by harshly strummed guitar, it is the best of the two tribute songs on the album. The other of course being �Song for Bob Dylan� which has obvious lyrics and is the worst thing on the record for me. It�s a relative worst though. Fortunately �Queen Bitch� is next, which sounds oddly out of place due to its fast pace and prominent electric guitar riffing. It really is a great tune all the way down to its �bippity boppity hat� and points the way towards that alien named Ziggy who was waiting in the wing. A fan favorite and a integral part of the Bowie mythology is the last song on the album �The Bewlay Brothers.� Supposedly about the experiences that Bowie and his step brother Terry (who was a little cuckoo for cocoa puffs and an inspiration for most of Bowie�s songs dealing with madness) had growing up, it is a song wrapped in mystical vocals and stark acoustic guitar passages. The imagery in the song is incredibly weird even by Bowie�s standards, and fans have been trying to interpret it for years. It is a personal song to Bowie and he refused to play it live for years until 2002 when he did one performance of it, that in my opinion was a way of exorcizing his old demons. The song ends on some creepy pitched vocals that leave a lasting impression and making one want to listen to the whole thing all over again.
Final Comment: A stone cold Bowie classic and highly recommended.
Score: ****�
Bowie was in trouble. After the hit success of Let�s Dance, Bowie was slowly slipping down in the eyes of critics and fans alike. Always desperate for acceptance to both critics and fans alike, he threw himself into his newest project, a very loosely based concept album. From this album he went on the infamous Glass Spider tour, with hundreds of dancers, a giant spider on stage, and tons of theatrics. The combined punch of the album and tour almost completely destroyed Bowie�s credibility. As much as Never Let Me Down gets put down, it really isn�t.... oh wait yeah it is THAT bad.
From the first programmed drum beats on �Day In, Day Out� the listener knows they are knee deep into a late 80s production nightmare. Beneath the sheen there is a decent song in here with an actual social message but its resonance is lost in the ear numbing mix. �Time Will Crawl� is the only song off the album considered to be a classic among fans. It�s tale of a nuclear holocaust future is chilling and still applicable to today. �Beat of Your Drum� is for the most part inoffensive as Bowie hits some nice high notes, but the lyrical matter is kind of creepy (Sounds like he�s singing about a young girl, coming off of starring with a teenage Jennifer Connelly in Labyrinth...well you can fill in the blanks). �Never Let Me Down,� the obligatory ballad with some actually kinda cool harmonica, is so lightweight that Michael Dukakis once insulted it and it cried. (HA! Political FUNster I am!) �Zeroes� sounds like it wants to be a Prince knock off rocker with lyrics like �my little red corvette.� Ok so the bridge is cool and it has creepy 9-11 parallels: �the fabulous sons have crashed their planes in flames.� Someone online actually took lines of lyrics from this album and put them together to form a sort of prophetic warning of the 9-11 attacks. Waaaaaaaaayyy too much time on their hands. Even for someone like me thats pathetic.
�Glass Spider� is supposed to show the concept of the album with a really lame poem about spiders or something before it turns into a repetitive song with the lines �Gone, gone the waters all gone, mummy come back cause the waters all gone� and �Jah Jah Jah.� LAME! �Shining Star (Makin� My Love� is a upbeat song about the dangers of drugs (!) which I kid you not, honest to God, has a rap by Mickey freakin Rourke in it. �New York�s In Love� is umm a song, and I guess its kinda catchy, but I mean who�s listening to this crap besides die hard Bowie fans? �87 and Cry� makes ME cry and way to date a song there with the title. Bowie was so embarrassed by the track that went here �Too Dizzy� that he deleted it off of all releases of the album. Well thanks to the internet I got it. Well its not worth deleting, it doesn�t reinvent the wheel mind you but it isn�t that EVIL as to warrant deletion. Another dumb Iggy Pop cover (NOO not Tonight again!) �Bang Bang� closes of the festivities and its sad how I kinda like this song as at one point it was stuck in my head for over a week, and it isn�t even a Bowie original.
Final Comment: I�m a big Bowie fan so I find some enjoyment from this album and I wont beat it up like Andy Capp beats his wife for talking smack to him every night. If anyone deserves a beating it�s her, she�s always whining about where Andy has been. Well I think it�s ANDY�s own business, and if he wants to get drunk every night and flirt with cheap hookers well that is his prerogative isn�t it? Stupid Labatt Blue Bear and his liberal Canadian friends ruining everyone�s good time!
Score: � *