So, three more Bowie songs to look at this week. (Closes eyes, reaches into basket, pulls out three slips of paper.) First one out is...
Yassassin - Lodger
Here, Bowie plays some very middle-eastern sounding fills on a Chamberlin, which was an updated and slightly more compact version of the Mellotron, a sort of low-tech, primitive, tape-based version of the samplers people use today. Around the time of "Heroes", our hero lived for a time in a pokey flat above a garage in a very Turkish district of Berlin; who knows, perhaps some of the musical inspiration here came from that period. In any event, he manages to squeeze some very apposite and memorable sounds out of his Chamberlin, and creates an excellent atmosphere with a hint of edgy menace.
The tune itself isn't a very challenging piece of music, but its simple riffs and motifs are well expanded on by the backing band, and it leaves a definite impression. There's something very Bowie about a narrator who declares "I'm not a moody guy!" and then proceeds to spend the next couple of minutes convincing us otherwise. Not a major Bowie work, but it fits well into the travelogue theme of Lodger's first side, and helps move the album along well enough. Yassassin is Turkish for "long live", as the sleeve notes very helpfully inform us.
Sound and Vision - Low
Hm, so we're back in "orange album" country again: This is a simple, engaging piece; taken out of its context on the first side of Low, it sounds as bright and breezy as an ad for breakfast cereal. Which is kind of strange, seeing is it's about wanting to stay in your room all day with the blinds drawn... Sound and Vision certainly kept the record company happy (at least on this side of the pond); the first single taken from the album, it sailed to number 3 in the charts, helped along by the fact that the BBC had adopted the tune for its 'coming attractions' theme music. If you think about it, the Low album is heavily biased in favour of music over words: of the seven songs on the first side, only five have lyrics, and even then words are used sparingly. "Nothing to read, nothing to say", indeed.
Much of the appeal of Low lies in the way it strips pop melodies down to their component parts and then builds them up again from scratch in new ways, and Sound and Vision is a case in point. Its three-and-a-bit minutes are brimming with sonic ideas and minimal, catchy hooks; the Davis/Murray rhythm section is right on the money, Alomar's snakey guitar riff sits right in there, part Bo Diddley, part reggae, next to Ricky Gardiner's slippery countrified double-stops, and there's even a couple of Welsh girls (i. e. the overdubbed voices of Mary Hopkin-Visconti) going "do-do-doo".
The snare-drum sound on this was a closely-guarded industry secret for many years until producer Tony Visconti eventually admitted that it came from running the snare through an Eventide Harmonizer. What really gets me about this song, though, is that weird percussive "hiss" that punctuates every bar when there's no singing going on; presumably white noise generated by Eno's briefcase synth. In the days before earbuds and digital compression, this is a piece of music very clearly designed to be played on a transistor radio in the middle of the afternoon. And why not?
Heathen (The Rays) - Heathen
I never stopped being a Bowie fan. It's just that by the time Heathen came out, I'd come down with Bowie fatigue. I'd listen to his new releases with interest, but never really engage with them. While there was no doubt he was still producing and playing excellent music, forty-something me just didn't feel the same urgency to run out and buy it straight away as teenage me had done , and that says a lot more about age and culture than it does about David Bowie's music, I think you'll agree. Heathen piqued my interest though; there was enough going on to keep you listening. It's kind of a sign of the times that the album got so much attention for including a cover of a Pixies song (Cactus); it's also a pity because it contains some of Bowie's best writing in a long time, skilfully interpreted by an excellent, sympathetic backing band. And this (almost) title track is one I always had a soft spot for. It's short, simple, and full of guitar buzz; I'd almost call it Bowie's attempt at crafting a soundscape for shoegazers. Again, like the Low track I mention above, it's not heavily reliant on words or verbal messages but it's strong on mood and atmosphere.
23.11.07
Friday On My Mind
Friday On My Mind is a new, weekly (fingers crossed) feature wherein I'll be writing about three songs by David Bowie every Friday. Why Bowie? A whole bunch of different reasons, but the one that most concerns us here is that he's spent much of the last 40 years building up an extensive body of work that (hopefully) will hold up to some kind of critical analysis. I've been a Bowie fan for almost as long, though I have to admit that not all of his work has been brilliant, so it's probably fairer to write about the good and the bad, along side each other, to try and get some idea of what makes the man tick and why his music still resounds with people today.
Of course, there are plenty of sites devoted to Bowie and his music, by people who know a lot more about the man and his work than I do, and I'm hardly trying to compete with all the resources that are out there; I simply hope to offer my own fan's-eye-view perspective on his works and the impressions they've left on me.
That sounds nice and noncommital, so here's something a bit more concrete to give you some idea of what to expect: My aim is to pick three Bowie tracks every week and write about them. Three and no more than three; the number shall not be two, nor neither shall it be four, but three only. I'll try and post them all together, once a week. For the most part I'll choose them at random, relying only on the exigencies of shuffle play. Every now and again I may go ahead and choose three tracks grouped under a particular subject or maybe a common phase of Bowie's career, but the time-honoured technique of Eeny Meeny Miny Mo is enough to be getting on with for the moment.
Why Friday On My Mind? It's the title of a tune by an Australian band called the Merseybeats who had a hit with it back in the 60s, and Bowie covered it on his Pin Ups album.
Anyway, I'm a fan, not an expert, and any comments, questions, corrections are more than welcome.
Now let's get stuck in...
Breaking Glass - Stage
A-a-a-a-nd the first coloured ball to fall down the chute is this live treatment from 1978 of a track from 1976's Low album. Barely four years after David Live, which had managed to fill in the gaps between the tail-end of Bowie's 'glam' phase (Diamond Dogs) and the beginning of what he liked to call his 'plastic soul' period (Young Americans), the Stage album came along. The overall mood and sound on this one is much more sombre and 'musicianly' than the bright and upbeat (if somewhat soul-less) David Live. For a live album, Stage s meticulously well recorded, every instrument thoughtfully given its place in the mix, though the 'live' feel kind of suffers as a result and you're almost surprised to hear (very faint) applause at the end of each number. DB's usual late-70s rhythm section - Dennis Davis and George Murray plus guitarist Carlos Alomar - get fleshed out with keyboards from Roger Powell of Utopia, sometime Zappa guitarist Adrian Belew and Simon House from Hawkwind on violin.
Stage drew praise when it came out for showing that it was possible to re-create the difficult, studio-bound tracks from the Low and "Heroes" albums. This live version of Breaking Glass comes at the end of the third side of the original double vinyl; all the other tracks are treatments of Low / "Heroes" instrumentals and for the most part they're pretty good; top-class musicians bringing their chops to bear on some difficult and challenging material. (I never could stand Sense of Doubt, though...)
This thoughtful re-work of Breaking Glass rounds the side off nicely. Bowie and band re-structure the song from the ground up, emphasising the "wonderful person / but you've got problems / let me touch you" chorus, which is only thrown in once or twice on the original. Belew's guitar and Powell's synths snake around the hookline riff and the last line, "let me touch you" is again extended and repeated. What was a sketchy, fragmented sounding ode to dysfunction and blighted communications in the original becomes something else given the Stage treatment; something that feels a little bit more mutual. It's almost like the "give me your hands" bit from the end of Ziggy. Classy bit of work.
Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed - Bowie at the Beeb
Not all of the Bowie at the Beeb stuff is brilliant, as with many such warts-and-all collections, but much of it is quite fine indeed. I prefer the treatment here, from a 1970 radio session introduced by John Peel, to the version of Unwashed that actually made it onto the Space Oddity album. Bowie wrote on a 12-string guitar during this period, and it's all over this tune, frantically scrubbed with some latter-day Bo Diddley-style syncopation and some wailing harmonica thrown in on top.
Things start out very mellow and singer-songwriterly, with sensitive chords and melancholy modality, but sooner or later the Bo-Diddley-on-downers bit comes along to rock things up a bit. When the band kick in on the album version things lift a bit but much of the song's appeal is lost; this "live-in-the-studio" version isn't as big or bold in sound but packs a much better punch, and the very playful and surreal Dylanesque lyrics come across a lot better ("phallus in pigtails" indeed). It's more fun, quite simply, and you don't feel that the singer is being swamped by big horns and rock production as he is on the studio version. In general, I have to say I prefer the Bowie at the Beeb versions of songs that ended up on Space Oddity, which I always thought was an album full of interesting songs ill-served by production.
Cat People - (Single version) - Cat People OST
Co-written with Italian producer Giorgio Moroder... I've always thought it was a shame these two didn't collaborate more. Suppose Bowie had teamed up with Moroder a few years before, when he'd started to get all European on us, instead of Brian Eno? I mean, Moroder did just as much for electronica in popular music as those Kraftwerk fellas that Bowie and Eno used to pal around with in the Berlin days. Though this alternate-reality reverie also conjures up the unlikely and disturbing image of Ol' Traffic Light Eyes crooning Love To Love You Baby...
But I digress. Apparently the backing track was all ready and Bowie just came along, wrote some lyrics and sang over the top of it. But that's a bit like saying Homer found some words, strung them together in the right order and came up with The Iliad. This is really a striking piece of work and both parties involved should take pride in it.
Cat People came not long after the Scary Monsters album and sounds way more focussed and nasty, as though all the frustration and confusion on that album were channelled into a single track. But Bowie doesn't sound confused here at all. He sounds quite certain of one thing: unremitting despair. Cat People is put together with a finely honed sense of dynamics and drama, starting very cinematically with cheap rhythm box and synth, DB putting on his biggest, most cavernous sounding baritone croon, and when he first brings in the "Putting out fire -- with gasoline" refrain it stops you in your tracks. With a few changes, this could have been a track off Station To Station except that album was more oblique, detached and druggy; here there is no doubt about it: "it's not the side effects of the cocaine, things actually are pretty fucked..."
It's a pity that after this, he produced little memorable work for the rest of the 80s. The version of this on Let's Dance isn't bad, with those punchy, gated sounding drums and slinky blues guitar from Stevie Ray Vaughan, but this record is an absolute monster, a hard one to beat, and something of a beacon in what turned out to be a bad creative period for our hero.
Of course, there are plenty of sites devoted to Bowie and his music, by people who know a lot more about the man and his work than I do, and I'm hardly trying to compete with all the resources that are out there; I simply hope to offer my own fan's-eye-view perspective on his works and the impressions they've left on me.
That sounds nice and noncommital, so here's something a bit more concrete to give you some idea of what to expect: My aim is to pick three Bowie tracks every week and write about them. Three and no more than three; the number shall not be two, nor neither shall it be four, but three only. I'll try and post them all together, once a week. For the most part I'll choose them at random, relying only on the exigencies of shuffle play. Every now and again I may go ahead and choose three tracks grouped under a particular subject or maybe a common phase of Bowie's career, but the time-honoured technique of Eeny Meeny Miny Mo is enough to be getting on with for the moment.
Why Friday On My Mind? It's the title of a tune by an Australian band called the Merseybeats who had a hit with it back in the 60s, and Bowie covered it on his Pin Ups album.
Anyway, I'm a fan, not an expert, and any comments, questions, corrections are more than welcome.
Now let's get stuck in...
Breaking Glass - Stage
A-a-a-a-nd the first coloured ball to fall down the chute is this live treatment from 1978 of a track from 1976's Low album. Barely four years after David Live, which had managed to fill in the gaps between the tail-end of Bowie's 'glam' phase (Diamond Dogs) and the beginning of what he liked to call his 'plastic soul' period (Young Americans), the Stage album came along. The overall mood and sound on this one is much more sombre and 'musicianly' than the bright and upbeat (if somewhat soul-less) David Live. For a live album, Stage s meticulously well recorded, every instrument thoughtfully given its place in the mix, though the 'live' feel kind of suffers as a result and you're almost surprised to hear (very faint) applause at the end of each number. DB's usual late-70s rhythm section - Dennis Davis and George Murray plus guitarist Carlos Alomar - get fleshed out with keyboards from Roger Powell of Utopia, sometime Zappa guitarist Adrian Belew and Simon House from Hawkwind on violin.
Stage drew praise when it came out for showing that it was possible to re-create the difficult, studio-bound tracks from the Low and "Heroes" albums. This live version of Breaking Glass comes at the end of the third side of the original double vinyl; all the other tracks are treatments of Low / "Heroes" instrumentals and for the most part they're pretty good; top-class musicians bringing their chops to bear on some difficult and challenging material. (I never could stand Sense of Doubt, though...)
This thoughtful re-work of Breaking Glass rounds the side off nicely. Bowie and band re-structure the song from the ground up, emphasising the "wonderful person / but you've got problems / let me touch you" chorus, which is only thrown in once or twice on the original. Belew's guitar and Powell's synths snake around the hookline riff and the last line, "let me touch you" is again extended and repeated. What was a sketchy, fragmented sounding ode to dysfunction and blighted communications in the original becomes something else given the Stage treatment; something that feels a little bit more mutual. It's almost like the "give me your hands" bit from the end of Ziggy. Classy bit of work.
Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed - Bowie at the Beeb
Not all of the Bowie at the Beeb stuff is brilliant, as with many such warts-and-all collections, but much of it is quite fine indeed. I prefer the treatment here, from a 1970 radio session introduced by John Peel, to the version of Unwashed that actually made it onto the Space Oddity album. Bowie wrote on a 12-string guitar during this period, and it's all over this tune, frantically scrubbed with some latter-day Bo Diddley-style syncopation and some wailing harmonica thrown in on top.
Things start out very mellow and singer-songwriterly, with sensitive chords and melancholy modality, but sooner or later the Bo-Diddley-on-downers bit comes along to rock things up a bit. When the band kick in on the album version things lift a bit but much of the song's appeal is lost; this "live-in-the-studio" version isn't as big or bold in sound but packs a much better punch, and the very playful and surreal Dylanesque lyrics come across a lot better ("phallus in pigtails" indeed). It's more fun, quite simply, and you don't feel that the singer is being swamped by big horns and rock production as he is on the studio version. In general, I have to say I prefer the Bowie at the Beeb versions of songs that ended up on Space Oddity, which I always thought was an album full of interesting songs ill-served by production.
Cat People - (Single version) - Cat People OST
Co-written with Italian producer Giorgio Moroder... I've always thought it was a shame these two didn't collaborate more. Suppose Bowie had teamed up with Moroder a few years before, when he'd started to get all European on us, instead of Brian Eno? I mean, Moroder did just as much for electronica in popular music as those Kraftwerk fellas that Bowie and Eno used to pal around with in the Berlin days. Though this alternate-reality reverie also conjures up the unlikely and disturbing image of Ol' Traffic Light Eyes crooning Love To Love You Baby...
But I digress. Apparently the backing track was all ready and Bowie just came along, wrote some lyrics and sang over the top of it. But that's a bit like saying Homer found some words, strung them together in the right order and came up with The Iliad. This is really a striking piece of work and both parties involved should take pride in it.
Cat People came not long after the Scary Monsters album and sounds way more focussed and nasty, as though all the frustration and confusion on that album were channelled into a single track. But Bowie doesn't sound confused here at all. He sounds quite certain of one thing: unremitting despair. Cat People is put together with a finely honed sense of dynamics and drama, starting very cinematically with cheap rhythm box and synth, DB putting on his biggest, most cavernous sounding baritone croon, and when he first brings in the "Putting out fire -- with gasoline" refrain it stops you in your tracks. With a few changes, this could have been a track off Station To Station except that album was more oblique, detached and druggy; here there is no doubt about it: "it's not the side effects of the cocaine, things actually are pretty fucked..."
It's a pity that after this, he produced little memorable work for the rest of the 80s. The version of this on Let's Dance isn't bad, with those punchy, gated sounding drums and slinky blues guitar from Stevie Ray Vaughan, but this record is an absolute monster, a hard one to beat, and something of a beacon in what turned out to be a bad creative period for our hero.
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