Friday On My Mind #2 - Neumusik Nacht und (Frei) Tag.

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.