The Man Who Polled the World, aka DAVID BOWIE POLL RESULTS

Missed most of today's reveal because I decided to go out and get drunk instead, but absolutely chuffed as buttons that 'Look Back In Anger' and 'Stay' placed... two of my all-time Bowie favourites.

and, no, I don't remember anyone passing around copies of STS or the Berlin Trilogy or even recommending him. He was the Ziggy guy responsible for a few AOR mainstays ("Changes," "Jean Genie," "Space Oddity" specifically). I mean, nobody cared.

I discovered Bowie around the same time, but just one of the Singles collections. I didn't listen to any current output until the collaboration with NIN. I don't remember him being especially uncool though. I always felt his place in the canon was already established. I guess the NIN thing felt a little 'old man trying to be hip'.

60. "Sons of the Silent Age" (from "Heroes") - 200 points/11 votes/0 first-place votes
59. Teenage Wildlife (from Scary Monsters) - 206 points/9 votes/1 first-place vote
58. "The Secret Life of Arabia" (from "Heroes") - 211 points/11 votes/0 first-place votes
57. "Beauty and the Beast" (from "Heroes") - 219 points/11 votes/0 first-place votes
56. "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)" (w/Giorgio Moroder; Cat People soundtrack; Let's Dance) - 220 points/10 votes/0 first-place votes
55. "Blackout" (from "Heroes") - 229 points/11 votes/1 first-place vote
54. "Move On" (from Lodger) - 233 points/10 votes/1 first-place vote
53. "Win" (from Young Americans) - 234 points/10 votes/2 first-place votes
52. "Cracked Actor" (from Aladdin Sane) - 239 points/10 votes/0 first-place votes
51. "Joe the Lion" (from "Heroes") - 251 points/9 votes/1 first-place vote
50. "A New Career in a New Town" (from Low) - 251 points/12 votes/0 first-place votes
49. "Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)" (from Scary Monsters) - 258 points/11 votes/0 first-place votes
48. "Diamond Dogs" (from Diamond Dogs) - 268 points/13 votes/0 first-place votes
47. "What in the World" (from Low) - 275 points/12 votes/1 first-place vote
46. "The Bewlay Brothers" (from Hunky Dory) - 284 points/14 votes/0 first-place votes
45. "Word on a Wing" (from Station to Station) - 288 points/10votes/1 first-place vote
44. "Kooks" (from Hunky Dory) = 290 points/14 votes/0 first-place votes
43. "Warszawa" (from Low) - 291 points/13 votes/0 first-place votes
42. "Jean Genie" (from Aladdin Sane) - 300 points/14 votes/0 first-place votes
41. "Wild Is the Wind" (from Station to Station) - 313 points/13 votes/0 first-place votes
40. "It's No Game" (from Scary Monsters) - 324 points/13 votes/1 first-place vote
39. "Fantastic Voyage" (from Lodger) - 327 points/17 votes/ 0 first-place votes
38. "Breaking Glass" (from Low) - 333 points/15 votes/1 first-place vote
37. "All the Young Dudes" (Bowie: Aladdin Sane sessions; Mott the Hoople, 1972 single) - 334 points/15 votes/2 first-place votes
36. "Boys Keep Swinging" (from Lodger) - 345 points/16 votes/1 first-place vote
35. "Aladdin Sane" (from Aladdin Sane) - 347 points/14 votes/0 first-place votes
34. "Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing (reprise)" (from Diamond Dogs) - 356 points/12 votes/3 first-place votes
33. "Fame" (from Young Americans) - 360 points/16 votes/2 first-place votes
32. "Fashion" (from Scary Monsters) - 374 points/17 votes/1 first-place vote
31. "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide" (from The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars) - 375 points/16 votes/2 first-place votes
30. "Ziggy Stardust" (from The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars) - 390 points/18 votes/0 first-place votes
29. "Panic in Detroit" (from Aladdin Sane) - 400 points/19 votes/0 first-place votes
28. "Let's Dance" (from Let's Dance) - 422 points/22 votes/0 first-place votes
27. "Drive-In Saturday" (from Aladdin Sane) - 441 points/20 votes/0 first-place votes
26. "Quicksand" (from Hunky Dory) - 451 points/19 votes/0 first-place votes
25. "Queen Bitch" (from Hunky Dory) - 467 points/21 votes/0 first-place votes
24. "Modern Love" (from Let's Dance) - 476 points/23 votes/0 first-place votes
23. "Under Pressure" (Queen/Bowie single, 1981) - 479 points/21 votes/1 first-place vote
22. "Stay" (from Station to Station) - 497 points/24 votes/1 first place vote
21. "TVC15" (from Station to Station) - 514 points/24 votes/0 first-place votes
20. "John, I'm Only Dancing" (1972 single) - 526 points/24 votes/2 first-place votes
19. "Look Back in Anger" (from Lodger) - 527 points/23 votes/1 first-place vote
18. "Starman" (from The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars) - 572 points/25 votes/1 first-place vote
17. "Space Oddity" (from Space Oddity) - 586 points/26 votes/1 first-place vote
16. "Five Years" (from The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars) - 596 points/24 votes/2 first-place votes

thx for the C&P work, smash

I got into 70s Bowie in college along with several other friends in the 90s, so it DID happen, somewhere. Helped that his entire back catalog was available on vinyl for dirt cheap.

Also, my post addressed college students -- guys my age -- in the nineties, and, yeah, he was a standing joke at the beginning.

that's so weird, cuz i'm a bit older than you (college in the late 80s), and bowie has always been HUGE among my immediate peers and the extended family of music scene people i've known over the course of my life, old and young. the "classic rock" stuff, the arty cherman stuff, the shiny 80s pop, the influence on lou & iggy, the glam & punk & funk & disco, all of it. big and obvious influence on tons of bands, from dino jr to the chamelons to smashing pumpkins.

i don't remember bowie ever becoming a "joke", just less and less interesting in the here and now. like the failure of the present only made the past shine all that much more brightly. but maybe an age gap of a half decade or so makes all the difference...

Yeah, that's the irony: his influence (and Ferry's) was SO obvious on eighties college rock but no one I knew wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.

maybe my love of bowie and ferry blinded me to the snickering of my peers, i dunno

which is why it's a shame The Buddha of Suburbia got no promotional push. More than BTWN and Outside (both of which I still like), it would have reminded skeptics of how interesting he could be.

"Dead Against It" would be in my top forty.

yeah I dunno among my cadre of music buddies in college Bowie's connections to Eno, Reed, and Iggy pretty much guaranteed he was worth investigating

My friends and I (girls) jammed tons of Bowie at parties in college -- mid-late 90s. Only 1 Bowie friend in hs though.

as an 80s kid i knew bowie from classic rock radio and had heard that his berlin period was when shit got real, but of course that stuff was never on the radio -- i didn't hear that until much later.

at some point i was into stevie ray vaughan and was like hey that guitar on 'let's dance' sounds familiar

I have to thank art-school women for my love of Bowie (and Nick Cave).

as Soto pointed out, the Nirvana Unplugged of Man Who Sold the World was huge in reminding people of Bowie's greatness (and it was the ultimate cognoscenti track so it got Nirvana fans psyched to explore the lesser known). I wonder if the Sound and Vision CD box set wasn't also responsible for (re)discovery, in addition to the individual reissues.

Outside was, weirdly, one of the favourite albums of kids in the visual arts stream at my high school in the early 2000s. That was my introduction to Bowie, but I've never been a huge fan. Low and Station to Station, though!

sweet results so far, 8 of my choices have placed. can't believe "fame" wasn't higher (my #1). such a huge groove.

totally missed the "all the young dudes" discussion. i didn't hear his version until just now on youtube, would have voted it pretty high.

I like this version of "Fame" better....and who knew Epstein from Welcome Back Kotter was one of DB's backup singers?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCKFMTeVBO0

Also, that clip is a must see for Ava Cherry (did someone mention her above?)...holy sh&t, has anyone ever looked, dressed, or danced so fuc&in' cool?

A couple other Urgent & Key Events to rebuilding Bowie's cred for late '90s kids:

• Marilyn Manson's Mechanical Animals. Bowie's name popped up in every review and interview tied to this release. Rolling Stone even ran a painting of Manson in early '70s Bowie drag alongside their positive review of the album. A lot of kids that I knew who were Manson fans were soon stocking up on Bowie reissues.

• The release of Velvet Goldmine the film.

Wow, Marilyn Manson, would've never thought of that. thanks...

that's right!

I totally remember that! I never got into Manson but some of my friends were into him, and he was heavily promoting that album as glam/Bowie-influenced. I remember he even named his guitar player something like "Ziggy".

twiggy ramirez?

Bingo.

Twiggy played guitar?

Oh man, I can't believe I didn't know this was happening!

― wolf kabob (ENBB), Wednesday, March 7, 2012 10:26 AM (4 minutes ago)

I don't want to be a dick about this, I just want to understand -- how do people "do" ILX in a way that a thread that spends a day and a half at the top of Site New Answers and ILM New Answers can go unnoticed?

Well, to be honest, I've been pretty sick the last couple days and haven't been checking as regularly as I normally do. Also, I just skim SNA and guess I missed it. I rarely check ILM on its own.

at the same time as the Nirvana cover there was the whole Britpop/glam thing, this was when I was in college, and you had Morrissey's "Your Arsenal" and REM's "Monster" - and 70s Bowie was totally a major influence on all of that.

My college experience was entirely different from Alfred's; I started in the Fall of '91, and the still recent reissues from 1990 were passed around and talked about amongst both the radio station people I hung out with and with the more general populous in the dorms (my cassette copies were never in my room, having been borrowed by one person or another).

Also, the David Bowie vs. 808 State "Sound And Vision" was played at raves and clubs and fraternity parties. The reissues seemed to make him current and relevant when it seemed that Tin Machine had pissed away whatever good will he had remaining.

I was working at a record store when Black Tie came out and there was great anticipation from customers and staff. What was it going to be like? He's working with Lester Bowie! "Jump She Said" has a neat video, if nothing else. It was disappointing, but still sold well.

I remember Outside as a big deal. Bowie goes industrial! People were talking about him ripping off Nine Inch Nails, but "The Hearts Filthy Lesson" got a lot of MTV airplay, and was his highest charting record since the mid-80s. I had a hard time getting tickets for the tour; it sold out rather quickly, and nobody walked out of the show as far as I could tell. His band was amazing and we all thought he blew NIN away.

Earthling seemed to continue the resurgence, getting better reviews despite dropping sales. Hours was crap but his legacy seemed secure by then.

he named his guitar player

whoa

That's great to know! For the record my college station played "Jump They Say" quite a bit, and perhaps it's nostalgia that forces me to rate it higher than it should. I'll defend it as one of his best-ever, with by far the best post-'83 video.

Don't know why I called it Jump She Said. Total space out, mixing Julian Cope (Drive She Said) and Bowie.

Glastonbury 2000 was a BIG turnaround for a lotta folk in the UK. he played a Greatest Hits set at the close of a scorching Sunday at the end of a Glastonbury that was famously doubly over-subscribed in attendance (the last year before the superfence in 2002). he went from an old guy trying to play Drun And Bass on the previous tour and album to well, THIS the December just after
http://ebid.s3.amazonaws.com/upload_big/1/8/5/1307029494-28716-0.jpg

easy to sneer and say 'huh NME so what' but essentialy being named the single most influential musician of all time by the leading rock weekly in the world on its cover was pretty key. there's no way that'd have happened in the late 80s/ early 90s.

also key in the years just prior IMO; this
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3l4h3_generique-seven-david-bowie-david-f_shortfilms

I bought most of the reissues in late '93 at a national mall chain call called Tracks. Every Friday for three weeks I bought a different entry in the Berlin Trilogy. Good times.

i feel so lame having to explain this but lol dudes Twiggy Ramirez is in the exact same 'first name from a model/actress, last name from an infamous psycho' format as Marilyn Manson, it has nothing to do with Ziggy Stardust

oh I know. Besides, Twiggy was on the cover of Pin Ups.

first bowie i bought was ryko's changesbowie comp

i feel so lame having to explain this but lol dudes

it's cool -- def. not as lame as arguing about the provenance of internet noodz photos

"The dope show" has a really good chorus

there's no way that'd have happened in the late 80s/ early 90s.

Yeah, I started reading the NME in 89 and Bowie was not cool at all then. When Suede came along things changed. It seemed a big deal when Bowie was on the cover with Brett.

Maybe it was a new wave hangover at the time

i got into bowie because i wanted to go to the nine inch nails/bowie concert back in 1995. i was 15, and my mother never would have let me go to a nin show, so i told her i wanted to see bowie (i remember that conversation... i think she knew, but she was good enough to not say anything). so to complete the illusion, i bought scary monsters, really having no clue who bowie was (thought he was famous because of his movie roles, i guess i'd seen labyrinth--which i just saw again last year, and i must say it's is an incredibly creative movie), then i rented the man who fell to earth and witnessed bowie's dick with my dad, then i bought heroes and station to station, and by the time the concert rolled around i was yelling at my friends about how "a warm place" was just bowie's "crystal japan" and how much of a rip-off nin was and how bowie was a god and they wouldn't understand.

bowie's down there with eno and new order and prince in the primordial branches of my little family tree of music exploration. trent reznor had the good taste to provide that for me, i suppose.

xp perhaps it had something to do with Tonight -> Never Let Me Down -> Glass Spider Tour -> Tin Machine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xnr_RAexqxg

I might be alone here but they all look like they're trying too hard

Carlos Alomar's paisley shirt and leather pants combo scariest elements btw

didn't seem that way in person. Or on the boot I found.

Here's a review from Spin of Bowie's 50th Birthday Show*, which seems a reasonable summing up of his status in the US in '97.

*(pgs.64 & 65 if it dosen't link up exactly)

i'm quite glad that my top 3 (at least, and if i'm remembering correctly,) are all out of the top 20. bowie's had so many good songs, and it's good to see that people are passionate about a great many of them. and he's a vital enough artist that my top 20 could completely turn over in the next few months. i think i've gotten more pleasure out of bowie for the last half of my life than i have anyone. just in the last year or so, my favorite album by him has changed several times. but fuck man who sold the world. that album sucks. think i'll listen to it now.

^^^ I remember that review. That's exactly how I remember the response.

xpost

Spacehog