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

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

First time I ever heard "Life on Mars" was the Flaming Lips cover

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

― mookieproof, Wednesday, March 7, 2012 9:30 PM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark

please just trust i know how lame i am whether or not i say it at all times and don't bother dogging me about something across multiple threads

Xpost. I was at that 50th birthday show, with rather good seats. It was pretty forgettable, unfortunately. Sadly, the only time I ever saw him live. I was a fan of a lot of the guests too, but left feeling pretty much nothing. Really should have been held in a tiny club as a super top secret thing...

I rember hearing radio ads for the PAY-PER-VIEW simulcast of the Birthday show. "Classics David hasn't played in years!".

haha some dude <3

Wonder where or if "Absolute Beginners" will place. Those of you around at the time: was it regarded as a Brief Return To Form, as it is now?

If I remember correctly, the thing that really hurt him in the USA was Never Let Me Down and the Glass Spider tour. It was one of the high (or low points) in terms of 80s bigger is better schlock.

After that he was pretty square. The Sound and Vision box set helped rescue him. I remember seeing him play Giants Stadium around 1990 in support of the reissue. He kept saying that it was the last time he'd ever play those songs again.

Absolute beginners was considered a good song, it was on the radio a lot. But he was still kind of cool then, that was years before any glass spiders.

only a year!

Bowie sold out the Orange Bowl in '90, so he was still an arena draw.

My main memory of Never Let Me Down: there was a local radio premier of "Day In Day Out" and Pepsi was a sponsor. After performing the song, Bowie asks specifically for a Pepsi before taking questions. I don't remember the exact wording, but the first question was basically "Who's responsible for this disaster" which Bowie brushed aside w/grace, and then went on to promote the album. I was just under 20, I guess, and spent most of my time listening to ChangesOne and Ziggy at the time. The whole thing kind of slapped me across the face...

If I remember correctly, the thing that really hurt him in the USA was Never Let Me Down and the Glass Spider tour. It was one of the high (or low points) in terms of 80s bigger is better schlock.

After that he was pretty square. The Sound and Vision box set helped rescue him. I remember seeing him play Giants Stadium around 1990 in support of the reissue. He kept saying that it was the last time he'd ever play those songs again.

Anyway... Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing was my #1. So glad to see it as high as it is. And the most #1 votes so far.
― smash williams, Wednesday, March 7, 2012 6:46 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

My #1 also!

God, all of these songs are so classic. You forget sometimes...

Bowie asking for a Pepsi?? what the hell. UK Bowie and U.S. Bowie were very different things at the time i guess, as i'm sure there was none of that Pepsi/ radio phone in stuff here. also the Sound And Vision box was no big deal over here. i barely recall it even coming out.

xpost - to Alfred: I think "Absolute Beginners" was so tied to the fiasco of the movie and the Heaven's Gate of Style Culture, in the UK anyway, that its qualities as a song were a little overlooked.

I can't comment on the US but after NLMD ended in critical and commercial failure the only way was up. Although it's considered a joke now the first Tin Machine album got good reviews and the feeling was that he was back in the game even if the work wasn't all there. BTWN and especially 'Buddha of Suburbia' built on that feeling, so by the time 'Outside' came out his rep was more or less restored.

There's a terrific interview he did with Jack Docherty in 97 which had Bowie fans raving. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yL4xxGE73E

Caught up with the thread/poll over morning coffee. What a great read. Will not go into the (good & interesting!) discussions, but rather pick out some remarks that clicked...

Disappointed that Song for Bob Dylan has not placed, and not expecting to see it now. If Be My Wife dosen't appear I'll sulk badly....

Ha, I had "You've Got A Habit Of Leaving" on my ballot.

I say "if she says she can do it then she can do it, she don't make false claims" around the house so often that my kids say it too, & they've never heard the song.

"Look Back In Anger" is the Lodger standout to me; I've been waiting so long for the album to click for me but this one's immediate

Loved the Glasto/amyl nitrate/Starman story and Bolder's blue face accident(omg)

Am I reading history correctly?

when Suede came along things changed

Definitely true over here. After Tin Machine he was a joke figure, the target of weekly mockery in the press - yet at the same time so embedded in the culture via his huge hits & Berlin coolness that the party line was 'brilliant until 83, irredeemably shit thereafter - and then there was all that nazi stuff, and The Laughing Gnome, so we knew all along, really'.

The guitar sound on The Drowners, specifically, is what changed things. It was an incredibly audacious gesture (within equally limited parameters obviously) and at a stroke opened up the whole glamBowie era for thieving, including lumpy attempts at sexuality.

The Brett/Bowie interview was kind of a crowning moment, though I never really felt Bowie was particularly engaged. He's done the rest himself by not really putting a foot wrong since as 'cool older guy you'd love to be'.

Brett's line, when asked for his reaction afterwards, was 'he wafted in in a suit and smelt beautiful', which I always found oddly charming.

Songs I had on my ballot that placed (position on my list in brackets)
39. "Fantastic Voyage" (14)
34. "Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing (reprise)" (2)
22. "Stay" (11)
20. "John, I'm Only Dancing" (12)
19. "Look Back in Anger" (9)

I think Sweet Thing probably has the highest points/votes ratio, at least up to now. I think only StS has a chance to beat it, but it probably won't. At least three of my top 10 will still show up I'm sure. Looking forward to the final 15!

xpost - yeah I remember that interview. Maybe I've still got it stored somewhere...

I too went to the Sound & Vision Greatest Hits tour - August 1990 at Maine Road, Manchester...with James supporting! The NME infamously ran a campaign to get everyone to vote for The Laughing Gnome in Bowie's phone poll to decide the pool of songs he'd play on that tour. So that's approximately where he was wrt NME ten years before that cover upthread.

"Absolute Beginners" the film - I put "That's Motivation" on my ballot. Doubtless, the only one 2 do so...

Re: Five Years, I've known Starman and Ziggy Stardust since I was a kid but I only heard FY about five ten years ago, on one of those Whistle Test repeat shows. It was an instant "holy shit!" moment and it's been my fave off that album ever since.

x-post to Mark G: ha, doubtless, yes. Though I did like it when I saw the movie I'd never consider it one of this top 20 songs :)

Sound & Vision tour, sweet memories. I can remember a day long program on public radio during a sunday where people could vote for which songs were to be played. I'm sure Bowie didn't do anything with those polls, anywhere.
Ran into my German language teacher in the park where it was held. I had to look this up, but apparently we had Kim Wilde supporting, wtf.

Oh, and the only version of "Five Years" I know well enough to recall is Frank Sidebottom's...

Bowie has just been awarded a black plaque on the street where the Ziggy Stardust album cover was taken.

Seem to recall the S&V set in Manchester being fairly short - 15-16 songs, maybe? Started with Space Oddity and Adrian Belew's Pretty Pink Rose was in there fairly early on...FFS. Four wasted minutes right there. But, still, I was pretty excited. It was my 22nd birthday.

My brother saw him in Stafford in 1978 - this was the setlist that night:

Warszawa
"Heroes"
What in the World
Be My Wife
The Jean Genie
Blackout
Sense of Doubt
Speed of Life
Breaking Glass
Fame
Beauty and the Beast
Five Years
Soul Love
Star
Hang On to Yourself
Ziggy Stardust
Suffragette City
Art Decade
Alabama Song
Station to Station
Stay
TVC15
Rebel Rebel

xp Bowie won't even be there for the unveiling. Gary Kemp will be doing it instead.
That's like having a plaque put up for Robbie Williams and having Olly Murs unveil it instead.

That's quite the setlist.

No Sound & Vision? Wasn't that his biggest hit five years or something at that stage?

biggest hit IN five years

He did three nights at the Bingley Halls in Stafford in June '78 and didn't do S&V at any of them! My brother raved about this show; he was a member at Eric's in Liverpool and saw any number of post-punk legends over the next year or so (followed Joy Div around on tour for a bit) but I don't think anything eclipsed seeing DB for the first time.

Aha, re: Sound & Vision...

The track was initially performed live only once, at Bowie’s concert at Earl’s Court on July 1, 1978. However, in 1990, for Bowie’s Sound + Vision Tour, it was a regular number

What did the gigs look like at that time? What size was the venue? What did he wear?

When I listened to S&V off the album, comparitively recently, I was surprised at how short it is.

Actually, thinking now, is it not his 'version' of a song like "Gonna write a classic, gonna write it in an attic' Adrian Gurvitz?

I can imagine DBowie thinking it as a 'jingle' more than a song..

no spoilers

Photos from Bingley Hall, 1978:
http://www.nme.com/nme-video/youtube/id/TfMH8Xrob38

40min of live performance (for German TV? Not sure the 21/5/78 Bremen show was part of the tour):
http://youtu.be/_a9bt8XGNz8

The Tina Turner-Pepsi commerical is grislier than you guys remember. Note how Cool Bowie is Mullet Bowie.

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

They always like to think they are on *this* level, when they do these ads:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pi5zFQ9plxU

As for Suede...yeah, the blitzkrieg of promo interviews in spring '93 restored Bowie as a cool figurehead even in the States, but remember: the Suede album flopped here and BTWN disappeared too after Savage Records went under.

I remember watching Velvet Goldmine at the pictures and [SPOILERS], at the end, when we have the faux-Bowie figure as a near-conservative corporate shill, I thought "Ooh, bitter fanboy. DB never sunk that low." But, actually...

Well, for a spoiler, it took me 'the appearance of the character' right at the beginning for me to think "is that not him", so...

Ah, Bowie's route isn't such a bad place to end up. Look at how Iggy's doing it.

Alice Cooper too.

While we're waiting for the rest of the results to come in, and on the subject of Bowie in the 90s, I've just discovered this bizarre and amazing interview he conducted with Tricky for Q in 1995.

http://www.moon-palace.de/tricky/q95.html

When I started buying the NME (bang in the middle of the britpop era) I think Bowie was fairly fashionable as an influence
(Pulp and Blur as well as Suede - even Oasis ended up covering "Heroes") but I seem to remember his then-current music getting fairly short shrift, especially Earthling. Hours... was sort of like "Well at least he's not jumping on bandwagons anymore". When those 1999 reissues came out, Uncut did a huge feature on him, which is when I started paying attention - I think he was the first pre-punk canon act I properly got into.

yeah the UNCUT Berlin feature in 2001 was fantastic; certainly the longest piece ever written on the subject at that point in a music mag (it was like 15 pages) and this was years before the Berlin books that came out too (the 33 and a 3rd Low book, the A New Career In A New Town book etc). the Bowie interview from the piece is here fyi http://www.bowiewonderworld.com/features/dbuncut.htm

Fantastically informative interview, presumably via email. They must have been whooping in the office when his answers arrived.