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

It's time I gave his post-Let's Dance materiel a semi-well-deserved not-so-long-overdue listen.

Loving the Alien
Don't look Down
Absolute Beginners
This is not America
Time Will Crawl
Never Let Me Down
Night Flights
Strangers When We Meet
I'm Deranged
Sunday
Heathen

Really surprised (not really) nothing made the poll.

lady grinning soul voters otm. sounds like the end of a movie.

the lyrics kinda kill that song for me.

Full list?

It's on the Google Spreadsheet

@ sarahell, he sounds, all over that record, as if he was trying to push his lyrics and delivery to the most campy, twisted place; it's a parody of "Ziggy". Works great on "Drive-in Saturday".

that's my favorite Bowie album, it's just the parts about the "musky odor" and "fullness of her breast" that are kinda gross

Huh! The first time I heard that album as a teenager I was all 'i don't get it' and my opinion hasn't really changed. "Cracked actor", "Watch that man", "Panic in Detroit" and "The Jean Genie" are just too sloppy and fucked up for my taste, the same reason I guess people like it. "Time" just sounds like he's aping Brel, "The prettiest star" is too cuet. Love "Drive-in Saturday" and the title track though

My ballot, and what positions they took in the end.

Notably non-canonical, without trying to be?

1 Loving The Alien (97)
2 Wild Is The Wind (42)
3 Jean Genie (43)
4 Beauty and The Beast (58)
5 "Heroes" (6)
6 Underground (103)
7 Sound and Vision (4)
8 Can't Help Thinking About Me (109)
9 Drive In Saturday (28)
10 Rebel Rebel (11)
11 Baal's Hymn (107)
12 John, I'm Only Dancing (21)
13 Scary Monsters (50)
14 Starman (19)
15 Under Pressure (24)
16 All The Young Dudes (38)
17 DJ (66)
18 Fame (34)
19 What's Really Happening (169)
20 That's Motivation (174)

11 Baal's Hymn (107)

Good man.

ta.

My ballot, bold didn't place.

1 It's No Game (Part 1)
2 Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)
3 Golden Years
4 "Heroes"
5 Starman
6 Life On Mars
7 Under Pressure
8 Fashion
9 Boys Keep Swinging
10 Changes
11 Aladdin Sane
12 Move On
13 Sound and Vision
14 Rebel Rebel
15 Hang On To Yourself
16 Jump They Say
17 Up The Hill Backwards
18 China Girl
19 Strangers When We Meet
20 Memories of a Free Festival

Albums

1 Scary Monsters
2 Ziggy Stardust
3 Hunky Dory
4 Lodger
5 Earthling

'Jump they say' missing out seems like the most egregious omission to me. After the fallow period of the mid 80s this was something I could say with some confidence that he wasn't just a heritage act but someone still capable of new, exciting work.

"Life on Mars" and "Drive in Saturday", are they not pretty much the same song, subjectmatterwise?

• The post-1983 shutout in the top 60 is regrettable

I've been having a think about this. I try to make a point of listening to everything I can when I contribute to one of these polls, and the thing that consistently comes out is that artists go on releasing good work a lot longer than you think. Nevertheless I mostly keep voting for the 'peak era' stuff.

I can think of two reasons for this:
- there's a kind of urgency in earlier work that dissipates as the artist mellows, doesn't take life so seriously, and tends to explore subtleties more than going for massive hooks and dramatic arrangements.
- there's always a cultural cachet to the more popular stuff; everyone knows it, so we spend more time talking about it and attaching meanings to it. It's natural to love it more.

And more practically, it'd be slightly bloody-minded to fill your ballot with Heathen deep cuts when you know that everyone else is going to be voting for side one of Low.

I'll be interested to see how the Paul Simon one pans out, where his peak era is possibly less pronounced than someone like Bowie.

It's not that I don't like anything post-1983, it's just that there's such an embarrassment of riches up to that point that I'd only include a later song if I was trying to make a point - it would feel dutiful rather than sincere. Maybe if the ballots were 40 places instead of 20, but then WmC would have had a nervous breakdown and Jump They Say isn't worth that.

Just me and Owen P voting for I'm Deranged then. Only five of us propped for Jump They Say...

"What's Really Happening"

Yes, I'm glad you asked me about that. I voted for it anyway..

Basically, this was a competition by DBowie on Bowienet. He put up an instrumental with him going la la la, and what you had to do was write the song's verses. Himself sang the chorus.

Then you 'uploaded' your verses.

The next part of the process involved clicking a link, and getting ten (or was it five?) sets of verses by other people, and you got to vote them out of five. Tell you what though, all the ones I saw were absolutely terrible! So, i thought I might be in with a good chance.

Anyways, the prize went to one Alex Grant (very close alphabetically, I noticed), and his verses were fine. Fair play, if someone said his were better, I would not argue.

I never got round to 'recording' my version. Might save it for the next ILX compilation.

"Life on Mars" and "Drive in Saturday", are they not pretty much the same song, subjectmatterwise?

I've always been a bit unclear about the what's-going-on of Life on Mars?, esp the second verse, but Drive In Saturday seems to me post-human sci-fi looking back wistfully at us (& 70s looking at 60s, 50s), & I can't get that to match quite.

it's about a girl who has a miserable family life who likes going to the movies

I think "Drive in Saturday" is responsible for my favourite DLTism, after he played it:

"And speaking of "Crash course for the Ravers, let's over to the traffic news"

(hey, it shows he was listening!)

Since all the images in LoM are more or less American, I interpret it as being about a girl (Bowie substitute) looking at America as though it's a not a real place, as though it's an entirely fictious entity that only exists in movies. Since for an English person, practically everything we think of as the real America comes from movies/TV/media pop culture generally.

are they though? sailors fighting in the dancehall could totally be British

i think the thing is that the descriptions of these movies all code as "old" b-movies, that she lives somewhere crappy where there is one movie theater that plays these old b-movies because it is crappy and can't afford doesn't give a fuck about showing contemporary fare. it's probably during the day, i'm guessing

I think it ties into the faltering pre-Ziggy state of Bowie's career: Space Oddity was a false start, he hadn't quite made the leap into stardom, he's still a struggling songwriter (failing to write the English lyrics for the song that would become My Way) - just like the girl in the song has failed in her plans to run away from home, and the whole ludicrous Hollywood spectacle doesn't console her, just mocks her dreams of escape.

She wants the escapism, but the films are rubbish and cliché driven.

so that second verse is… Bowie/girl poetic digression about rotten state of England, uk pop culture consumer thralldom?

It's just "I am the Walrus" type bol.

The post-1983 shutout in the top 60 is regrettable

David Bowie continued to make records after 1983? Far out. (Sorry--being a wiseguy.) More regrettable to me is that nothing from the Lower Third snuck in.

Only 3 other ppl voting for "Absolute Beginners" is just shocking. (I hadn't expected much support for "Looking for Water".)

It just occurred to me (seeing the date, d'oh) - that mugshot Moka posted was taken two days after the Nassau show in '76 that's included in the Station to Station reissue from last year.

A day later, at Madison Square Garden, still classy.
http://www.teenagewildlife.com/Appearances/Concerts/1976/0326/JD02.jpg

1. Life on Mars?
2. Ashes to Ashes
3. Five Years
4. Station to Station
5. Rock n Roll Suicide
6. The Bewlay Brothers
7. Sweet Thing
8. Lady Grinning Soul
9. Fantastic Voyage
10. Sound and Vision
11. Yassassin
12. Quicksand
13. Look Back in Anger
14. Sons of the Silent Age
15. It's No Game (Part 2)
16. The Secret Life of Arabia
17. Changes
18. Absolute Beginners
19. African Night Flight
20. Golden Years

1. Starman
2. Life On Mars?
3. Oh! You Pretty Things
4. Ziggy Stardust
5. Lady Stardust
6. Cracked Actor
7. Heroes
8. Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing (Reprise)
9. Bewlay Brothers
10. Quicksand
11. Lady Grinning Soul
12. Prettiest Star
13. Young Americans
14. Rock 'n' Roll Suicide
15. Stay
16. Time
17. TVC 15
18. John, I'm Only Dancing
19. Watch That Man
20. Five Years

Changes accidentally ommitted. Painfullest cuts, iirc:

Hallo Spaceboy
Panic In Detroit
Modern Love
Jean Genie
Moonage Daydream
Ashes to Ashes
Station to Station

I'd have put Stay higher id I'd listened to it before I submitted, but I'm still happy with Starman at #1. It makes me smile all over my body.

regarding what "Life on Mars?" is about: http://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/2010/03/23/life-on-mars/

I honested figured ILX's love for Berlin-era Bowie would place Station to Station and Heroes above Life on Mars, but I always believed it would be in the top three... my local Bowie universe has always regarded Hunky Dory as his finest work (I remember late night diner arguments over Hunky Dory vs. Aladdin Sane, me arguing the latter) and Life on Mars is the shorthand for that record.

honestly. honestly!

I like Aladdin Sane heaps better than Hunky Dory. It hangs together better and doesn't have any songs on it that make my teeth hurt. Some of HD is just horrible. However there is a certain softness (warm and upbeat like in Starman or wistful and strange like in Bewlay Brothers) that you don't really hear again. When it's good, it's really good?

What part of HD is horrible? "Fill Your Heart"?

I like Fill Your Heart!

I don't like Fill Your Heart.

Also I am no fan of Andy Warhol or Song for Bob Dylan, cute & clever once but very grating after 30 years, and for some reason Kooks rubs me up the wrong way lately too.

B-b-b-but that dead-on guitar playing on Andy Warhol!

Our criteria at the time was admittedly... very high school. Although since the Ryko reissues were just released, we actually had access to his entire catalog! Space Oddity was rejected out of hand for reeking of hippy and the sixties, Ziggy Stardust was "too popular" although what that meant in real terms I don't know since there were about six Bowie fans in our entire high school, most of them teachers. So the battle lines were something like Man Who Sold the World/Hunky Dory vs. Aladdin Sane/Low. Eventually somebody got a copy of Station to Station and attempts at narrative were abandoned.

I agree--Fill Your Heart, Kooks, Warhol, and Dylan are stinkers!

No! Warhol is great!

It's DELIBERATELY ANNOYING!

Kooks is just a nice place to be

'Andy Warhol' is clearly where Metallica stole one of the riffs in 'Master Of Puppets' from.

"Andy sleeping/ Andy tired/ Andy take a little snooze"

Don't know why, but i find it hilarious.

I used to think it was funny, but I've heard it too many times for the childish humour *or* the natty guitar to overcome the oh-god-so-annoying vocals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCf3xa5tYKM