David Bowie R.I.P

Dwight Yoakam names his five favorite Bowie songs: http://www.ocregister.com/articles/yoakam-700535-bowie-elvis.html

xpost -- yer welcome!

i tried rewatching velvet goldmine

i still hate it. well, i like looking at it but hearing jonathan rhys meyers sing causes me physical pain & mcgregor's fake jagger bums me out. i know it's supposed to all be a pose but i caaaaaaaan't stand how affected it all is

If I remember right, the concept with Hours was like inhabiting old "Bowie" spaces, right? That's certainly obvious on "Seven," which is fairly amazing. I love "Thursday's Child."

i fucking hate velvet goldmine too

I really like Todd Haynes for the most part. VG just tries way too hard

Aw, my friend Dawn is quoted in that NY Times piece, with a photo of her daughter (who is soulmates with my daughters, bonded by Bowie, Wild Flag, Ex Hex...). She was the first person I thought of when I heard the news.

Revisiting The Next Day this morning, for the first time in about two years. Feeling surprised and a bit guilty about having dismissed/ignored it pretty quickly after release (last.fm tells me 25 listens, which seems correct).
For me, the title track is putting everything from hours to Reality to shame in terms of sheer vitality, force and also: fun. His voice is so strong, remarkable lyrics and generally it sounds like an unreleased b-side from Lodger, like an excellent mix of Repetition and Red Sails.

The Stars (Are Out Tonight) another highlight, from there it gets a bit hit and miss. Certainly would have been a better album if only 10 songs would have made the cut, but its undeniably a total positive surprise, that such a comeback was still possible at that time.

mcgregor's fake jagger

Wasn't it supposed to be Iggy?

It looked more like Kurt, really.

I remember seeing an interview with Ewan McGregor at the time of release and he said he got to get out his 'inner Noel Gallagher' in that role, or something similar

Whatever that is worth

I will take you AAAALLLLLL on about Velvet Goldmine in another thread, come and have a go if you think you're etc. (semi-joking emoji here) but not on the Bowie RIP thread.

I just think it's a bit disrespectful to discuss fan fiction in an RIP thread.

That's what it is, isn't it? Never thought about it like that.

Lou Reed's best albums

all in the '80s

no way

Aged 10, "Ashes to Ashes" spooked the hell out of me but I knew there was something deep happening there. In the last week I've spent a lot of time with "Scary Monsters" and it's pretty remarkable. And Ashes is breathtaking in its complexity. I guess when you have that rhythm section, you can make even a crazed lysergic paranoid meringue sound as funky as hell, and people will love it. But it's a phenomenally odd song to reach number 1.

I always forget there's a Tom Verlaine cover on Scary Monsters

Lou Reed's best albums

all in the '80s

no way
― Chicamaw (Ward Fowler), Thursday, January 21, 2016 6:22 AM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Haha yea I was like say what now?

Oh yeah. I've said so many times. The Blue Mask, Legendary Hearts, New Sensation – his most rewarding solo records. Toss in New York, which some of you like more than I, and it's a good decade.

The seventies boast, what, Transformer, Coney Island Baby, and maaaaayybe The Bells? It's not even close.

None of his 80s albs can match Berlin, Metal Machine Music, Street Hassle or Take no Prisoners, just for starters.

The true mystery of Bowie is Never Let Me Down. Pretty much all the other missteps can be explained away. Tonight was a slapdash attempt to cash in on the Let's Dance phenomenon; a case can be made for Tin Machine (although I'm not going to make it); the try-hard 90s albums are OK in their way... but Never Let Me Down is dreadful, just dreadful, despite the fact that he spent a lot of time on it and promoted the hell out of it. At the time he said it was getting back to what he was doing with Scary Monsters! But I defy any Bowie fan to listen to the Glass Spiders monologue without cringing. Getting it so wrong and so right is really Bowie's strange alchemy...

― Zelda Zonk, Mittwoch, 20. Januar 2016 11:56 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Always thought I'd be the only one around here going to bat for Tonight in comparison to NLMD. Listened to the latter again last week with a friend and we both agreed that it's not only for the most part ridiculous (like Tonight) but sounding like a total void, idea and inspiration-wise, produced to death.
Granted the majority of Tonight, Loving The Alien and Blue Jean excepted, are accidents with varying degrees of unintented hilarity, but the songs seem alive at least while the whole of NLMD to me feels like a vast and lifeless desert of overambitious creative white noise, difficult to even walk through. Pushing Ahead Of The Dame sums it up nicely in the review of Beat Of Your Drum: "If only the whole album had been as tasteless as this."

Although I wasn't quite sure of what to make of it before (I think I mostly liked it but I probably haven't listened to it since the '90s ended), it's pretty clear to me after hearing it in chronological context that Outside is Bowie's best since Scary Monsters. A little more cringingly Tekwar in spots than I'd like, but David is present! And engaged! And the music isn't doing him a massive, dated disservice! Okay, it's a little dated but not in an off-putting way.

Outside is Bowie's best most interesting since Scary Monsters. Some real high-highs, but also often a slog. It does, however, reprise/re-record this song, which is probably his best single since "Scary Monsters:"

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

Oh yeah. I've said so many times. The Blue Mask, Legendary Hearts, New Sensation – his most rewarding solo records. Toss in New York, which some of you like more than I, and it's a good decade.

The seventies boast, what, Transformer, Coney Island Baby, and maaaaayybe The Bells? It's not even close.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, January 21, 2016 6:43 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

None of his 80s albs can match Berlin, Metal Machine Music, Street Hassle or Take no Prisoners, just for starters.

― Chicamaw (Ward Fowler), Thursday, January 21, 2016 6:46 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I just listened to the first Lou Reed s/t solo album for the first time in the last couple years and it kind of amazes me how underrated it is

yeah and also Berlin, Street Hassle and MMM are major works IMO, Take No Prisoners is fun more than good per se....also Rock n Roll Animal....Sally Can't Dance is p good too

The first three songs of New York as so amazing they almost convince me that the whole album is a classic but I do love it mostly because it was my first Lou album

None of his 80s albs can match Berlin, Metal Machine Music, Street Hassle or Take no Prisoners, just for starters.

― Chicamaw (Ward Fowler),

too much junk on these albums, Street Hassle excepted

Nah, Berlin and Metal Machine Music are flawless. All killer, no filler.

And the lowest of Lou's '70s lows are nowhere near as low as Mistrial.

the blue mask is the only album i need post-70's.

how do you distinguish the wheat from the chaff on MMM?

I think a few Berlin tracks can stand along songs like "My Red Joystick"

also we're leaving out a certain album by the name of Mistrial on out of his 80s dossier (ha xpost)

i liked new sensations when it came out but i would never play it now.

I think Berlin is a sodden self-parody but so am I.

(only albums i need to own forever: lou reed, berlin, sally can't dance, the bells, the blue mask, rock n roll animal, lou reed live. the rest is for demented superfans who have to justify everything like sonic youth fans.)

how do you distinguish the wheat from the chaff on MMM?

I'd wager that most people feel the entire album is either one or the other.

Ecstasy is a wonderful record.

maybe the first time he hired a real producer who didn't fuck shit up, and the songs are terrific.

are we taking it for granted that transformer (famously prod. bowie/ronson) is the best one and that's why no one has mentioned it yet AT ALL?

I mentioned it. It has more than a couple tracks I don't care for.

Yeah, Transformer is pretty patchy, and the great tracks on it are so over-played and over-familiar that I can't really listen to it anymore (both times I saw Lou live - on the New York and Magic & Loss(!) tours - he wearily encored w/ 'Walk on the Wild Side' and even the audience didn't seem that bothered that he'd played it. )

But it would take a demented superfan to suggest that Transformer is inferior to New Sensations :-)

i like the 70's live versions of the best songs on transformer more than the studio versions. satellite, vicious, etc.

R&R animal and lou reed live are seriously two of my favorite records of the 70's and i am not a live album superfan. live albums that are essential to me a pretty small list.

(i am a demented dick wagner and steve hunter superfan though...)

i also like coney island baby more than any 80's record other than the blue mask. but i don't feel the need to own coney island baby anymore...

Transformer still feels pretty classic to me, that Ronson guitar sound, excellent tunes, great Lou vocals. i like the wagner/hunter attack, but my main complaint about R&R Animal is probably Lou's performances.
anyway, probably should be on a Lou thread...

Yes, let's talk about this from that Dwight Yoakam piece upthread, wau:

six months before Elvis’ death in 1977, the King had called him out of the blue to discuss Bowie possibly producing his next album.

(only albums i need to own forever: lou reed, berlin, sally can't dance, the bells, the blue mask, rock n roll animal, lou reed live. the rest is for demented superfans who have to justify everything like sonic youth fans.)

― scott seward, Thursday, January 21, 2016 9:11 AM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Transformer, the only album known by non-superfans, is only for demented superfans???

hahaha! don't listen to me about anything! yeah yeah transformer. haven't played it in decades. probably pretty good though.

Meantime

http://pitchfork.com/news/63059-hear-david-bowie-impersonate-bruce-springsteen-neil-young-iggy-pop-lou-reed-tom-waits-in-newly-unearthed-recording/

Oh yeah. I've said so many times

Indeed you have!

bowie producing elvis in 1977 is a ridiculous thought...

Meantime

http://pitchfork.com/news/63059-hear-david-bowie-impersonate-bruce-springsteen-neil-young-iggy-pop-lou-reed-tom-waits-in-newly-unearthed-recording/

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, January 21, 2016 10:45 AM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is the most hilarious thing I've heard in a very long time.

The second one is not Marc Bolan?

yeah sounds more like him than Neil Young imo

transformer is amazing, all the way through.

i'm a terrible bowie fan because although i think of myself as a huge fan, i really just obsessively listen to everything up through let's dance and then skip forward to the next day and http://i.imgur.com/DCfpQ4X.gif. it's interesting to read all the accounts of attempts to give another fair shot to tonight and never let me down and tin machine, and the varying opinions about the 90s stuff. i just can't see myself diving into that stuff for a very long time. i've listened to station to station roughly 3 billion times and it's still deeply satisfying, every single time, and life is too short to be listening to the likes of Tonight. i suppose i'd be interested in a playlist of only post-Let's Dance songs, though.