It's No POLL: "Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)" Poll

Missed this poll, but I believe I voted either "Ashes To Ashes" or "Scream Like a Baby" last time around, depending on whether I voted for the one I like best or the one that needed the vote most.

Then Play Long gets to Scary Monsters (after a fashion).

The piano was Roy, whom he used before on Station To Station, and he was in the next room – for they were all in New York; it was cheaper and asked fewer questions than anyone or anywhere in London – to Springsteen’s band, who were making The River, and hi Bruce, can we borrow Roy for a little while (“Independence Day” is the present record’s “Be My Wife”)?

nice

Is it just me or does "Ashes to Ashes" stick out like a sore thumb on Scary Monsters? It's one of the best songs of Bowie's career and of the 1980's - the rest of the record is a muddy and impenetrable mess.

it's just you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgpWCK075Do

I just posted this on the other Scary Monsters thread...

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Some speculation by Momus on the origins of the title track: http://imomus.com/index032010a.html (just over midway down the page)

Now here's producer Tony Visconti talking about recording the song and playing a rare early version in which Bowie sings some alternative lines about too many people with too many teeth.

"We told Manhattan-based funk musicians to play like a British punk group," says Visconti.

The "British punk group" in question was almost certainly Joy Division, a Bowie favourite at the time. Scary Monsters has many points in common with She's Lost Control, released the year before

Whereas Ian Curtis is singing about his female character's epilepsy, Bowie sings about a woman consumed by anxiety and claustrophobia, running amok, pursued by demons, monsters, creeps. Dennis Davis, Bowie's drummer, is playing suspiciously Stephen Morris-like snare fills, as though someone has just played him the first Joy Division album right there at The Power Station. It's the electronic syndrum-cowbell that punctuates both songs that really gives the game away, though.

Although Visconti is quick to claim credit for running a cowbell through a guitar distortion pedal -- "we just can't leave things as they are, not David and myself" -- some of the kudos should go to Martin Hannett, who produced She's Lost Control and paid meticulous attention to the drum sounds. The Scary Monsters cowbell does such a similar tonal four-bar curve to Joy Division's electronic snare that it's hard not to think it must've been deliberate. But it was a completely legitimate payback; Joy Division had themselves drawn liberal inspiration from Bowie's work with Iggy Pop.

The "rare early version" linked to from Momus' page sounds, um, like Joy Division

Is it just me or does "Ashes to Ashes" stick out like a sore thumb on Scary Monsters? It's one of the best songs of Bowie's career and of the 1980's - the rest of the record is a muddy and impenetrable mess.

It lands differently for different people - this is my fave Bowie record by far.

I've always wrestled with this record – it is in some ways like a consolidation of his Berlin records, Lodger in particular, as well as, yes, an acknowledgement of post-punk, on which he (and those records) were perhaps the biggest influence.

But it also feels a bit schizophrenic and self-conscious to me. "Ashes to Ashes" doesn't feel like it belongs on the same record as the two Fripp-assisted tracks that surround it (title track and "Fashion"). Meanwhile, something like "Teenage Wildlife" sounds far too much like "(We Can Still) Be Heroes."

Part of this should probably be chalked up to Eno's departure – the Talking Heads experienced a similar vacuum on Speaking in Tongues in which they rolled out a similar bag of tricks and the same personnel but with diminishing artistic returns.

As a result, I find the record to be something less than the sum of its parts – tho "It's No Game (Part 1)," the title track, "Ashes to Ashes" and "Fashion" are undeniably classics. Others perhaps as well.

It's got nothing to do with you
if one can grasp it

Side 1: one of the best things Bowie ever did
Side 2: just OK

The 50s-style choral vocals on "Up the Hill Backwards" were like a test run for the backing vocals on Let's Dance. In 1980 the singing sounded depersonalized and "in quotation marks", but the style returns with a much sunnier feel three years later.

Side 1: one of the best things Bowie ever did
Side 2: just OK

― Zelda Zonk

I've come around to the experiments on Side Two. It's as if the New Romantics scared him into wearing more colorful vocal plumage.

Any side containing “Teenage Wildlife” by definition cannot be just ok

SHUT UP

Teenage Wildlife is the best of side 2, I'll give you that! But the rest is nothing that's ever going to be in anyone's top 20 Bowie tracks...

I love how weary and resigned “It’s No Game Pt 2” is, tho. And the record is WEIRD, probably weirder than anything since Hunky Dory’s side 2.

To be insulted by these fascists, it's so degrading

I'm okay
you're so-so

Shiruetto ya kage ga kakumei o miteiru
Mo tengoku no jiyuu no kaidan wa nai

And no one will have seen and no one will confess
The fingerprints will prove that you couldn't pass the test

Fashion totally robbed here