Post a controversial music opinion

there’s only two cocaine ballads on station to station, for fucks sake. And his “wild as the wind” is amazing, another great closing track.

I’m no Bowie scholar, but isn’t Let’s Dance supposed to be his big R&B move?

I'd say Young Americans more fully meets that description.

“Fame” was a US no 1.

(“Golden Years” was a top 10 as well)

"Fascination" scratches the itch for me.

^^ top ten Bowie

His singing and Vandross' vocal/chord sequence = A+

they played Bowie once an hour on the local classic rock radio station when i was growing up, where did y’all live?

he did recruit Stevie Ray Vaughan for the record (and wanted him for the tour, but Vaughan declined).

Vaughan had signed on, took part in the tour rehearsals (which were taped and bootlegged), and really had a sweetheart deal worked out where he could take his own backing band Double Trouble along to Europe to play their own shows between Bowie dates. But then at the absolute 11th hour SRV's manager at the time demanded a serious pay raise from Bowie's people, who very quickly (and according to Bowie himself, without his counsel) fired Vaughan, who supposedly arrived at the airport in Texas unawares of any of this, only to meet his gear and luggage on the tarmac as it was being removed from the plane.

If you ever come across an open copy of SRV's Montreaux concerts, Bowie wrote a fantastic essay about their relationship for the liners which is very much worth pulling the booklet out for.

^^The CD version. Not sure if that was carried over to the DVDs.

At the time, was reported that he found out at the last minute that he was gonna be paid union scale, and he said he could do a lot better than that without leaving Texas.
xxpost Thanxx again to Alfred and Tarfumes for getting me to finally check out the 2016 Rhino Young Americans, which I'd never listened to at all, from the 70s on, mainly just because I didn't like the title single and "Across The Universe Still don't, but all the rest takes me for a ride: Bowie times The Philly Sound, oh my (gotta learn more about the latter too, as Alfred on Dusty's The Complete Atlantic Singles also reminded me).
Intrigued by these wik notes on alt & outtakes, also

In 2016, the album was remastered for the Who Can I Be Now? (1974–1976) box set, which also includes an earlier, rawer-sounding draft of the album, titled The Gouster.[87]

“Fame” was a US no 1.

(“Golden Years” was a top 10 as well)

Ferry and Bowie saved my life, helped me realize myself as a queer person. I love Bowie's bad guitar and sax work, I love his awful vocals -- I love'em as much as his undiminished ear for melody and his restlessness. He wasn't a poseur -- he was the greatest fan of music ever to make a major career. He tried to recreate the music he loved, and he created a series of poses to make sense of himself as a bad-toothed Englishman with a lousy voice and awesome record collection trying to be Elvis.

Eh.

I like The Gouster a lot. It improves on Young Americans quite a bit.

I kinda feel like Nile was a perfect partner for Bowie. Similar level of polish. Ditto Omar Hakim.

While I admire SRV's work on Let's Dance, it seems more a happy accident than an inevitable, seamless integration.

I was always pro-Bowie from a young age (cool older sisters gave me tapes). I saw Jazzin' for Blue Jean on Beta. In college I fell desperately in love with a hardcore completist Bowie fan, who adored everything up to and including "The Laughing Gnome" and "Little Drummer Boy."

I will confess that I didn't follow every subsequent development but I do think his last album was a majestic statement. Rip

xxpost (re Alfred) Right on. And he tends to come in and take over any thread where his name is uttered, like Elvis, Dylan, few others. In the 70s, he seemed like as much a presence as anybody could be---charisma, prestige, chutzpah, however many records he may have actually been selling at any given time (Elton John, the only other UK glam-associated star to make it that big, probably even bigger sales-wise, expressed some frustration with Bowie's flair for self-promotion, even when he seemed to be mainly working his ass off, in the studio especially), a constant presence even on Deep South small suburb AM, album tracks on FM, mainstream celebrity magazines as well as rock ones, he was on Soul Train*, he guest hosted The Midnight Special, talk about suburban Friday night freaks & geeks poptop dimebag NBC w Johnny Rivers' version of the theme song, Wolfman Jack as greeter

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kcoju5QP5iM

** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kcoju5QP5iM

oh yeah here's "a rough edit" of the whole 1980 Floor Show, broadcast in '73:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kcoju5QP5iM

Sorry for the double post! Seems like he moved on from "trying to recreate" in any literal sense to mixing influences, adding new ones, and stirring faster and fasterrr---and really, "Space Oddity, " his breakthrough Top 40 hit, didn't sound like anyone else I could think of, and still can't, ditto the first LP I heard, The Man Who Sold The World, although the studio backing band could sound like good live Jeff Beck Group, kinda. Some of his shittier album vocals later on did sound too much like Anthony Newly.

Elton John, the only other UK glam-associated star to make it that big

My god, triple post! Here's his whole Midnight Special:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxRWsQ1nre4

Hi Steve If you read the description you'll see that I stated that I had edited out all the footage of the other artists so that the video contained only the complete Bowie footage.
The complete show with all the artists is a little project for future

anyway here's the line-up and songlist:

Recorded October 18-20th, 1973
London, England
Broadcast on The Midnight Special
November 16th, 1973

Featuring:
DAVID BOWIE
MARIANNE FAITHFULL
THE TROGGS
CARMEN
AMANDA LEAR

Opening Credits
Sorrow
Bulerias
Everything's Alright
I Can't Explain
As Tears Go By
Wild Thing
Bullfight
The Jean Genie
The Midnight Special Promo
20th Century Blues
I Can't Control Myself
Strange Movies
I Got You Babe

Can’t remember where I read it, but supposedly Bowie was so coked out of his mind that his Soul Train segment required far more takes than usual; at one point Don Cornelius took Bowie aside and sternly told him to get his shit together.

I have seen some retrospective documentary or biopic or classic albums or behind the music-type thingy that hypothesized as follows: Bowie did not set out to be a rock star or musician per se. He was a visionary artist and personality (what today we might call an "influencer"). Music just happened to be the quickest and most efficient way for him to enter the culture as an icon of ultraWarholian proportions.

If circumstances had aligned differently, he would have been perfectly happy to invade Anglophone culture (and subsequently global culture) as a visual artist. Or poet. Or filmmaker or actor or whatever.

An interesting comparison is to Debbie Harry and Madonna, both of whom were shrewd and ambitious enough to say: I am going to be famous right about meow. Try and stop me.

Well maybe, but I read a quote from one of his school mates: at assembly, when they were all asked what they meant to be after graduating, and other lads were saying like "Electrician," "Engineer," "Accountant," he answered, "Pop star." Of course he did paint, which seems to have been obligatory for his generation of London rock stars, and did get way into studying mime, which came in handy in stage version of "The Elephant Man," when he had to go into and out of contorted stances, pretty carefully, as he said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1fTtwGqdQw I liked his movies OK, but wasn't surprised that he didn't make that many of them, never did seem to be anything like a preoccupation.

He was playing in small bands from a pretty young age and after the Konrads it seemed like he hammered at it pretty hard. Once he heard Little Richard and Elvis the was off and running. Granted, it took him a while to become BOWIE. Any other things he has worked on hasn’t been much more than dabbling. His visual art was mainly mediocre and his acting wasn’t anything special. I do agree that he wanted to be a star and music was the best way to get there.

The Rebel Rebel single mix made me like the song much more than the album version.

Was thinking about that mix when yall first mentioned the song!

Don Cornelius took Bowie aside and sternly told him to get his shit together.

Ok this thread is making me go down a Bowie rabbit hole and there’s so many gems throughout his discography that I forgot about.

Did we ever have a Bowie artist poll?

Oh yeah one of the esrly ones

NEUPÖLLN - ILM Artist Poll #14 - David Bowie (POLLS ARE CLOSED)

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

This one rather

other lads were saying like "Electrician," "Engineer," "Accountant

How dreary, I mean even the kid in 'Harriet the Spy' who intended to become an accountant went around telling everyone he wanted to be a ballplayer.

An interesting comparison is to Debbie Harry and Madonna

I've def thought that Bowie, Madonna and Miles Davis form a triangle. Part of it is the way these artists approach collaboration, foster the collusion of disparate musical personalities and envisage the space for those personalities in their work.

Bowie did not set out to be a rock star or musician per se. He was a visionary artist and personality (what today we might call an "influencer"). Music just happened to be the quickest and most efficient way for him to enter the culture as an icon of ultraWarholian proportions.

I don't think this is wrong, exactly. But you could just as easily say it about pretty much whoever.

And it's fodder for a separate thread, maybe: Are there musicians who are "just musicians" and others who are capitol-A "Artists" or "creatives" first and foremost, and how can you tell the difference?

Most artists gravitate to the medium that excites them the most, sometimes regardless of aptitude, and excitement over a medium is often bound together with that kind of personal ambition, with what has cache and to whom, or where praise, attention or employment can be earned.

He may be equally iconic, but I don't think Bowie has had anything like the broader cultural impact of Warhol, in terms of taking something fundamental about how we perceive things and flipping it around. And though he shared Warhol's interest in foregrounding himself, he was much more Expressionistic than an "artist-machine"- while A LOT of other musicians have automated and routed out their processes in different ways.

I don't know, though. One of the things I have difficulty with in the visual arts- so many of the people who do that have a sense of "what's right", so many people have decided what they're about. It's a professional necessity. And I think those kinds of agendas were a problem for Bowie, too. He talks about self-reinvention as a survival instinct, but it's also a destructive act. Now, a record has the ability to sidestep whatever it's supposed to do. When it ends it ENDS. This was not a guy who wanted to make a statue.

My family and I were recently walking and passed by an art gallery that had a show of Bob Dylan's artwork. The wife and kids know I'm a Dylan nut; "Do you want to go? We can go if you want!" I shrugged my shoulders. "Nah."

There must be a big musician who is also a great visual artist? Robert Pollard's collages are miles better than any of Bowie/Dylan's art stuff, but it still seems like a stretch. Beefheart?

Eno seems to have the well-rounded artist thing figured out fairly well.

Arnold Schoenberg was a decent painter.

John Cage did some nice visual art.

Many other musicians in the music broadly named “jazz” have graphic scores that are quite interesting to look at: Anthony Braxton, Wadada Leo Smith, etc.

And it's fodder for a separate thread, maybe: Are there musicians who are "just musicians" and others who are capitol-A "Artists" or "creatives" first and foremost, and how can you tell the difference?

I think this would be an interesting thread. I’m having trouble agreeing with you re: you could just as easily say it about pretty much whoever (i.e., that they’re "creatives" first and foremost, who just happen to chosen music as a quick route to fame)… at least, when I think of “great musicians” (rock stars, etc.), music really does seem their main forte, and I don’t think they would have “made it” via another art form. It helps that most of them also have a lot of charisma / “star power,” of course…

(I guess, in other words, “just musicians” wouldn’t necessarily be the other side of the dichotomy – as there’s definitely that X-factor in play for almost anyone who becomes a “star.”)

Joni Mitchell is a very good painter imo

who just happen to chosen music as a quick route to fame

oh, what I'm saying is more like: there are different varieties of recognition, one may be more appealing than another, and it's one of the things that can excite someone about a specific medium, but usually not the only thing, and I suspect there are other reasons why Bowie in particular and others more generally are drawn to their medium over others, including capabilities/limitations of the form itself and cultural expectations of its practitioners.

And I would add that artists will usually produce better work in the medium where they have the most practice or discipline.

There must be a big musician who is also a great visual artist?

Ron Wood obv

He's got his own exhibition to do.

Bill Dixon was fairly renowned for his painting (and later, printmaking), but he had been a painter before he began his music studies. He has said that he’s been lucky in that his work received far more exposure than that of some of his contemporaries in visual art by appearing on his album covers (around 15, which is most of his discography).

That guy in that punk band.

... i.e. Nick Blinko of Rudimentary Peni.

Beefheart is the obvious one in that he probably made more out of painting than music.

Well maybe, but I read a quote from one of his school mates: at assembly, when they were all asked what they meant to be after graduating, and other lads were saying like "Electrician," "Engineer," "Accountant," he answered, "Pop star."

― dow, Friday, June 24, 2022 6:54 PM (two days ago)

oooh, look at bowie's schoolmates being all "i was into the whole electrician thing way before bowie, he never said a word about it until '78"

can we keep the word "creatives" out of this thread

The opposite of this phenomenon might be Jacques Brel spending years trying to reinvent himself as a filmmaker (though I haven't seen any of his movies, maybe they're great - maybe Madonna's a great film director too, but I'm not eager to find out).

Now, a record has the ability to sidestep whatever it's supposed to do. When it ends it ENDS. This was not a guy who wanted to make a statue.

A more extreme example of this mindset would be Fela Kuti, who never performed songs live that he'd already recorded. You weren't gonna hear any of the old shit if you went to see him — you were gonna hear next year's shit.

There must be a big musician who is also a great visual artist?

Peter Brötzmann. He's designed almost all of his own album covers going back to 1965, as well as gig posters, etc., etc., but he also paints, is a printmaker, builds Rauschenberg-style sculptures and has had multiple gallery exhibits of his work.

https://www.udiscovermusic.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Ronnie-Wood-painting-web-optimised-1000.jpg

Bono dabbles in poetry, I hear.

Jonathan Richman is a pretty decent artist. I like his stuff more than Ron Wood’s anyways.

I heard he makes very nice pizza ovens as well.

Saying that Bowie doesn’t have blues in his music was a half-baked and on reflection clearly false stab in the dark. My apologies for the derail. One of his early bands was called the Manish Boys, for chrissakes.

Grimes makes her own artwork and scammed some rich person into buying an NFT of hers for 6 million or so, guess that makes her one of the most successful ones.

One of the Tool guys helps make their art and videos iirc?