David Bowie

[Babali]

Diamond Dogs is simply amazing, I love the dystopian apocalyptic feel. It's just about as much a masterpiece as Scary Monsters, but in my opinion Bowie released many masterpieces. Teenage Wildlife was my all-time favorite song for several years, it is still one of the greatest songs I've ever heard.

[botley]

Agreed on all counts. There's something so coy and appealing about those two albums despite their bleak apocalyptic content; a combo at which Bowie excels.

You're working on a custom compilation for your collection or what is this for?

Yes, a two-disc update of The Platinum Collection (see previous pages for Disc Two). Purely for my own amusement. This first disc is turning out to be a bit of a slog because it's mostly Tin Machine and other collaborations without much in the way of good solid songs (with a few exceptions).

[frankie teardrop]

i had no idea 'drive in saturday' was an apocalyptic song until recently. yeah, i knew about 'suffragette city' and 'panic in detroit' and obviously stuff like 'saviour machine' being all gloom and glory, but 'drive in saturday' was just too charming to imagine it as anything other than a twee love song. which it still is, to an extent.

[botley]

It's definitely the prevailing undercurrent in most of Bowie's songwriting. Even "Let's Dance" ('for fear tonight is all...')!

[Necrodoommonkey]

Changes 1. LOVE that album!
But seriously...there's an astounding lack of love for Lodger. Am I the only person who loves Lodger? Yassassin is amazing.

[Babali]

Changes 1. LOVE that album!
But seriously...there's an astounding lack of love for Lodger. Am I the only person who loves Lodger? Yassassin is amazing.

Bowie is just epic. I have been a huge Bowie fan for years and still have not gotten through all his music. Lodger is another one that, you're right, doesn't get enough love. I'll have to throw it on today.

[allegro]

i had no idea 'drive in saturday' was an apocalyptic song until recently. yeah, i knew about 'suffragette city' and 'panic in detroit' and obviously stuff like 'saviour machine' being all gloom and glory, but 'drive in saturday' was just too charming to imagine it as anything other than a twee love song. which it still is, to an extent.

Panic in Detroit is allegedly about Iggy's having lived and hung out with the White Panthers and the MC5 and all that shit going down with the race riots.

http://foggynotionbooks.com/detroit.html

http://www.annarbor.com/entertainment/stooges-tour/

http://makemyday.free.fr/whitepanthers.htm

[frankie teardrop]

yeah, inspired by his detroit stories, but i always felt it had a dystopian feel about it, as well. america in ruins/edge of society sort of vibe, which is likely why the story excited him in the first place.

[allegro]

Yeah, well, if you survived the Detroit race riots, you'd feel like it was all pretty fucking dystopian, too.

[botley]

Speaking of epic shit-shows, this 1988/1996 disc is turning out to be a pain in the ass to sequence. I dunno if there's even enough room for all these fucking singles — there are so many of them, far more than I originally thought, and they're totally schizophrenic. We're talking half early-90s dance mix territory, and half mid-tempo Tin Machine rock. Both of which are my defining impressions of that time period, anyway.

If I hadn't picked an upper limit of 80 minutes, or an era of Bowie's career with lots of content that I'm not entirely fluent in, I'd add some deep cuts for breadth and variety. Instead, right now I have Queen Latifah rapping over top of "Fame '90" (and ugh, did that really need to happen? "Fame" is already on disc two of The Platinum Collection so I may drop it) right next to "Pretty Pink Rose" with Adrian Belew. Maybe I'll wait for that "Pushing Ahead" blog to get up to speed on this era, so I can brush up my familiarity a bit more.

[frankie teardrop]

oddly enough, 'pretty pink rose' was one of the better songs from that era, not that it's saying much. in general, the deeper cuts were the gems of the late 80s/90s era bowie, though i like all of outside, singles & album tracks. buddha of suburbia is pretty great too, though it's been ages since i've listened to it.

'jump they say' is a pretty great single from that era, though. i do also like 'you belong in rock n' roll' from tin machine II and have some sort of soft spot love for "real cool world" though it's obviously repetitive and dated.

i reckon you put "time will crawl" on the previous disc, no? i think pushing ahead of the dame just got to that track, one of the only listenable cuts from never let me down.

[GoodSoldier333]

Ok, i take it back. I'm actually starting to enjoy some tracks from Reality. May not be quite up there with other work, but definitely a more than modest record.

The Wedding from Black Tie White Noise has to be one of my favorite record openers ever. I get shivers when i first hear that bass come in.

[botley]

Sadly, it doesn't look like I'll have space for "The Motel" (one of my favourites) on this Best of David Bowie 1988/1996 compilation... there was too much goddamned Tin Machine to include. I was able to give Outside the last word, however, with a one-two punch of its strongest tracks at the end.

Suggestions are always welcome, but this is how it's starting to shape up at 78 minutes or so:

1. Jump They Say (7" Version) 2. Real Cool World (Radio Remix) 3. Black Tie White Noise (Radio Edit) with Al B. Sure! 4. Under the God with Tin Machine 5. Telling Lies (Feelgood Mix) 6. Heaven's in Here (Edit) with Tin Machine 7. Hallo Spaceboy (Remix) with Pet Shop Boys 8. Tin Machine with Tin Machine 9. Prisoner of Love (Edit) with Tin Machine 10. Strangers When We Meet (Radio Edit) 11. One Shot (Edit) with Tin Machine 12. Pretty Pink Rose with Adrian Belew 13. Baby Universal (7" Version) with Tin Machine 14. Buddha of Suburbia (Video Edit) with Lenny Kravitz 15. Miracle Goodnight 16. You Belong in Rock 'N Roll (Edit) with Tin Machine 17. Tonight (Live) with Tina Turner 18. I'm Deranged 19. The Heart's Filthy Lesson (Radio Edit)

[Alpha 60]

I divide my Bowie mixes up like so; 69-75, Station to Staion and live from that era, Best of Berlin, 80-93, and then 95-to present.. But any Bowie mix is super hard to narrow down to 80 mins no matter which era. 69-75 is probably the hardest for me to whittle down.

[fillow]

why does it have to be under 80mins though? are you putting a CDr for your car stereo or something?

[botley]

Yeah, I'm doing cover art and stuff. I want a complete box set that covers Bowie's entire career, but both Sound+Vision and The Platinum Collection stop before they get to this period, so I am compiling these homebrew supplements.

[frankie teardrop]

i respect that you're limiting things, easy to go way overboard on a project like this.

not to make your head spin any further, but don't forget that sound and vision had a nice smattering of outtakes and rarities! if you have room- see if you can sneak in something like the showgirls version of 'americans' or the eno/outside mix of 'man who sold the world.'

[botley]

I may do a bonus disc with all of those. It's been fun tracking down all the radio edits/re-making them myself in some cases — I actually think they improve on a few of these songs.

[frankie teardrop]

i'd be curious to hear some of those edits. i've never found much place for radio edits of songs (see 'heroes' for example, whose majesty is compromised by shaving 2 minutes off it, even if it *is* sung in german). however, pushing ahead of the dame is swearing by the shorter versions of never let me down tracks, and i see a lot on your playlists, so i'm curious about it.

i also just discovered a 12'' extended mix of 'beauty and the beast'-- granted, it's two minutes longer and it's hard to pick out what exacly changed aside from the length. nothing special, but bizarre and cool!

[botley]

I was able to find most of them by downloading FLAC rips of the original CD singles, but there are some that are harder to locate in lossless form; what I did then was pull up the music video on YouTube and matched the edits to my longer FLAC version. It takes a bit of time but it's great to be able to fit a whole extra track (like "I'm Deranged") on the CD without sacrificing sound quality.

That short edit I made for "Heaven's in Here" cuts almost a full two minutes, but it doesn't remove any lyrics (which the single edit of "Heroes" does, unforgivably) — just Reeves Gabrels' interminable wanky guitar pyro. The music video uses the full version, so I just had to guess what parts they removed on the actual single.

[Alpha 60]

why does it have to be under 80mins though? are you putting a CDr for your car stereo or something?

I was just making a general comment on mixes, collections. I’m just old school when it comes to putting some kind of collection of songs together. I think a listenable chunk of something with some kind of identity should run somewhere between 45 mins to 90 mins. Obviously, though, I grew up in a era of mix tapes, cds, mini-discs. On computer, portable device and clouds or applications I don’t always set limits, there is also compiling, but I like limited playlists or collections.
Botley, your Bowie mix/box set sounds awesome.

[botley]

Thanks! The 1997/2003 portion is listed on page two of this thread, send me a PM with your e-mail address if you're interested.

[botley]

Well, fart... evidently "Pallas Athena" or at least one of the remixes by Jack Dangers (of Meat Beat Manifesto) qualifies for inclusion since it came out on a white label 12" in the club scene circa 1993... with no indication on the label that Bowie wrote/performed it! And since that release was apparently something of a hit, looks like it's going to have to replace "I'm Deranged" after all. Now to track down a lossless copy and decide which mix to use.

This is fucking hard work being a pedantic Bowie fan!

[frankie teardrop]

i always liked the original version of 'pallas'--- this isn't the tao jones index one, right? i feel like that was a live techno version the band did (also performing 'v2 schneider' in this vein) but i can't remember the specifics. for what it's worth though, 'i'm deranged' got some radio action back in the day thanks to lost highway. i seem to recall hearing it from time to time.

alternate post: GOD IS ON TOP OF IT.

[fillow]

Funny, does anyone has experience of learning any big artist/band music catalogue backwards? This happened to me and Bowie.
I'm Deranged is one of three songs that got me into Bowie back in the day, along with The Pretty Things are Going to Hell (heard it from Stigmata soundtrack) and V.1 version of I'm Afraid of Americans, which I decided to download from whatever-it-was-called Napster-like network as it showed up often in the search results for Nine Inch Nails. Next I learned about NIN/Bowie tour and found Outside. The next batch of albums I stumbled upon included everything from StS onwards. And only after that I found pre-Station stuff.

[botley]

Like most people, I was always aware of Bowie in a cultural zeitgeist sense, but didn't think to actually check out his music until I got the NIN connection (yes, "I'm Deranged" and the Reznor remixes of "Hearts Filthy Lesson" & "I'm Afraid of Americans" helped enormously). I bought Heathen when it was relatively new and then picked up the plot from Diamond Dogs onward.

After my friends and I saw him live on April 1st 2004 during the Reality Tour, there was no going back to casual fandom. It's been an obsession ever since.

frankieteardrop: I'm not talking about the Tao Jones Index version (which is also pretty cool, but it wasn't a single until 1997); it's likely going to be this Don't Stop Praying Mix that's also on some versions of the "Jump They Say" EP. I didn't account for radio airplay in compiling the tracklist for this CD, the criteria were much simpler: a) "was it a single?" and b) "does it fit in here with the other four discs I've already got?"

[frankie teardrop]

haha, sorry to keep complicating things for you!

as for my story, bowie fan first from early childhood (parents had a few records, i got the obsessive bug), then nine inch nails. couldn't go to the outside/dissonance tour, as i was only 13 at the time and my mom wouldn't let me...

[botley]

Aw hell no! Have you been to see him since? Have a favourite show?

[onthewall2983]

[frankie teardrop]

Aw hell no! Have you been to see him since? Have a favourite show?

just once, on the heathen club tour. saw the beacon theatre show from the back row orchestra, amazing all the same. don't know why i didn't make the reality tour... maybe i thought i'd catch him next time around.