David Bowie

[NotoriousTIMP]

Speaking of Earthling, am I the only person that likes that album?

Nope, I loved this album when it first came out and I still love it. Now if it would get the repress treatment that OUTSIDE received last year I would be a happy man!

If you haven't already, pick up the 2012 repress of OUTSIDE. Sadly it's excerpts from the album, but it sounds amazingly warm and fresh. At $28, I feel it's money well spent!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v412/cingularrox/EDF958F0-9816-4C46-B0EF-93EB0A6EEB2B-24265-00001538FC0D798E.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v412/cingularrox/BEBB3240-5A54-480D-A616-42DFD68860C7-24265-000015390112C1A6.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v412/cingularrox/F91D0C7A-08C5-4D04-9099-CB9939B73F59-24265-0000153903811F8C.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v412/cingularrox/14F7176B-1241-445B-B80C-EBE0904BE26D-24265-00001538FEBECD59.jpg

[BRoswell]

http://pitchfork.com/news/49125-david-bowie-probably-wont-perform-live-ever-again/

:(

Looks Like Pitchfork Made That Up (http://www.spin.com/articles/david-bowie-producer-the-next-day-album-details?utm_source=spinfacebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=spinfacebook)

Also, Visconti said there are no guests on the album, meaning anyone hoping that Trent would make an appearance will (once again) be disappointed.

[Ryan]

Earl Slick, the long-term guitarist for David Bowie (http://www.live4ever.uk.com/tag/david-bowie), has said the legend’s live band ‘would love’ to go back out on the road, but admits that possibility remains remote and the present time despite the confirmation of a new album and single this week. “We don’t know,” Slick has told Ultimate Classic Rock of Bowie’s live plans. “Obviously, we want him to. But right now, that’s a big if. I could get a phone call tomorrow saying, ‘Hey, you know what? Here’s the setlist.’ I don’t know.”
“I can’t speak for him or the organisation. Obviously, the band would love to go out. Even if it’s not a huge tour, we would like to go out and do some gigs. But that’s yet to be seen.”
David Bowie’s new album ‘The Next Day‘ arrived out of the blue earlier this week, and will be released officially on March 11th. Speaking of the record, Slick has echoed the thoughts of producer Tony Visconti (http://www.live4ever.uk.com/2013/01/new-david-bowie-album-both-classic-and-innovative/) by describing it as having a rock theme:
“There’s a lot of rockers on there, I can tell you that,” he continued. “There’s a few kind of really cool mid-tempo ones in there as well, but I’m the go-to guy for the rock stuff with David.”


Read more: http://www.live4ever.uk.com/2013/01/david-bowies-live-band-hoping-for-new-tour-dates/#ixzz2Hj5Gp1OI

[uroboros]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v412/cingularrox/14F7176B-1241-445B-B80C-EBE0904BE26D-24265-00001538FEBECD59.jpg

Dear god...I've waited oh so long for this. I snagged it as soon as I got home from work. Mahalo to you, good sir, for telling of this repressing. I don't know how this slipped by me. Outside was the album that dragged me kicking and screaming into the Bowie Discography. I should note that I do have the Heart's Filthy Lesson 12" picture disc which is oh so pretty to look at.

I still have to get that Heathen LP reissue though..

[dlb]

So here we go, I'm hooked and I think now is the perfect time to get into Bowie completely. I pretty much have every release on the shelf, but never took the time to proplery explore his world. The only records I really got into where heathen and reality back when they were released. And of course I know the stuff from the outside tour with NIN aswell.

I'm not too fond of the new track, but I'm glad he's back. Any recommendations where to start?

[Piko]

Just about any album he has could be a good starting point since they're so different from one another. My personal favorites, though, are Heroes and Low. I avoid his 80s stuff, and I'm probably in a minority. But the thing about Bowie is how well he's able to adapt to the times and the things around him.

[uroboros]

Any recommendations where to start?

The Best Bowie Eras:

1974 - 1980: Diamond Dogs, Young Americans, Station to Station, Low, Heroes, Lodger, Scary Monsters
1993 - 2013: The Buddha of Suburbia, Outside, Earthling, Hours, Toy, Heathen, Reality, The Next Day


There's a fantastic start for ya. Station to Station and Outside are great places to start. Lodger and hours are weaker albums IMO of those periods, but the rest of it is pretty flawless. I'm guessing the new album will be the same. Of course there's the Early stuff and the Ziggy period, which are essential too, but, artistically, the above are his best periods. Most of his 80s stuff has been denounced even though Let's Dance is alright for what it is. Then there's Tin Machine which did what it had to do. Its a freakin' massive discography. It'll take years to fully comprehend it. Good Luck and kudos for giving it a go!

[Reznor2112]

This says the single is an iTunes exclusive, it isn't clear about the album.

Wow...totally did not read that correctly. Thanks for pointing that out haha

[sore_and_crucified]

The Best Bowie Eras:

1974 - 1980: Diamond Dogs, Young Americans, Station to Station, Low, Heroes, Lodger, Scary Monsters
1993 - 2013: The Buddha of Suburbia, Outside, Earthling, Hours, Toy, Heathen, Reality, The Next Day


There's a fantastic start for ya. Station to Station and Outside are great places to start. Lodger and hours are weaker albums IMO of those periods, but the rest of it is pretty flawless. I'm guessing the new album will be the same. Of course there's the Early stuff and the Ziggy period, which are essential too, but, artistically, the above are his best periods. Most of his 80s stuff has been denounced even though Let's Dance is alright for what it is. Then there's Tin Machine which did what it had to do. Its a freakin' massive discography. It'll take years to fully comprehend it. Good Luck and kudos for giving it a go!

Here's hoping the album is a mix of Outside and Station to Station!!

[screwdriver]

The Best Bowie Eras:

1974 - 1980: Diamond Dogs, Young Americans, Station to Station, Low, Heroes, Lodger, Scary Monsters
1993 - 2013: The Buddha of Suburbia, Outside, Earthling, Hours, Toy, Heathen, Reality, The Next Day


There's a fantastic start for ya. Station to Station and Outside are great places to start. Lodger and hours are weaker albums IMO of those periods, but the rest of it is pretty flawless. I'm guessing the new album will be the same. Of course there's the Early stuff and the Ziggy period, which are essential too, but, artistically, the above are his best periods. Most of his 80s stuff has been denounced even though Let's Dance is alright for what it is. Then there's Tin Machine which did what it had to do. Its a freakin' massive discography. It'll take years to fully comprehend it. Good Luck and kudos for giving it a go!

I think that's good prognosis, but I really don't think you can sell short Ziggy -- fantastic album, it catapulted Bowie to fame for a reason. Great starting point if you're not one of those people instinctively turned off by older music. The remaster last year was great too.

[hellospaceboy]

Speaking of Earthling, am I the only person that likes that album?

That was the album that me fall in love with Bowie! Fantastic songs spiced up with jungle and electronics, it was -and still is- a goddamn-near-flawless record.

Not sure if it was posted here before, but Spin has a great collection of interview snippets from Tony Visconti on the new album:

http://www.spin.com/articles/david-bowie-producer-the-next-day-album-details?utm_source=spinfacebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=spinfacebook

[Sutekh]

Station to Station a good starting point? Great LP but a bit challenging in some places...Ziggy is blatantly the entry level Bowie album, follow that up with the Berlin albums to see his evolutionary leap

Also (maybe this belongs in the controversial opinions thread) The Idiot and Lust for Life by Iggy Pop are more or less Bowie side projects (co-wrote, produced and played on every single song, plays selected songs live as recently as 2004)... I'd rate them as amongst the best he's worked on

[fillow]

Copy-and-pasting some news that made me almost spill my coffee:


Tony Visconti’s saying in today’s round of interviews that there’s enough material for two albums! From The Times:

“The two have created 29 songs together of late, making a second album almost inevitable. “We’re not going to give up on the songs that haven’t made this one,” Visconti says.
“We’re going to go back and look at them because they’re spectacular musical pieces, they just haven’t been finished lyrically. I think he’s on a roll, and will possibly return to the studio later this year. If people don’t like this album then maybe he won’t, but it doesn’t matter to him. He told me what he wants to do is make records.”

Also, I just spent almost two hours simply surfing though the albums, checking up a few notes from each songs (which obviously led to listening a lot of songs in full). The next two months looks like perfect timing to go retrospectively though the whole catalogue, which I'm starting to do as I write.

[frankie teardrop]

Station to Station a good starting point? Great LP but a bit challenging in some places...Ziggy is blatantly the entry level Bowie album, follow that up with the Berlin albums to see his evolutionary leap

Also (maybe this belongs in the controversial opinions thread) The Idiot and Lust for Life by Iggy Pop are more or less Bowie side projects (co-wrote, produced and played on every single song, plays selected songs live as recently as 2004)... I'd rate them as amongst the best he's worked on


gonna sound bizarre, as a staunch berlin-era supporter (heroes is my all time favorite album) and die hard station to station fan, but i agree with this. start with the simple, catchy, timeless glam rock that made the man famous (they really are amazing songs- life on mars, rock n roll suicide, panic in detroit etc. are golden), and also listen to roxy music if you want more of that vibe. station to station through and including scary monsters is the best era for me, but not something to dive into without getting the full ride of the progression, and the satisfaction that comes along with it. if you want to get fancy, just go chronological... if you want to get hardcore, do so while reading the pushing ahead of the dame (http://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/) blog which tells a very lengthy tale about each song, with interpretation and careful consideration to detail...

and the iggy pop stuff is amazing, but the same rules apply, as these records were made in the same era, and the idiot is notoriously dark and difficult (but fucking brilliant).

[frankie teardrop]

and for the already berlin converted... this may sound familiar:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPAOkWDxz7U

great story on the song this inspired on aforementioned blog (http://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/2011/03/15/warszawa/).

[allegro]

Also (maybe this belongs in the controversial opinions thread) The Idiot and Lust for Life by Iggy Pop are more or less Bowie side projects (co-wrote, produced and played on every single song, plays selected songs live as recently as 2004)... I'd rate them as amongst the best he's worked on
Hahaha as an Iggy fan since I was a kid in the early-70s in Detroit, I think of those albums as classic Iggy (ESPECIALLY Lust for Life) with Bowie helping out an old friend.

[allegro]

I think a good Bowie starting point is Hunky Dory.

My personal intro to Bowie, meaning when I finally started paying attention, was when "David Live: David Bowie at the Tower Philadelphia" was released and we used to be able to play records in the school lunchroom and somehow that album got played every day during lunch (over the lunch room PA) for months. My best friend Robert put Sun-In in his hair to look like Bowie.

[Sutekh]

Hahaha as an Iggy fan since I was a kid in the early-70s in Detroit, I think of those albums as classic Iggy (ESPECIALLY Lust for Life) with Bowie helping out an old friend.

Neighbourhood Threat is a contender for my all-time favourite song... I love the chorus of ghostly Bowies in the background

[allegro]

yeah, that's a great song!!

My favorite Bowie background-singing-on-an-Iggy-song is "Turn Blue." Second fave is "Success."

[Nirvana23]

I'm super excited about the new album! Where are we now? didn't strike me immediately but the more I'm listening to it I'm enjoying the nuances to Bowie's voice and the simple but powerful instrumentation, the strings are fantastic! Plus this song is produced very nicely I believe.

[jmtd]

Call me a cheapskate but I don't feel like buying this single, that I like, as it has no b-side to speak of. I might as well hold out for the album.

[dlb]

thanks for the input guys!

I listened the shit out of reality for the last two days and I think I will just go chronologically through his albums the way you got to experience them as a fan back in the day. One album a day with me lying on the couch and having headphones on should work, but I'm sure I will stick to certain records and songs as I go which might make this a longer journey then I'm expecting it to be. But who cares, let's do it!

[Ryan]

<3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMitPOgHCLQ

[ambergris]

'Where are we now?' hits No.6 in the UK charts, making it Bowie's biggest success there in 26 years (and first Top 10-hit in 20 years)

http://www.officialcharts.com/singles-chart/

[danebraddy]

The Best Bowie Eras:

1974 - 1980: Diamond Dogs, Young Americans, Station to Station, Low, Heroes, Lodger, Scary Monsters
1993 - 2013: The Buddha of Suburbia, Outside, Earthling, Hours, Toy, Heathen, Reality, The Next Day


There's a fantastic start for ya. Station to Station and Outside are great places to start. Lodger and hours are weaker albums IMO of those periods, but the rest of it is pretty flawless. I'm guessing the new album will be the same. Of course there's the Early stuff and the Ziggy period, which are essential too, but, artistically, the above are his best periods. Most of his 80s stuff has been denounced even though Let's Dance is alright for what it is. Then there's Tin Machine which did what it had to do. Its a freakin' massive discography. It'll take years to fully comprehend it. Good Luck and kudos for giving it a go!

Each to their own I guess, but hours... really grew on me over time and I loved Lodger from first listen - Fantastic Voyage, DJ, Look Back in Anger, Boys Keep Swinging and Repetition are catchy and very accessible.

Also, Bowie rapping in 1979 on African Night Flight is awesome.

Personally, I'd say Lodger is easier to 'get' and like than Station to Station <ducks for cover>

[frankie teardrop]

Personally, I'd say Lodger is easier to 'get' and like than Station to Station <ducks for cover>

you asked for it! i love lodger (except the lesser re-recording of 'sister midnight), but it's extremely schizophrenic and experimental, what with everyone switching instruments as per brian eno's suggestion and no one really grooving together as a result, for it to be a great introduction or an instant love. station to station is a MUCH more straightforward and solid record, damn near perfect.

so uh. ups to lodger for sure but i disagree on your ranking.


as a brief aside, chris connelly (wax trax) and shirley manson played an entire set of bowie songs at the metro last friday. setlist was chock full of classcis (young americans, station, starman, life on mars, dj, win). would have liked to have been there for sure...

[allegro]

yeah, come ON, you can't get any more catchy than STAY!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuKHYttgwhA

[allegro]

Heh, actually, Golden Years and TVC 15 are pretty catchy, too! (Although, admittedly, I don't like them as much as Stay.)

The title track (Station to Station, all 10+ minutes of it) is one of my favorite Bowie songs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY77zDzNmYw

[frankie teardrop]

me, too. still gives me shivers, from the train-esque feedback loop to the first moments when his voice come in. then it's disco shift and the party gets started. love that record. 'wild is the wind' is debatably the best cover he's done, in a career filled with mostly album filler covers that are hit or miss.

[Magtig]

Two different Q&A's from Rolling Stone with the new album's producer (http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/david-bowies-the-next-day-album-a-track-by-track-preview-20130115) and guitarist (http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/q-a-david-bowie-guitarist-earl-slick-on-secret-new-album-sessions-20130125).

[allegro]

will he ever top this though? not sure

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv6mEv_rDdE

ends up you were right ...

http://chicagoist.com/2013/02/11/monday_afternoon_diversion_how_davi.php

[onthewall2983]

http://youtu.be/QnOmrDzRrGQ

[Ryan]

Has Bowie done any interviews yet or still being reclusive?

[Morad]

Has Bowie done any interviews yet or still being reclusive?

Seemingly, he's decided on no interviews for the new album, and Visconti's pretty much his surrogate for information about the record or all-things Bowie. I hope that changes soon. I miss seeing his face on magazine covers and in videos.

And I just discovered this Bowie tribute album (http://open.spotify.com/album/07vKzpfeIIq4bvZNCKSTNq) on Spotify, and really wanted to share it. It features some pretty great covers.

[fillow]

A quick heads-up: for the past month Pushing Ahead of the Dame blog have been digging through the Outside-era material (http://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/tag/outside/), which at some point will lead to Outside tour and NIN/Bowie live collaboration.

[botley]

I don't think that guy has a very high opinion of Reznor.

[kenthebear]

idk why articles are saying he stopped making music after reality, seems a bit unjust to forget his greatest work (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anywhere_I_Lay_My_Head)

[frankie teardrop]

surely you jest? i think everyone wants to forget that album, and bowie would be wise to do so as well...

[jmtd]

I quite liked it. Might give it a spin soon!

[kenthebear]

yo son i hope you're ready to be HYPE AS ALL FUCKING HELL because i bring you news of a NEW SINGLE from some THE GUY IN THE THREAD TITLE

it's called THE STARS (ARE OUT TONIGHT) and it's about BOWIE HAVING SEX with male celebrities and their journey of ACCEPTING HOMOSEXUALITY

it's out feb 26th.

[october_midnight]

http://sphotos-h.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/166709_10151251843617665_1000706931_n.jpg

[botley]

Dope as F vimeo mashup: http://t.co/JoMxCakM

[slave2thewage]

it's about BOWIE HAVING SEX with male celebrities
I can't wait for the verse about Justin Bieber.

[danebraddy]

A review by the Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/cdreviews/9888192/David-Bowie-The-Next-Day-album-review.html

[october_midnight]

New video for 'The Stars Are Out Tonight'. (http://pitchfork.com/news/49608-watch-david-bowie-shares-video-for-new-song-the-stars-are-out-tonight/)

[orestes]

Tilda! Andrej!

Unf, it's like all my fandoms colliding in the video.

[ManBurning]

Now this (Stars are out tonight) is more like the classic Bowie I was hoping for! I didn't like the last track he released (Where are we now?), but this is awesome!
Really looking forward to the new album now, just a couple more weeks!

[thevoid99]

Tilda Swinton in a Bowie video.... thank you music gods!!! She should play Bowie in a movie.

[frankie teardrop]

yeah, this song is fantastic! totally on board with this one.

[thefragile_jake]

New song is good but Where Are We Now? is still giving me endless amounts of goosebumps.

[october_midnight]

Full album up for streaming! (http://pitchfork.com/news/49744-listen-to-the-new-david-bowie-album-now/)

[allegro]

Full album up for streaming! (http://pitchfork.com/news/49744-listen-to-the-new-david-bowie-album-now/)
Thanks, listening now!

[SaintNoir]

Listening now! Super good surprise!

[october_midnight]

Only a few tracks in but I'm reeeeaaaally loving it.

[allegro]

We can't understand what he's talking about (as is sometimes typical with Bowie) but we're really loving the music so far!

[seasonsinthesky]

jesus, he went straight back in time with this one. i'm generally undecided (one of those weird late-period Bowie likers) but it has some real barnburners in there. and DAT DRUM SOUND.

[slave2thewage]

Just after the first listen and it's AMAZING.

[Presideo]

Enjoyable album - it's the music I want modern Bowie to be making, and I hope he makes more of it!

Also, I have a decent-quality rip from the iTunes stream with the tracks separated. PM if you want a link.

[Indefinite_Cure]

Wow, it's fucking good imho! I already loved The Stars (Are Out Tonight) but the highlights on first listen for me: "Love is Lost", "Valentine's Day", "I'd Rather Be High", "(You Will) Set the World On Fire" and "You Feel So Lonely You Could Die"

Fantastic overall!

[danebraddy]

I just got through my first listen... It's strange there are elements from (pretty much) every Bowie era in here, there is something for everyone.
I was enjoying the shit of it but getting a bit on the fence with the vibe from the first six track , then If You Can See Me kicked in... so far this is more than I expected (and I expected good things).

I can't wait to listen to it more... Heat​ is a great closer too

[ghostaustin]

I'm still on my first listen, and I was unsure about the first few tracks but so far everything after and including Where Are We Now is pure gold. I love the Earthling vibe on If You Can See Me

[danebraddy]

It's now available from the usual suspects should that be your thing.

I kinda 'missed it' the first time through because of giddiness - but The Next Day (song) is awesome

[Deadpool]

Is the iTunes stream the standard tracklist or the deluxe version with the bonus tracks? (just out of curiosity)

Happy to see everyone's enjoying it!

[Iran_Ed]

Is the iTunes stream the standard tracklist or the deluxe version with the bonus tracks? (just out of curiosity)

Happy to see everyone's enjoying it!

Standard version

[frankie teardrop]

as much as i wanna cave in with a stream/link- i think i'm going to handle this one the old fashioned way and wait for the release date. but i'm glad to hear all the positive reviews so far!

[Nirvana23]

Really enjoying this after two streams!

[Morad]

On the first listen, I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would. But I'm listening to it again and it's astounding. I think all the loudness complements his silence of the past ten years. It's so different from what I thought it would be. It's so new and retro and yet so touching in those rare, surprising moments too. "Love Is Lost" is beautiful, especially since its segues into "Where Are We Now?" Two nice, consecutive slaps in the face. It's great.

And the lyrics are so, so stirring too. Wow.

"I can see you as a corpse,
Hanging from a beam.
I can read you like a book.
I can feel you falling,
I hear you moaning in your room."

And also this, which is nice:

"You're country is new
your friends are new
your house are new
and your eyes are new
your maid is new
and your accent too
but your fear is as old as the wo-o-orld"

And "Heat" which is just incredible:

"My father ran the prison.
My father ran the prison.

I can only love you,
By hating him more.
That's not the truth,
It's too big a world.
He believed that,
Love is theft.
Love and wars,
The theft of love.

And I tell myself,
I don't know who I am.
And I tell myself,
I don't know I am."

And, of course, the title-track:

"here i am; not quite dying
my body left to rot in a hollow tree
its branches throwing shadows on the gallows for me
and the next day and the next and another day."

[ambergris]

So I've listened through it twice now and I think that there is a lot to enjoy and to appreciate in the coming months. My musical tastes moved a bit away from this kind of garage band/indie rock and I would have liked a little more ambience à la Heathen or a little more "jazziness" (Bowie uses pianist Mike Garson for that, but didn't do it this time). Still, Bowie's in formidable form, I can't help but appreciating that. The songs are, within the limits of indie rock, rather versatile, full of little tricks and surprises.
This might be the last good opportunity to point people to the song 'The Electrician' by The Walker Brothers (that is, Scott Walker). If you like Bowie's 'Heat' listen to this one, you will be rewarded.

[frankie teardrop]

'the electrictian' (and all the scott songs from nite flights) are amazing.

and i caved. i'm listening to a nice vbr rip of the new album now. absolutely loving it so far!

[thefragile_jake]

I can tell this is something I'm really going to like but it's not entirely blowing me away after a couple listens. I know I enjoy it...but something's not clicking 100% with me really.

[poinoup]

Add me to the list of Earthling lovers also. That was right around the time I really got into Bowie. I remember Muchmusic had his 50th Birthday concert on back in the day, and the diversity of the tracks hooked me. It may be unofficial, but I am happy I finally have decent audio of the concert: http://www.musicadvisor.biz/david-bowie-birthday-celebration-–-live-in-nyc-1997-review.htm

Thinking of that concert, I haven't seen this song mentioned a lot in here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-UJk7mKRV0

DVD of that concert please!!!

[frankie teardrop]

moonage daydream? the highlight of ziggy stardust in my opinion, alongside 'five years' and 'rock n' roll suicide'- those three songs are irrefutable. 'all the young dudes' is a great forgotten gem, never fully realized by either mott the nipple or the flat studio recording from the aladdin sane sessions. weird how that one got swept under the rug in a sense.

so two listens into the new album. i like it, but don't LOVE it. too much self-reference (a problem with heathen/reality as well), from the drums in 'five years' to two songs (TWO!) sounding like 'repetition' from lodger. it's been mentioned that 'heat' is great, but that it's also a scott walker homage.

the best song by far is 'love is lost' which truly wowed me. the rest is solid but doesn't really jump out at me, though 'the stars (are out tonight)' gets in my head a lot. i so a solid effort for sure, on par with the last few as far as the WOW factor is concerned.

[poinoup]

Moonage for sure! I remember first hearing it at the 50th birthday concert. "Moonage", "Space Oddity", and "Seven Years in Tibet" were the first three songs that grabbed me from first listen.

I also love the version of "Repetition" that plays over the credits of the concert. Bowie and the "light masks"!

[frankie teardrop]

that's an acoustic backstage session, i believe... complete with an interview and people calling in to wish bowie a happy birthday. scott walker calling in is especially touching.

[poinoup]

I'm going to have to look for those calls. Getting into Scott Walker two years back reminded me of getting into Bowie in the late 90s.

[frankie teardrop]

here's the one in particular:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF1Y7BzWbUs

[ManBurning]

Not a bad album at all. My favorite track is "The Next Day" I think that would have been a better single than "Where are we now?". I really can't get into that song at all, it's just so different from the rest of the album, to the point where the album doesn't seem to flow well with it being a few songs in. I enjoy "(you will) set the world on fire" as well.

[konkelo]

The new album sounds good! It was on sale on a local grorecy store already today, maybe I'll go and pick it up. I'm new to his music so what albums would you people recommend to start with?

[halloween]

I can't wait for the release date. I want the cd in my HANDS. I'm glad to hear people's reviews about it are mostly positive.

[imail724]

The new album sounds good! It was on sale on a local grorecy store already today, maybe I'll go and pick it up. I'm new to his music so what albums would you people recommend to start with?There's a lot of different eras of Bowie that cover a lot of different sounds, but I think most will agree with me in recommending you check out Honky Dory, Ziggy Stardust, and Low for the time being.

[frankie teardrop]

i'd say low, ziggy, and station to station as starting points, but you can't really do any wrong with anything from space oddity up to and including scary monsters. just go in order, enjoy the ride. and don't dismiss outside.

as a first record, hunky dory has obvious career highlights but some real big misses to weed through. 'quicksand,' 'mars,' 'queen bitch,' and 'belway brothers' carry that record in favor of dreck like kooks/fill your heart/eight line poem/blargh.

[thevoid99]

The new album sounds good! It was on sale on a local grorecy store already today, maybe I'll go and pick it up. I'm new to his music so what albums would you people recommend to start with?

If you want to go to compilations. Changesbowie is a nice place to start as it was where it started for me. For albums, start with Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane and then go into Station to Station, the Berlin trilogy, and Scary Monsters. Then go for everything else in the 70s and then go after everything else he's done. It's really one of the best catalogs of any artist out there though are some duds like Tonight and Never Let Me Down.

[frankie teardrop]

and even those two albums have one great track each (loving the alien/time will crawl) if you can stomach some shameless 80s production.

really though, am i the only one who thinks hunky dory is an incredibly flawed album? 'kooks' was awesome when i was 12 and that's about it. fill your heart and eight line poem never even had that going for them though...

[thevoid99]

I love "Kooks" and still do. Aside from "Loving the Alien", "Blue Jeans" is only other good song in Tonight while Never Let Me Down does have a couple of other good singles in its title track and "Day In, Day Out" despite the 80s production.

[danebraddy]

This kid is impressive:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2S2IdMdBO0&amp;list=LL7E3AhThTcltY2cueEZFeAg&amp; feature=mh_lolz

He is pretty spot on except about Dancign Out in Space... I love that track, it reminds my of everything good about 'Modern Love'.

The more I listen to this album, the more I love it... lyrically it's dark as fuck, which adds to my love of it.
Heat is a great closer, the bass in that song sounds like it was lifted from The Motel.

In fact there are spots all over the album that sound transported from earlier work, which adds to the charm. Whether it's a riff from Fame in Dirty Boys or the vibe of The Man who Sold the World (album) in How does the Grass Grow.

To me, and I know I'm buzzing still about new Bowie, this album stands with the best of his work. It's a solid album where it's weak points would be considered strong points for most other artists.

Like most people, most of the album didn't grab me at first, but it has me now... and it's not letting go.

So to those who haven't listened yet, I'd say try to go in without expectations and within two to three listens you'll know to believe the hype.

[frankie teardrop]

just got this in the mail, a nice workaround for the excerpts from outside vinyl missing this otherwise gem of a song:



http://991.com/newGallery/David-Bowie-Strangers-When-We-56310.jpg




green vinyl, too- for those who are into that sort of thing!

[konkelo]

Thanks for the recommendations about the albums! I'll go and check out some of those soon!

[slave2thewage]

iTunes sales:

Austria #1
Australia #1
Belgium #1
Czech Republic #5
Finland #1
Germany #1
Ireland #1
Netherlands #1
New Zealand #1
Sweden #1
Switzerland #1
Turkey #1

[uroboros]

...and another day (words from a db junkie)

With no ego, I can say I am an authority on davidbowie. I have my factoids, opinions, fetishes & blasphemies about every nook and cranny of his ocean-deep discography. Having finally overcome my initial bewilderment of The Next Day I can say it is his best work since Heathen & Reality. From a more distant & useful perspective though, it is a masterpiece among his other dozen or so masterpieces.

The album is dampened only from some b-sides that made it into the middle of the album. As Nick said, “Prolix! Prolix! Nothing a pair of scissors can’t fix!” Nevertheless, The Next Day pummels the body with its relentless intensity, rots the mind with dire morbidity & leaves you ravenous for more.

db,
you were dearly missed.
jsw

PS: anyone got "God Bless the Girl" for me? PM for trade.

[Reznor2112]

Having finally overcome my initial bewilderment of The Next Day I can say it is his best work since Heathen & Reality.

It's his only work since Reality...

[uroboros]

It's his only work since Reality...

That was the, uh...you know, the joke. ;-)
It is apparently standard procedure for every db album for reviewers to say "best since Scary Monsters". Alas his 90s and 00s output tend to be overlooked.

[thevoid99]

I finally heard the album just over an hour ago. It's really fucking good. It seems like a mish-mash of basically many of the great periods that Bowie has been through in his career. There's a bit of glam. There's a bit of soul. There's a bit of 90s stuff. There's a bit of electro stuff. It's really solid. I don't want to compare it to every other album. That's too tiresome. Plus, "best since Scary Monsters" is just too cliche these days.

[ManBurning]

I've listened to this album a coutless number of times this week, and it keeps getting better. However, i still cannot get into "Where Are We now?" AT ALL! As soon as it comes on, I skip it. I try and give it a chance each time, but it just drones on. Like I said earlier, it disrupts an otherwise perfect flow of the album.
Other than that, i give this album an 8/10.

[allegro]

Review of The Next Day in today's Chicago Sun-Times (http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/conner/18652552-452/bowie-keeps-swinging-on-the-next-day.html). (3 1/2 out of 4 stars, 4 being "essential")


Throughout the ’90s, David Bowie ran from his past. He swore off his catalog in concert, couched himself in a middling rock band (Tin Machine) and embraced emerging electronica music — even touring with Nine Inch Nails, looking frightfully the follower rather than the usual leader.

The results ranged from OK (“Earthling,” 1997) to oh-dear (“Hours…,” 1999). Then, recognizing that he had built for himself a wheelhouse containing many mansions, he did the smart thing at the turn of this century and went back inside. “Heathen” (2002) and “Reality” (2003) are two of Bowie’s most accessible and enjoyable records, not only because of their renewed songwriting focus and alluring tunes but because he made them with Tony Visconti, the trusted producer-pal who helmed most of Bowie’s landmark albums in the 1970s. Together they drew inspiration from Bowie’s past without retreading it. “Heathen” rang a lot of familiar Bowie bells, and “Reality” started to fashion something like a new sound — a sound that “The Next Day” capitalizes, underlines and emboldens.

“The Next Day” is titled for the future, yet its face is a defacement of the past, papering the new title over the cover of Bowie’s landmark “Heroes” (1977). The first “New” single is the maudlin “Where Are We Now?,” a sighing reminiscence of Bowie’s days in Berlin (recording some of those early albums with Visconti). That song materialized in January on Bowie’s 66th birthday. Not a peppy comeback, by any means, it was embraced overenthusiastically by fans just glad to know he was not only alive but writing.

Bowie’s last tour, in 2004, was interrupted by an emergency angioplasty to clear a blocked artery. Dire rumors of his health have circulated since, and the Flaming Lips recorded a song called “Is David Bowie Dying?” The title track here, though, finds Bowie sneering, “‘I’m gonna say goodbye,’ he says/Yeah,” as in, yeah, right.

This new day, however, is a cloudy one. “The Next Day” is not an easy album to digest. Lyrics span a variety of Bowie fixations — dystopian futures, gangs of cross-dressing boys and, of course, fame cursed fame. While this is definitely a rock record, the music careens through several styles and affectations, from “Reality” rewrites (“The Stars [Are Out Tonight]”) and good ol’ glam-rock (“Valentine’s Day”) to the jazzy chase-scene arrangement of “If You Can See Me” and the wonderfully lurching, Morphine-like rhythm and sax of “Dirty Boys.”

Instead of playing nearly everything themselves, as they did on the intimate “Heathen” and “Reality” records, Bowie and Visconti brought a band back to the studio — a legion of Bowie pals (including guitarist Earl Slick, bassist Gail Ann Dorsey, “Serious Moonlight”-era sax player Steve Elson) — the more the merrier to muddle the memories. The album thus plays like a band working on new tunes but relying on muscle memory, not resting on laurels but on the assurance of one of rock’s richest catalogs.

Bowie obsessives will find plenty here for forensic analysis, musically and lyrically, but ultimately “The Next Day” stands on its own, or at least as the culmination of what “Heathen” and “Reality” were trying out. Finally comfortable with his own legacy, Bowie has made a record that feels like classic Bowie. Of course, we tend to say that about every new Bowie album. But “The Next Day” likely is the first album in at least 20 years that finally deserves this oft-repeated claim: “It’s the best Bowie since ‘Scary Monsters’!”

[Morad]

I'm really sorry for my constant linking over here on ETS, but nowadays, I just tend to write articles and pieces about things I'm obsessing over, and this is just another case of that.

I wrote a piece on Bowie's endless transformations throughout the decades, and I think I'm really proud of it, and you guys may enjoy it. So here's the link to that. (http://www.antiquiet.com/lists/2013/03/not-quite-dying-a-visual-stride-through-david-bowies-endless-transformations/)

Now, I must review this strange and perplexing album. I think Bowie is laughing at every critic that's trying to unfurl it.

[allegro]

Review in today's USA Today (http://m.usatoday.com/article/news/1969723):


Too often, a rock veteran's new work elicits a hopeful audit followed by a happy retreat to the fusty greatest-hits compilation.

Not so with David Bowie, whose golden years are overshadowing his golden oldies.

The glitter rock, plastic soul and electronica albums of the '70s stand among Bowie's tallest achievements, and the elegance, urgency and versatility of his 2013 return provide powerful proof that pop music's craftiest chameleon has lost none of his sound vision.

The Next Day (* * * * out of four) arrives Tuesday, ending years of rumors that Bowie was retired or ill. (In 2011, the Flaming Lips and Neon Indian released the single Is David Bowie Dying?)

It's Bowie's first studio album since 2003's Reality and his best since 1980's Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps). Secretly writing and recording for two years with longtime producer Tony Visconti, Bowie crafted an emotionally dramatic, stylistically diverse, sonically bold and lyrically complex song cycle tackling a chaotic, war-scarred, celebrity-driven world of bewildered souls.

The disc's title and cover, with the 1977 Heroes album photo papered over, clearly telegraphs Bowie's determination to look forward, and he's succeeded in sculpting a bracingly modern collection. Some tunes fly off into experimental realms that would leave listeners disoriented if not for the solid melodies and Bowie's emotionally rich vocals.

Yet his past echoes in the grooves of Next, whether it's a sprinkling of Ziggy Stardust in the title track, a chunk of Hunky Dory in If You Can See Me or smidges of Lodger dirges in You Feel So Lonely You Could Die. Nothing feels like a throwback, however.

Single Where Are We Now?, the delicate, nostalgic ballad released Jan. 8, on Bowie's 66th birthday, hinted at an introspective, autobiographical bent. Instead, Next leans toward observation (the pained ruminations of battle-weary soldiers in I'd Rather Be High and How Does the Grass Grow?) and uptempo bold strokes (The Next Day and the soulful, psychedelic Dancing Out in Space). The album peaks with the sax-driven, sensual Dirty Boys; bleakly beautiful Valentine's Day; and The Stars (Are Out Tonight), a feverish rocker mocking celebrity culture.

The Next Day marks a glorious homecoming. Here's hoping we don't have to wait another decade for Day After Next.

[thevoid99]

USA Today does put a review worth reading every once in a while. This was definitely one of their finer moments. Pitchfork's review was actually pretty good. Allmusic's as usual was lame as Stephen Erlwine is a terrible critic. PopMatters' review sucks ass.

[allegro]

Review in The Atlantic (http://m.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/03/the-predictably-unpredictable-resurrection-of-david-bowie/273920/):

Hearing an album for the first time is an experience of incremental revelation, note by note. But repeated listens can smooth over the surprising moments of that initial encounter, and it's easy to forget what was once the exciting foreignness of a work. The snags in the fabric of David Bowie's best art, though, do not disappear over time; they become more fascinating. The Next Day, his first new album in 10 years, is a powerful reminder of just how deftly David Bowie crafts the strange and the profane. Dissonance becomes its own form of harmony, and ugliness beauty.

The Next Day, his 24th studio album, is a robust encore for Bowie, whose sudden return to the music world has had the dramatic proportions of a messianic resurrection. Following the 2003 release of Reality, Bowie suffered a heart attack and gradually withdrew from public view. Most thought he had retired from his half-century-long career for good. But the creative itch seems to have returned, and Bowie began secret recording sessions for The Next Day about two years ago ("He just said, 'I feel like writing again,'" recalled Tony Visconti, Bowie's longtime producer, in a Rolling Stone interview). On his 66th birthday this past January, Bowie's website announced the forthcoming release of The Next Day and posted the video for its lead single, "Where Are We Now?" The viewer is treated to a brief glimpse of the musician as he gazes imposingly upon what looks like an artist's studio, filled with the clutter of creativity. What has he built for us?

The dreamy and ruminative "Where Are We Now?" is unlike the album's predominant style: rock charged with a chest-beating aggression that sometimes tamps down into a rusty, gravelly cool. While the album, as is typical of Bowie, avoids confessionalism and fashions personalities other than himself—a soldier tired of war, a medieval man whipped through the streets (reportedly based on Bowie's perusal of English history books)—the artist feels more present than ever. Bowie makes a bold swipe in the urgent, first track, where his leathery voice—despite having lost some of its whiplash agility with age—breaks out into high-pitched shouts or curls into vicious growls. "Listen!" he demands, like a stern schoolteacher.

Bowie has addressed aging before, on his previous records, but The Next Day summons death with a newfound directness. The imagery is visceral ("How does the grass grow? / Blood blood blood / Where do the boys lie? / Mud mud mud"), the language stark ("I can see you as a corpse / Hanging from a beam"), and the threats unrestrained ("I will slaughter your kind"). But age still hasn't equipped him to answer questions that would have been at home in a 19th-century Russian novel: "Where are we now?" he muses, and in the smoky closing track, "I tell myself / I don't know who I am." But stars, that perennial theme in Bowie's work (and in his most famous incarnation, the alien rocker Ziggy Stardust), hover over the dark lyrical landscape. They offer escape and mystery. The artist who turns his gaze skyward sees possibilities that are not so earthbound and so weighted by death. "I gaze in defeat / At the stars in the night," he sings, "The light in my life burnt away / There will be no tomorrow." The man who fell to earth aches to return.

But there is another escape valve: art. The formal risks taken by The Next Day fall in line with Bowie's long history of reinvention and provocation. The album is full of moments in which the next millisecond is nearly impossible to predict, leaving the listener helpless to the vagaries of the music. These precise moments can be difficult to recall from memory; their peculiarity seems to guard the music against disposability. The album's remarkable centerpiece, "If You Can See Me," trips over itself in its frenetic headlong race; it is a struggle to keep up. The key of "Dancing Out in Space" repeatedly modulates with no pivot chord, like an on-off switch flicked up and down, and the song ends in a key different from what it began with. The introductory passage of "How Does the Grass Grow?" sets up the rest of the song in no recognizable way, and a later section sounds as though it has been lifted from a different song and stitched in with surgical care. Even the burst of guitar that kicks off the album can sound like a mistake.

The abrupt announcement of the album after a decade-long silence has the effect of focusing attention on Bowie's legacy (responses in the media have tended toward retrospection), while at the same time providing a point of departure from this same legacy (The Next Day will always be "that" album, the gateway to a new era, and not just part of a series). Bowie openly plays with this balance. The music videos for "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)" and "Where Are We Now?" pay homage, respectively, to his coke-addled Thin White Duke persona and to his fabled years of creative ferment in Berlin. But this is not straightforward nostalgia. In the first video, Bowie and Tilda Swinton (another famously androgynous artist) play an elderly couple, the one wearing a pert yellow cardigan and the other doing indoor aerobic exercises. "We have a nice life," they murmur in the grocery store. Later, Bowie bangs his fists against the wall to ask the younger version of himself—sexual, reckless, creative—to please quiet down so that he and his wife can watch TV. Has age dampened rebellion? Does maturity weaken creativity?

Bowie seems to stiff-arm these doubts with the cover art for The Next Day. The designer, Jonathan Barnbrook, vandalizes the cover of his 1977 album Heroes, one of the most sacred images in the Bowie archive: It shows the 30-year-old artist as saint, hand lifted in vague worship and eyes fixed in transcendental thought. The Next Day superimposes a white square and its name, in generic font, onto the original image and crosses out the album title. It looks like a joke, and it is objectively ugly, all the more because it is offensively bland—anti-Bowie, in another context. But here, the self-awareness cuts through the banality.

Bowie is not precious about his past. His legacy is not invulnerable to the subversive manipulations of his art. He will violate, even destroy, his past incarnations in pursuit of a way forward. It's a sign of his faith in creative renewal. The costume changes, the personas, and the musical transformations over Bowie's long career are less interesting than the philosophy that has underpinned them. His irreverence comes from a place of reverence—for music, for mystery, for one's inner life, that unknowable territory that can only be mapped with the inexact brushstrokes of art. Like us, Bowie is of the world where clocks tick and the body grows sicker, but his art has made it possible for him to lay claim to "the next day, and the next, and another day."

[hellospaceboy]

I just bought the album today (consciously stayed away from itunes, because I wanted the physical copy and the experience of getting it on release date, the excitement, etc.)

Wow. Just wow.

This is fantastic. I'm blown away, I even like the previously hated cover, looking at the whole package it really works.

[liquidcalm]

While some things really bug me about this album (the fact songs mostly fade out rather than finish), this is really good. Throws Reality aside, and I think it works better as a whole than Heathen. Bowie sounds great, the rockier tracks sound like a band having fun and taking pleasure in recording, rather than treating it as a job, a trap many older artists seem to fall into. My only other complaint is with the bonus tracks its pretty long. So yeah. its a good album.

[Morad]

Here's my Antiquiet review (http://www.antiquiet.com/reviews/2013/03/david-bowie-changes-shape-again-with-the-next-day/) of The Next Day by the way.


Plastered over city streets are photos of a black-and white David Bowie summoning Erich Heckel’s Roquairol. It is a familiar photograph – almost: One palm faces Bowie as another rests on his heart, as Berlin memories resurface and as three of Bowie’s most seminal works begin to echo in our minds with fervent nostalgia. But there is a minor blemish to this reminiscence: Bowie’s face is indistinguishable. Those vacant, mechanical and faraway eyes are now covered by a white square, defaced; and the simple ironical word – “Heroes” – is crossed out without a replacement. Instead, on the surface of that strange rectangle reads “The Next Day.”

Nothing else is said, not even alluded to. Does it mean that Bowie is invoking his past or straying away from it? Perhaps it means nothing at all?
There is no sense of newness in The Next Day, no novel glimpse of the David Bowie that has risen from the ashes of his ten-year reclusion. But this lack of explicit originality is a not shortcoming. It is, actually, quite deliberate.

Bowie’s decade-long absence from the popular world has given him enough time to craft a persona entirely unintelligible in the blaring, ear-splitting world of short-attention-spanned celebrity. By simply rustling or evoking well-established themes and processes, Bowie has cast himself as a phantom in popular culture, a celebrity wrapped in silhouette, simply observing those interpreting him, talking about him, and pondering over him, without adding his own rejoinder. His legend is being furthered by his name and his veneers and his previous works simply echoing in the atmosphere all over again.

It is extraordinary how in this freakish, celebrity-obsessed world, it is Bowie’s silence that has recast the spotlight upon him. But the artist himself is not to be seen. All that one can come across under that gleaming light is the string of works already left behind by him: traces of Ziggy Stardust, some almost familiar sights of Berlin, and mere whispers from the Bowie of the new – crooning from behind a curtain, drenched in muffled mystique, refusing to reveal himself, and disinclined to add to the conversation.
This is how his legend will carry on: by the words of others.

Let others guess what new face snivels behind his iron mask, and let them mull over its impenetrable themes, and let them craft the artist they choose to craft based on the sole item they’ve been given – with its nostalgic yet defaced exterior and the scatter-brained multifariousness that ruthlessly careens inside of it.

Bowie wants no part in it. He is merely the artist, merely the name plastered onto the product. His legend is no longer dictated by his choice of words and characters, as it wasn’t when he tried to be in control of them, and just as it wasn’t when his legend swelled and intensified when he decided to quietly step into the shadows.

And The Next Day begins without any such stillness. Bowie bellows that he is still alive, not quite dead, and he laughs off the lamentations over his sudden withdrawal, and commandingly sways his song forward. Suddenly, the ferocity of the title-track gives way to delicious sleaze as Bowie playfully shuffles through with Dirty Boys. And at the onset it becomes quite clear that The Next Day’s exterior isn’t at all about narrative or intelligibility. Instead, it is a web of truth and of invention, of honesty and deception, and of parables and candor. It is impossible to say which is which, and that is perhaps the magic of the record: it is not an easy listen. It confuses its audience just as it delights them, and one can choose what one wants from it. It could be for mere amusement or it could serve as something deeper, difficult, and more artful. It is both, as the artist masks his self and his intentions with allusions and with allegories, brutishly denying his audience even a moment of vicariousness, while concurrently feeding them with superficial puree. The downright distress ofYou Feel So Lonely You Could Die could easily be contradicted by its somewhat jovial exterior, while the prophetic Heat could be taken as truth or shrugged off as another fallacy.

It is also clear that somewhere beneath the stories that The Next Day tells, Bowie, too, is speaking. It is simply a matter of finding out which is which, and who is who, and simply involving oneself with Bowie’s now-meta mystique.

It is mystifying that a record could so heartlessly bemuse and perplex and bedazzle while at the same time delight and amuse in such a simple-hearted way. No wonder that Bowie alludes to Vladimir Nabokov in I’d Rather Be High. Nabokov was the master of cruel high-art. He played his readers without ever making them aware of their imprudence or his own unkindness. Bowie seems to be following in the author’s footsteps, unyielding in his cunning, and so skillful at controlling his congregation. He directly admits to his fraudulence in Heat, continually iterating that he is a dissembler, that he is a fraud, that he is a seer, as The Next Day comes to a close, but his listeners are so much in his control by then, that nobody could possibly believe him.

Not a moment of The Next Day is uncalculated, and not a second passes by without a missed reference or a neglected allusion to a past work, or a previous character, or to Bowie himself. It is impossible to tire from a record that pleases its audience so superficially with its sophisticated splendor, while also denying them the right to any trace of lucidity. It is as cruel as Nabokov was cruel, and it is doubtlessly Bowie’s most unsympathetic work, but The Next Day isn’t simply harsh for the sake of cruelty. It is challenging, as popular art hasn’t been in a very long time. It is invigorating how the record refuses to give in or to reveal itself in however many listens, and perhaps, it never will.

The Next Day is a parable fabricated by an even-more-powerful one – its artist, who still dawdles in the shadows and sneers at the labyrinth he’s crafted and the lies he’s told. But liars tell the prettiest of stories, even when they hide their faces and even when they seal their mouths in quietude.

[pukkelpop]

Here's Bowie's wife telling he will tour again:http://www.contactmusic.com/news/david-bowie-to-tour_3552267

and here am i hoping for a Bowie/NIN tour ....!!!

[innerturmoil]

...(the fact songs mostly fade out rather than finish)...

Nod to "Low".

[allegro]

USA Today does put a review worth reading every once in a while. This was definitely one of their finer moments. Pitchfork's review was actually pretty good. Allmusic's as usual was lame as Stephen Erlwine is a terrible critic. PopMatters' review sucks ass.

ALL music reviews have pretty much sucked for decades; all the flowery verbose smoke blowing out of writers' asses, gag. Quote Elvis Costello: "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." I really don't get the song-by-song descriptions as if the writers are providing a service to deaf people, or really stupid people.

Time Magazine review (http://entertainment.time.com/2013/03/11/david-bowie-challenges-listeners-on-the-next-day/):

When The Next Day was announced, speculation ran rampant. The first single, “Where Are We Now?”, presented David Bowie musing on the Berlin he inhabited almost 40 years ago. The radical album art defaces the centerpiece of his “Berlin Trilogy,” “Heroes.” Tony Visconti, his frequent collaborator who produced that period, was back. It was all quite transparent: after 10 years between albums, Bowie hasn’t returned to shelve out some catchy art rock, he’s come back to make a statement.

You can chalk “what is that statement?” up on the list of puzzles to solve. The Next Day is a dense and varied body of work that Bowie has all but outright challenged fans to cross examine. Invoking the “Berlin Trilogy” suggests that The Next Day might be more than meets the eye conceptually, and at the very least, should serve as a red flag that listeners’ wits should be about them. None of the record’s 14 tracks are casual affairs, and only few of them are catchy enough to overcome a passive listen. The latest single, “The Stars (Are Out Tonight),” is as easy as Bowie will go on listeners without a greater investment of time, and that track still offers a multi-layered experience.

It’s been suggested that the title, The Next Day, could refer to the track “Heroes.” If “we could be heroes, just for one day,” then this would be the day afterward. However, the title track is another thing entirely. Inspired by a recent interest in medieval history, Bowie writes a thrashing rock song of priestly conspiracies, angry mobs, and a heathen “not quite dead… body left to rot in a hollow tree.” Instead, it’s the somber first single, “Where Are We Now?”, that serves as the only strict tie to “Heroes.” “Had to get the train from Potzdamer Platz,” sings Bowie, mentioning a key landmark where the Berlin Wall formerly divided the city. The song could be not only Bowie’s emotional revisiting of a landscape that’s changed so much, but a return to that bold young couple “standing by the wall” in 1977.

Bowie’s nods to his back catalog don’t start and stop with Berlin. The album’s penultimate track “You Feel So Lonely You Could Die” could be an important part of the Bowie mythos, waiting to be torn apart by fans: a classically styled rock ballad that ends unmistakably with the opening drums of “Five Years” from Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars. This is more than a head-nod to some of his most famous work – the song itself is a likely suspect as a follow-up, or perhaps prelude to that story. The lyrics easily fit into Ziggy‘s future world of indifferent, over-indulged youths, five years before humanity’s end.

Analyzing the rest of the record as sequels to previous albums gets sketchy after that. Keep listening for tag-backs and more faint similarities to show up, but much of it could be projection. If the unifying theme of The Next Day is Bowie revisiting albums, perhaps for most of the tracks, the revisiting is conceptual rather than narrative. There’s no definite answer in reach, but an integral part of enjoying this record is asking these questions.

Bowie’s prior album, 2003′s Reality, was a quintessential rock record for the Thin White Duke. It was accessible, delivered a couple great covers, and generally had something for everyone. As a whole, The Next Day is the opposite experience. It’s a challenging album, and not just because its tracks are a puzzle box — the mix is dense. Perhaps more than any of Bowie’s prior 23 records, this one is an art record. Not “art” in how affecting it is, or even how complex it is by design, but in that it’s made to be carefully considered, deconstructed, and debated. On a track-by-track basis, the album becomes less obtuse. Though bound by the dense mix, the tracks of The Next Day stand alone.

“Dirty Boys” sounds like it could’ve taken a page from a Tom Waits LP – a circus dirge with dirty sax and a smooth chorus. “Love is Lost” is an organ-heavy rock grind on the subject of grim cosmetic transformation and social dysphoria. “If You Can See Me” has one of the most abrasive sounds on the record; it’s a drum and bass-heavy track that would sit snug somewhere between 1993′s Black Tie White Noise and 1995′s Outside. In fact, the delightful, disjointed, and impenetrable lyrics could find a home with the latter album, or one of its long-discussed sequels. The final track, “Heat,” invites the most questions with its desolate, desert-like yawn and lush details that tease a mysterious narrative.

In three tracks, Bowie surprises with sociopolitical stories more befitting his quasi-folk rocker days than anything he’s written in the past 30 years. “Valentine’s Day” is a tragic ballad, almost a love song, to a high school shooter. “I’d Rather Be High” chronicles a modern soldier’s bitter return to society after “training these guns on the men in the sand.” And “How Does the Grass Grow?” is another wartime track with a chorus taken right out of a chant used in bayonet training.

Coming to terms with The Next Day has been an ordeal and a struggle of initial indifference. One has to dig deep and fight uphill to connect here, but that climb results in a rewarding, fascinating listen. Yet what’s more intriguing is speculating on what The Next Day could become and whether or not any of its mysteries will be solved. As always, Bowie remains in constant metamorphosis and here we are once again with a litter of erratic questions. Though, the mere fact that we’re spinning around in speculation only champions this as a success.

[frankie teardrop]

fun fact for outside fans: just found out via the always excellent pushing ahead of the dame (http://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/) blog that the title track was actually a reworking of a live-only tin machine outtake, maintaining much of the same chord progression/vibe/lyrics and removing all the tough-guy, crass macho bullshit that was prevalent in tin machine. just kind of cool to know that a great latter-day bowie track stems from one of the lowest points in his career (though i like 'i can't read' and 'you belong in rock n'roll' just fine).



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_x6JzOIRCA

[screwdriver]

While some things really bug me about this album (the fact songs mostly fade out rather than finish), this is really good. Throws Reality aside, and I think it works better as a whole than Heathen. Bowie sounds great, the rockier tracks sound like a band having fun and taking pleasure in recording, rather than treating it as a job, a trap many older artists seem to fall into. My only other complaint is with the bonus tracks its pretty long. So yeah. its a good album.

I'm struggling to find the source for it right now (might be one of my many bowie books at home) but his approach on songs fading out is that he actually prefers it because, paraphrased, things in life rarely "end," they just sort of fade away and then the next thing starts up. As someone who used to hate songs fading out, that attitude totally gave me an appreciation for them.

[liquidcalm]

I'm struggling to find the source for it right now (might be one of my many bowie books at home) but his approach on songs fading out is that he actually prefers it because, paraphrased, things in life rarely "end," they just sort of fade away and then the next thing starts up. As someone who used to hate songs fading out, that attitude totally gave me an appreciation for them.
To me it sounds like a hangover from when records had to be shorter... Plus I like songs to finish, not just bowie but other artists too. The only thing worse is a fade in. Remember this is entirely me being strange!

I blasted the record in the car earlier today.. The first six or so songs range from okey to great.. but after then it really takes off, I love (You Will) Set the World on Fire and as if to undermine myself, How Does The Grass Grow (even with its fade out)

[seasonsinthesky]

To me it sounds like a hangover from when records had to be shorter... Plus I like songs to finish, not just bowie but other artists too. The only thing worse is a fade in. Remember this is entirely me being strange!

that's not strange at all. in fact, it's quite intelligent. fadeouts will always be indicative of a writing copout or a gimmick; the very few examples of well-done fading (occasional Pink Floyd uses, for instance) tend to be in pieces that were avant garde to begin with. repeating a chorus into infinity and fading it out will never, ever be anything but a copout. if Bowie likes his songs to be more like real life, perhaps they should end suddenly, or get messy and explode.

[allegro]

Up until relatively recently, the fadeout was pretty common. The Beatles used it a lot, too. As someone mentioned, it was great for radio. Not for length, but because it was easy for DJs to cut the song wherever they wanted. (The end of the Beatles' "A Day in the Life" is a good example; some DJs insisted on letting the ENTIRE fade play, while others cut it short). Ditto for "Hey, Jude." It was just common practice back then. A definite END to a song just seemed too Broadway or something.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2010/10/07/130409256/you-ask-we-answer-why-do-some-songs-fade-out-at-the-end

I'm so used to fades that I didn't even NOTICE them on this Bowie album, he's used them SO much. Even before Low.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wd2clb5T8JA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=louXPUW7tHU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY77zDzNmYw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rf0fmqWS-kI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhSYbRiYwTY

[the duder]

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8vpmxDuRl1r885jpo1_400.gif

[screwdriver]

that's not strange at all. in fact, it's quite intelligent. fadeouts will always be indicative of a writing copout or a gimmick; the very few examples of well-done fading (occasional Pink Floyd uses, for instance) tend to be in pieces that were avant garde to begin with. repeating a chorus into infinity and fading it out will never, ever be anything but a copout. if Bowie likes his songs to be more like real life, perhaps they should end suddenly, or get messy and explode.

you must have a very dramatic life. in my life, friends are really good friends and then suddenly you realize you haven't spoken to someone in months... nothing happened, you just sort of faded apart.

either way, different strokes for different strokes. my strokes are just apparently less intelligent.

[seasonsinthesky]

you must have a very dramatic life. in my life, friends are really good friends and then suddenly you realize you haven't spoken to someone in months... nothing happened, you just sort of faded apart.

either way, different strokes for different strokes. my strokes are just apparently less intelligent.

holding a chord on a guitar fades out too. not really sure why realizing you haven't spoken to someone in months has to be reflected in an endless chorus loop fading out for 30 seconds. in fact, it seems likely for many people that, in the midst of such a process, new friends would be made during the same time, which would actually be the case for a crossfade into the next song (a la Outside). the Bowie statement is still justifying a copout.

[Frozen Beach]

I honestly don't like endings where the song ends. They feel so... cold.

This might be my favorite fade out of all time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtsmuVA0m7c

I love the fade out, fade in, fade out. Sounds like he's walking away, returning, then finally leaving.

[liquidcalm]

I definitely don't mind the fade out to mix into something new, or as a very conscious decision.. just.. not all the time!

Everyday has a new favorite on The Next Day, today its I'll Take You There.. not sure why its a bonus track.. whereas I can see why Plan is a bonus... Also went back to Heathen for a bit today, its still good, feels like the precursor to TND, and connects better than Reality.

[JamesCmuse]

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8vpmxDuRl1r885jpo1_400.gif

Was JUST listening to this soundtrack. Within You remains one of my all time favourites..

[ambergris]

Nowadays, the years 1984-1987 are regarded as Bowie's creatively worst years, but I imagine an alternative universe in which the 'Tonight' album includes 'This is not America' and maybe 'Dancing in the Streets' and in which 'Loving the Alien' is the immediate successor of 'Blue Jean' and suddenly 'Tonight' features 4 worldwide hits. Then Bowie releases 'Never Let Me Down' which includes 'Absolute Beginners' as lead single and the good songs of the Labyrinth soundtrack (especially 'As the World Falls Down') and Bowie gets another success. I think Bowie's creativity was spread too thin during those years (He also produced and co-wrote another Iggy Pop Album in 1986.)

In other news, will 'The Next day' become Bowie's first US-nr.1-album EVER?
http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/chart-alert/1551808/david-bowie-vs-bon-jovi-for-no-1-on-next-weeks-billboard-200

[dlb]

I'll take you there is probably one of the best bonus tracks I've ever had the joy to listen to. It conquered my top Bowie song list for 2013 in no time! Love it! :)

[thevoid99]

I love the album as a whole in its deluxe edition. Bowie still has it. He did lose it for a while during the 1980s but he got some of his mojo back in the 90s. I really hope he gets a #1 album in the U.S. It would just be sweet even though album charts are irrelevant these days.

[Jinsai]

album is great, but it's taken me a bit to get over how haggard his voice sounds on it. Bowie always sounded so ageless on every album, so it's surprising to hear him sound old

[ambergris]

So, in the end Bowie's new album 'only' hits Nr.2 in the USA, but that's still a career high.

http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/1552545/bon-jovi-debuts-at-no-1-on-billboard-200-david-bowie-at-no-2


I was really shocked that Bowie did so by selling only 85000 albums. Bon Jovi at Nr.1 sold only 96000 albums. As a comparison, in the UK Bowie hit Nr.1 with about 94000 sales, and only a fifth of the US population. The USA really isn't that big on albums it seems....

[orestes]

I think we both know the reason behind low-unit sells. ;)

[onthewall2983]

Bon frickin' Jovi.

[thevoid99]

I'm just glad it wasn't to something like Justin Bieber or any of that folk-pop shit. Besides, at least Bowie put up a good fight in the charts.

[frankie teardrop]

and bowie's status was always that as incredibly influential cult figure in the US, even at his peak. bon jovi at no. 1 just solidifies that most americans have shit for taste.

[allegro]

and bowie's status was always that as incredibly influential cult figure in the US, even at his peak. bon jovi at no. 1 just solidifies that most americans have shit for taste.
maybe it means (as Orestes seems to have implied) that Bowie fans are tech savvy enough to have stolen the album, which would not show up on the charts.

[frankie teardrop]

i figured lots of people pre-ordered it on itunes on the night of his birthday. i meant moreso that i've never been shocked by bowie's low chart status in the states outside of a few songs in the mid-70s (i think fame was his first no. 1 billboard song) and let's dance era. i wonder if this album was released soon after reality if it would have gotten this high in the charts at all? UK maybe, but definitely not in the US.

anyway, we all know that latter statement is true, right? ;) this is the land of the ubiquetous disposable pop star and the all-american dinosaur, after all.

[allegro]

yeah, sadly, the last time I saw Bowie for the Reality tour was at the Rosemont Theater (now the aCHOO Theater) which was pretty small compared to the ARENAS he played back in the day, plus G and I were, I swear, some of the YOUNGEST people in the audience which was friggin' weird because we're not very young haha.

[ambergris]

I think we both know the reason behind low-unit sells. ;)

And Americans do it far more often than Brits.

[Sutekh]

Meanwhile, deep beneath the Bank of England...
http://i49.tinypic.com/2ihuyz5.jpg

[botley]

EMI just put a new remaster of Aladdin Sane (for its 40th anniversary) out on CD/iTunes. I do think it's a significant improvement over all of the previous digital versions, but there are no bonus tracks. Definitely worth picking up, if you don't already have a legit copy. It's my favourite glam-era Bowie record (closely followed by Diamond Dogs). Just wish there was a high-res flavour too.

ps. I always buy music I like, especially when the artist owns their own masters, as Bowie does, and the record company are doing a good job (as EMI did by getting the original mastering engineer Ray Staff to re-do the digital version properly at last). It's important to reward good business practices in this fucked-up industry. It's the same reason I bought The Beatles in Mono box set when I owned all of those albums already — the label got it RIGHT, for once.

[onthewall2983]

http://www.davidbowie.com/sites/davidbowie.wmg-gardens.com/files/styles/blog_detail_image/public/201305/tnd_exclusive_shot_1000sq.jpg?itok=md7HO7I5

Exclusive still from The Next Day video shoot (http://www.davidbowie.com/news/exclusive-still-next-day-video-shoot-51636?cmpid=davidbowie/twitter/tweet-button/blog-detail)

[imail724]

Gary Oldman and David Bowie. *head explodes*

[botley]

I got chills. *watches again*

[imail724]

So good. And Marion Cotillard looks super hot

[thevoid99]

Bowie... Oldman... Cotillard.... *sploog*

[GoodSoldier333]

Have a Bowie question that's been killing me. Was hoping a fanatic bigger than myself would be able to help! :)

Do any of you know the song that starts playing at the 28:13 mark (you hear the piano come in) just as "Heroes" starts coming to an end ? It's all instruments so i can't really search anything.

http://vimeo.com/53207758

[Alpha 60]

I think it is part of Absolute Beginners

[GoodSoldier333]

You're awesome! It is, thanks so much.

[frankie teardrop]

definitely. LOVE that song. in a pretty rotten decade, it's one of the few true standouts.

[thevoid99]

"Absolute Beginners" is I think one of Bowie's best songs ever, especially in that terrible decade that was the 80s. I was happy to see in 2000 that he still played that song.

[GoodSoldier333]

Do any of you have a version of I'm Afraid of Americans (NIN V.1 Mix) that isn't so darn quiet? I had it for a while and noticed how quiet the song was recorded. Then i bought the mp3 off amazon and it matched what i had before....still ridiculously quiet compared to every other song on my ipod. I figured that's just the way it was recorded. Am i wrong?

[wizfan]

Trent was asked about his opinion on The Next Day in a recent Canadian radio interview. He refused to say it, merely stating "I'm glad he's putting new music out." Maybe Trent didn't like it?

[frankie teardrop]

Do any of you have a version of I'm Afraid of Americans (NIN V.1 Mix) that isn't so darn quiet? I had it for a while and noticed how quiet the song was recorded. Then i bought the mp3 off amazon and it matched what i had before....still ridiculously quiet compared to every other song on my ipod. I figured that's just the way it was recorded. Am i wrong?

probably hasn't been brickwalled yet. that's how music *should* sound.


"Absolute Beginners" is I think one of Bowie's best songs ever, especially in that terrible decade that was the 80s. I was happy to see in 2000 that he still played that song.

he played it at beacon, and it was the best song of the night!

[BRoswell]

Trent was asked about his opinion on The Next Day in a recent Canadian radio interview. He refused to say it, merely stating "I'm glad he's putting new music out." Maybe Trent didn't like it?

If you watch the video of the interview, he smiles when he said that he was just glad that Bowie put a new album out. I think he did like it. Perhaps not as much as the classic albums, but I don't think he would have commented on it to the length that he did had he thought it was shit.

[imail724]

At htda show I went to they played one of the new songs over the pa before they came out, dunno if that means anything though

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

[anthony_etc]

I think Trent is upset that The Next Day blows Oblivion out of the water

[Jinsai]

I think Trent is upset that The Next Day blows Oblivion

Derrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrp

[frankie teardrop]

RIP trevor bolder of the spiders from mars... gloriously mutton chopped bass player for some of the best music ever recorded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=louXPUW7tHU

[allegro]

Yeah, and according to this documentary, he and Mick didn't get paid much and they were the last to know that Bowie was to break up the band at their last live performance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=myjdpSUEHyY




R.I.P., Trevor

[GoodSoldier333]

In case you haven't yet seen what Jimmy Fallon did last night:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TsQ4ZOPzF0&amp;feature=youtu.be

[jmtd]

Do any of you have a version of I'm Afraid of Americans (NIN V.1 Mix) that isn't so darn quiet? I had it for a while and noticed how quiet the song was recorded. Then i bought the mp3 off amazon and it matched what i had before....still ridiculously quiet compared to every other song on my ipod. I figured that's just the way it was recorded. Am i wrong?

Have you tried
Replay gain

[thevoid99]

Oh, that was a good Jimmy Fallon clip. I love his show sometimes. He always has cool guests. Oh, earlier today on HBO Comedy, Flight of the Conchords' Bowie episode. "Bowie in Space". How can anyone not love that song?

[frankie teardrop]

just discovered this article, which explains that bowie was banned from SNL in 1997 for performing 'scary monsters'- a song that absolutely terrified lorne michaels from when he used to do a ton of cocaine to that record:
http://kimgordonsrealage.tumblr.com/post/28567497608/david-bowie-discusses-his-brief-ban-from-saturday-night

speaking of which, the full 1979 performance with klaus nomi:
http://vimeo.com/69201377

[GoodSoldier333]

I miss this thread. When is it NOT a good time to talk about Bowie? If any of you still haven't watched that "Dave" video project released earlier this year, check it out:


http://vimeo.com/53207758

[ManBurning]

If there's a good time to pick up David Bowie's new release "the next day", now is as good as any.

3 disc special edition due for November.

"'THE NEXT DAY EXTRA' will feature the original 14 song album, a 10 track companion cd with five unheard songs, two remixes (including one by LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy) and a DVD featuring four videos from 'THE NEXT DAY'."

http://www.davidbowie.com/news/3-disc-next-day-extra-due-november-release-52051

Sign me up!

[frankie teardrop]

i really dislike the trend of re-releasing modern albums 2/3 times when they're less than a year old. good lord, that's just a cash grab, and this is why (among other reasons) people have gotten accustomed to stealing music... since i don't love the record as much as i'd hoped i would, i'll definitely pass.

[botley]

Well, I never bought the physical edition anyway, but even if I had, I'd be buying the digital EP of the seven other tracks.

[frankie teardrop]

i bought the vinyl because, well, bowie. but i haven't listened to it yet.

[onthewall2983]

No word if the DVD features surround mixes?

[Deadpool]

Hard not to to see this as a cash-grab since, as frankie teardrop pointed out, it's been less than a years since the album was released. That said, I'm still excited for the new songs and remixes. The Next Day is an album that, little by little, I get more enjoyment out of every time I listen to it. I've always liked it, too. Not my favorite Bowie LP or anything, but very solid. "You Feel So Lonely You Could Die" has gotta be my favorite.

[NotoriousTIMP]

I cant stop listening to this remix.....

http://consequenceofsound.net/2013/10/listen-david-bowies-love-is-lost-remix-james-murphy/

[frankie teardrop]

halo33 surprised me in toronto with a trip to the bowie exhibit... tons of infamous outfits over the years, rare clips, the klaus nomi-nicked suit from saturday night live, the synths used on low/heroes, interactive media and cool remixes/mashups, and most wonderfully, original lyric sheets. herr 33 and i teared up a little bit while reading the draft lyrics of heroes, with various scrawled out and discarded verses mixed in.

if you can see this, GO!

[hellospaceboy]

^^^
I'm jealous, too bad the exhibit won't be presented anywhere near where I live

[halo33]

That exhibit was so. damn. good.
I wanted to move in. I just kept staring at lyric sheets and I would imagine Bowie's pen writing them down in reverse.

[carpenoctem]

Just popping in to say that Low is incredible and I can't believe a human being made it. How you gonna make your LP's second side an ambient trip that beats the hell out of anyone else's actual songs and arguably transcends even Eno's work? I feel like an angel is pouring liquid codeine in my ear canal during "Subterraneans."

[trollmanen]

I was in Toronto last week and was able to see this exhibit. It was amazing. I was blown away. One of my favorite pieces was the original artwork for Scary Monsters, a collage that measures about 6 feet wide. You can actually see where the artist cut up the album covers on the back and then painted over them, all the layers and raw edges, stuff that you would never get from looking at even the vinyl version of the album.

[frankie teardrop]

I was in Toronto last week and was able to see this exhibit. It was amazing. I was blown away. One of my favorite pieces was the original artwork for Scary Monsters, a collage that measures about 6 feet wide. You can actually see where the artist cut up the album covers on the back and then painted over them, all the layers and raw edges, stuff that you would never get from looking at even the vinyl version of the album.

i actually forgot about that, but was equally impressed! i knew it was a collage but i never knew it was that large!


Just popping in to say that Low is incredible and I can't believe a human being made it. How you gonna make your LP's second side an ambient trip that beats the hell out of anyone else's actual songs and arguably transcends even Eno's work? I feel like an angel is pouring liquid codeine in my ear canal during "Subterraneans."

don't forget heroes, low's schitzophrenic, manic depressive twin brother. i love both albums a lot, buti prefer heroes...

[ManBurning]

You can stream 5 of the bonus songs that are to appear on the deluxe edition of Bowie's "The Next Day" next Tuesday, right now over here:

http://music.cbc.ca/#/genres/Rock/blogs/2013/10/First-Play-David-Bowie-The-Next-Day-Extra-5-new-songs

[thevoid99]

I saw his new video last night. I can't believe it cost $13 to make.

[frankie teardrop]

well he already had all those weird talking head projection dolls from the earthling era:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFLY9tRAGtM

[uroboros]

I saw his new video last night. I can't believe it cost $13 to make.

The dummies are from the aborted "The Pretty Things are Going to Hell" video. Each one cost 7,000 pounds to make. So...$13 maybe a tad off the mark.
http://www.teenagewildlife.com/news/1999/0911/tptagth02.jpg
http://www.teenagewildlife.com/news/1999/0911/tptagth01.jpg

[Morad]

The dummies are from the aborted "The Pretty Things are Going to Hell" video. Each one cost 7,000 pounds to make. So...$13 maybe a tad off the mark.

This and the photos were incredibly interesting. Thanks for that.

Recently, I've been listening to the Bowie at the Beeb collection that was released about a decade or so ago. It is fantastic to listen to all these songs in such a tight format, without any of the gimmickry, without anything but just the matchless music itself. This is probably my favorite performance of Ziggy Stardust.


http://youtu.be/xXcq38Fqfhw

And have you guys heard God Bless the Girl yet? It was released for the Japanese release of The Next Day and is on The Next Day Extra too. It's pretty great.


http://youtu.be/4G6cAfxAm0M

[frankie teardrop]

honestly, what both uroboros and i had mentioned about the dolls/projection techniques pretty much sums up what I don't really care for regarding most of bowie's work since hours and especially what i dislike about this modern album and era. people have always given bowie credit as an innovator and trend-setter, and i've always thought that was a generous and slightly inaccurate claim (bowie was always on the cutting edge, but was still following a lot of more pioneering artists even during the best of times). however, he was a game changer for a very long time, and still flirted with it in the 90s.

you can argue that his knack for trendchasing/setting was even further removed in the 90s, a little slower, a little less cutting edge and a little more grasping for straws after his rough 80s period. but i still loved outside and dug earthling. i'm not sure what happened, but soon after the gabrels partnership ended, it seemed like bowie began to really dig deep into the past, both channeling a series of regrets and faded memories, and the music has really started to suffer as a result. i like heathen, the songwriting strength more or less makes up for those nostalgic glasses, but most ofhours, reality, and the next day leave me cold and seem less sure of himself and more resting on his laurels. a few good songs on each of those records, but otherwise, i feel like bowie has lost the plot. see also the modern revamping of 'rebel rebel' (which was horrible) as well as the more singles-heavy setlists despite promising he wouldn't ever look back after sound & vision. i'm ok with him changing his mind on this and i've enjoyed hearing many of the classics at the show i saw at beacon theatre, but i digress.

anyway, these new videos, featuring dolls from the aborted pretty things video and projection techniques used as far back as earthling, not to mention the cover of the new record, the revamped boroughs photo from 73/74, etc. it all just seems a little too self-referential to accept. not that bowie hasn't earned the right to look back and reflect on his tremendous career, but it's not the kind of thing i look for or enjoy about bowie, thus i can't get behind it as easily.

[NotoriousTIMP]

Just a heads up, Music On Vinyl has repressed Earthling and Heathen on limited edition colored vinyl. I'm not 100% sure about heathen, but EArthling received two limited pressings out of 2500 each; one being green (1st press) and blue (2nd press).

I managed to snag a green pressing on Amazon and got #1678 - $34 shipped to my door on Halloween! Sure beats paying the prices that the original pressing was going for.....

http://img.tapatalk.com/d/13/11/01/a4ydubaj.jpg

http://img.tapatalk.com/d/13/11/01/pehe7yve.jpg

[elevenism]

http://www.vevo.com/watch/david-bowie/the-next-day-explicit/USRV31300003

Can i just say, what in the FUCK are you thinking, david? seriously....

[uroboros]

http://www.vevo.com/watch/david-bowie/the-next-day-explicit/USRV31300003

Can i just say, what in the FUCK are you thinking, david? seriously....


Probably thought:
David Bowie + Gary Oldman + Brutal religious imagery/commentary + Blood + Tits = Controversial Video

Aces all around.

[The Doctor]

New Louis Vuitton ad with Bowie playing "I'd Rather Be High" on harpsichord, pretty sweet:


http://youtu.be/GpTwgRk2aUU

[Reznor2112]

NEW MUSIC SOON says Bowie:
http://pitchfork.com/news/55917-david-bowie-says-new-music-coming-soon/

[baudolino]

NEW MUSIC SOON says Bowie:
http://pitchfork.com/news/55917-david-bowie-says-new-music-coming-soon/

"SOON"- that belongs to NIN Spotting, right?

[thevoid99]

More new Bowie.... SWEET!!!!

[fillow]

Hopefully with a proper artwork this time

[onthewall2983]

Two new songs to accompany the release of Nothing Has Changed, a career-spanning compilation going back to before his name change. (http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/new-david-bowie-songs-to-accompany-career-spanning-comp-20140909) It'll also have 3 unreleased songs from the Toy sessions.

[fillow]

Thank you David, we were really in need for another singles compilation. New tracks are welcomed, but the whole thing is a blatant cashgrab.

[botley]

L@L if you think anything in the current music industry still counts as a cash grab. This actually looks like a pretty nice compilation (I should know, I drew up two vastly more extensive volumes upthread), but it's a pity they missed the awesome single remixes of "Real Cool World" and "I Can't Read".

Anyway Mr. Cashgrab, here's (almost) the whole thing on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtCjDbDKHtKlvRwN-BseRhpuojsPptjOX) for free.

[Frozen Beach]

So, do the original mp3 files that leaked of the Outside outtakes not exist anymore? You know, the ones all the bootlegs used as a source?

[icecream]

http://consequenceofsound.net/2014/09/david-bowie-to-release-new-album-soon-according-to-his-longtime-producer/

Soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo new Bowie soon according to Visconti. Can't wait to drown in Bowie soon

Haven't seen if this was posted: http://consequenceofsound.net/2013/12/trent-reznor-praises-david-bowie-slams-arcade-fire/
He doesn't even "slam" Arcade Fire. Just media doin' the usual.

[botley]

Talk about media doing the usual — CoS (and Pitchfork) picked up the above quote from CNN who were quoting Visconti (https://twitter.com/tonuspomus/status/513247774989901824) quoting what Bowie already announced: two new songs. Not a whole album. Silly rabbits.

[The Doctor]

Saw a screening of the documentary about the 'David Bowie Is' exhibit that's currently on an international tour. I thought it was fantastic!

For someone such as myself who neither lives near a stop on the exhibit's tour nor am able to visit it, this was quite the treat. Not only do they lead your through the exhibit, which shows off many of his amazing costumes/outfits throughout the years, there's also vintage video clips of performances and present day thoughts from those who worked with Bowie or were influenced by him, such as Kansai Yamamoto and Pulp's Jarvis Cocker. There's close-ups of his handwritten lyrics too, which is fascinating; seeing the lyrics to something like Starman and see the scribbles where he hadn't quite gotten it right yet gives him a human quality I had never really experienced before.

If this is showing at a cinema near you and you're a Bowie fan, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

[Shadaloo]

Nice. Good to know because I just got tix to a Saturday showing. :D

[hellospaceboy]

I caught the documentary too, and loved it! I was curious to see how they'll going to represent the exhibit on the screen (since it's about the exhibit, not Bowie himself) and they did a beautiful job, very elegant. Highly recommended!

[GulDukat]

Sound + Vision ​was re-released. Four discs of music for 30 bucks. Not bad.

[jmtd]

saw that in HMV and mistook it for "nothing has changed", but noticed the track listing was chronological and got confused

[The Doctor]

I made a bunch of Bowie wallpapers for the iPhone 6 you can download them as a zip (https://www.dropbox.com/s/q5ma2ygpk8g2mmo/Bowie_iPhone6.zip?dl=0).

[icecream]

I'm really looking into either busing or flying to Chicago to see the David Bowie Is exhibition. Has anyone here seen it?

[frankie teardrop]

i saw it in toronto. very, very impressive and thorough. handwritten lyrics, old costumes, and never before seen footage... DEFINITELY worth the pilgrimage if you're a big fan!

[Shadaloo]

I too saw the documentary the other day, and I'll attest that it's wonderful and a must-see for fans who can't get there.

[icecream]

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell... looks like I'm going!

[ghostaustin]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjch4rgIbYU#t=343

<3

[Space Suicide]

New Single Debuted (http://consequenceofsound.net/2014/10/david-bowie-releases-new-single-sue-or-in-a-season-of-crime-listen/)

I dig it.

[Charmingly Miserable]

I like it too although I don't think David's vocals are as strong as I think it could be.

[armogi]

I like it a lot too, somehow it reminds me of outside.

[frankie teardrop]

i tried to make it through this one, but i'm not feeling it. i'm not a huge fan of free jazz, and when i want this kind of loose structure experimentation, his idol scott walker does it ten times better... i applaud bowie for trying something different, and for abandoning the mostly dry rock n' roll cliches of the next day (which i didn't care for either), but otherwise...

[thevoid99]

I dig it for the element of jazz as I think it's Bowie just implying his love for jazz. After all, it was his older half-brother that introduced him to John Coltrane.

[fillow]

Bowie had many jazzy tracks in his career. Disco King, A Small Plot of Land, half of BTWN and Buddha tracks. Certainly a familiar territory for him.

[Digital Twilight]

I quite like it but to be honest the vocals don't seem to gel with the song all too well.

[frankie teardrop]

Bowie had many jazzy tracks in his career. Disco King, A Small Plot of Land, half of BTWN and Buddha tracks. Certainly a familiar territory for him.

definitely. the first two especially are fantastic. buddha has some great moments as well. this new track just doesn't gel for me. perhaps a bit too overlong, a bit too avant garde without urgency (again, see scott walker for better examples of this- or even 'small plot of land'), and as @Digital Twilight (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=3112) suggests, a disconnect between vox and music. it just sounds dull and uninspired to me, which makes the jazz elements extra grating.

it's less that it's a completely different direction for bowie, since that would be a stupid complaint given his career arc. i just don't think the track is very good. on a side note, i often wonder if anyone would have cared about the next day or this new compilation if he hadn't disappeared from the business for 10 years... reality was a superior album (no masterpiece, but i liked it better than the next day), but it was mostly ignored and dismissed when it came out. it just shocked me when most of his 90s and 00s work was dismissed outright yet this comeback is generally praised across the board. absence makes the heart grow fonder for some? for me, it just makes me extra critical.

[implanted_microchip]

i often wonder if anyone would have cared about the next day or this new compilation if he hadn't disappeared from the business for 10 years... reality was a superior album (no masterpiece, but i liked it better than the next day), but it was mostly ignored and dismissed when it came out. it just shocked me when most of his 90s and 00s work was dismissed outright yet this comeback is generally praised across the board. absence makes the heart grow fonder for some? for me, it just makes me extra critical.

That definitely has a lot to do with it, considering there was an entire decade where everyone had grown to accept that Reality was the final Bowie album, that there'd not be anything else and we should all learn to live it, with Bowie himself rejecting any comments about writing another one. Couple that with the constant health rumors, and when a surprise single and album announcement dropped, of course it was hyped as all hell. It felt like a total gift and surprise that everyone had grown the think wouldn't ever come, and it automatically got a lot of attention and people wanted to love it ahead of time. In the 90's and early 00's he was releasing an album almost every other year and they were more taken for granted, nowadays anything he puts out could very well be the last thing he ever makes, and there's a sense of urgency and importance surrounding that. It's like how fans might skip a tour for a band, but if it's the "final tour ever" everyone and their mother will come out to see it.

(That said I personally love TND, don't want to sound like I don't.)

[SarahConnor]

The internet knights anyone whose career was established pre-internet.

[botley]

Most of the internet is full of fucking idiots.

Bowie doesn't need to do ANYTHING, now, and the Scott Walker comparisons are getting tiresome (yeah I also read Pushing Ahead of the Dame, and he's doing a great job of drawing out these parallels between their careers without scorekeeping like their music was some fucking football game). Yes, The Next Day and this new track do feel like a gift. It's nothing like what I would have expected given the neoclassicist approach of Reality & Heathen. I'm still reeling from his career resuming. Really excited to hear the Toy tracks and the new song in a properly-released form on Nothing Has Changed. All the web rips floating around sound like total ass.

[frankie teardrop]

Pushing Ahead of the Dame

if anything, momus leads the pack on commentary, and kind of nails it on this track. otherwise, if the shoe fits on the walker comparisons... as a huge fan of both artists, it's not hard to make that connection here and elsewhere. it's less about keeping score as i'm trying to say that this new track kind of lacks the conviction and intensity that walker channels when he heads into this territory, whereas the bowie cut just sounds discordant and plodding. someone else mentioned that the track was the most jazz-driven track yet, embracing and channeling coltrane head on instead of dabbling with flourishes like south horizon, small plot, aladdin sane, etc. there's some truth to that. i didn't mind the dabbling as a tool combined with the usual kick-ass songwriting, but hearing a full fledged jazz track is not my taste.

while we're all feeling cantankerous today, i'll add that my issues with the next day are the same i have with modern morrissey records. there's less of the magic that attracted me to their work in the past... and the sounds are more conventional, more predictable, and honestly, without the name behind it sound little more than a bar band playing every saturday down at the local pub. stock rock cliches, standard riffs, with the obvious star power on vocals. it's the first time i haven't found more than one track i've enjoyed on a bowie record (even hours had a handful of decent cuts). the only song that does anything for me is 'heat'- and well, i guess i can't mention why i like it without sounding like i'm keeping score ;).

as for a final statement, i thought heathen was nearly perfect. ditch the abysmal gemini spacecraft cover and add in some of the toy outtakes or b-sides and it's a really wonderful era. i guess the same complaints i have about the next day can easily be made about heathen- with 'slow burn' having a bit of that 'heroes' vibe and the production focusing heavily on the rock side of things, but the songwriting sounded stronger, bowie was confident, and there were enough interesting tracks (sunday, 5:15, heathen) that added weight to the record. or maybe it was just the right record at the right time...

meanwhile, i'm not going to dog bowie for coming out of retirement should the creative spark hit him, but i wish the new material was judged more on its quality (or lack thereof) than being cherished and grandfathered in on the comeback aspect. it's similar to giving someone an oscar for a lesser film because you snubbed the other, superior ones in the past.

[Jinsai]

I don't know... I like the new track better than anything off The Next Day.

[frankie teardrop]

the funny thing is that i do too, though i still don't like it! ;)

[botley]

my issues with the next day are the same i have with modern morrissey records. there's less of the magic that attracted me to their work in the past... and the sounds are more conventional, more predictable, and honestly, without the name behind it sound little more than a bar band playing every saturday down at the local pub. stock rock cliches, standard riffs, with the obvious star power on vocals. it's the first time i haven't found more than one track i've enjoyed on a bowie record (even hours had a handful of decent cuts). the only song that does anything for me is 'heat'- and well, i guess i can't mention why i like it without sounding like i'm keeping score ;).
Apart from a couple of the keyboard patches (not the playing, just the sounds), it doesn't sound much like any pub band I've had the good fortune of hearing. Maybe I need to move to New York, if all the local axe-slingers actually do sound like Earl Slick and Tony Levin, with monster colossus drummers like Sterling Campbell and Zach Alford bashing away behind them. What's most important to me is the songwriting, and on The Next Day I find Bowie's most jaw-droppingly personal and viciously incisive songcraft in at least twenty years.

I would love to hear more innovative production techniques, too, but I honestly just don't expect to hear those from older pop stars; they may have been able to keep up with the industry in their youth, and push the envelope each time, but it's near impossible after a certain point — everyone eventually becomes set in their ways. I'm not apologizing for this, or giving Bowie a pass for it. It goes the same for other artists of his age and status; even Walker hasn't entirely escaped it. You simply have to be willing to put up with some 'old fogey' sounds from these guys, or else be embarrassed by Madonna-esque grafting-on of someone else's hip production style. Lucy can't dance, dat dat dah-dah-dah-dah.

We at least agree on this: "Heat" is an amazing piece. Reckoning with the ghost of one's father is such a powerful trope, and it really speaks to the quality of that album that I sometimes forget how amazing the closing number is when, given the strength of its front-loaded first half, that's what springs immediately to my mind. Yes, the album's production style was hard to get past at first, but I now tend to play the whole of The Next Day Extra CDs back-to-back. Just wish they had included the two very spooky videos for that "Love Is Lost" remix on the DVD, too, but I guess they weren't completed in time.

[allegro]

I would love to hear more innovative production techniques, too, but I honestly just don't expect to hear those from older pop stars; they may have been able to keep up with the industry in their youth, and push the envelope each time, but it's near impossible after a certain point — everyone eventually becomes set in their ways. I'm not apologizing for this, or giving Bowie a pass for it. It goes the same for other artists of his age and status; even Walker hasn't entirely escaped it. You simply have to be willing to put up with some 'old fogey' sounds from these guys, or else be embarrassed by Madonna-esque grafting-on of someone else's hip production style. Lucy can't dance, dat dat dah-dah-dah-dah.
Is Bowie maybe afraid of high-tech production because he's afraid that it would be perceived as "tricks" like a face-lift, ala Tony Bennett duets? Although, I've seen Tony Bennett live recently and he still has it except he gets tired pretty fast. Sinatra should've retired WAY before he did, he was embarrassing. My point is that our aging idols are never gonna sound like they used to sound and if we're lucky they age like fine wine and we get subtle nuances of what they used to be plus something different added with age, and they go in new and interesting directions that aren't too embarrassing (e.g. auto-tuned to death, or Rod Stewart lounge act old standards)? I think you really hit the nail on the head, though, botley, with the songwriting / songcraft being the most important element. Bowie's strong younger voice is forever lost. People need to cut him some slack, and embrace his current voice and focus more, as botley said, on songwriting / lyrics. This is the final "season" of Bowie. The guy's approaching 70. Enjoy the guy while he's still here.

[frankie teardrop]

well, we did have higher tech production with earthling and the like, but ever since (and perhaps as a reaction to the blasting that record took from its detractors), he's settled into a more mature songwriting style and production techniques to match. i don't fault him for that so much but to me, heathen sounded so much more alive and fresh comparatively. but i'd wager that earthling was the last truly innovative and wild bowie album, even if it was chasing a trend at the time.

i actually think bowie's voice is solid, all things considered. i've always liked (and often preferred) his deeper croon.

[allegro]

well, we did have higher tech production with earthling
But, wasn't Earthling released 17 years ago? When Bowie was 50? 1 year older than Trent Reznor is now?

Heathen was released 12 years ago, when Bowie was 55?

None of these older singers' voices (meaning, over 60) are as strong, except maybe for Tony Bennett who seems to be some weird exception to the rule (save for outdoor cold Christmas specials, but Tony is 88).

[allegro]

speaking of Bowie and Bennett, I'll just leave this here ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19kWn_QbJEA

[BenAkenobi]

...i'd wager that earthling was the last truly innovative and wild bowie album...

i'd wager hours... (well, not exactly jaw-droppingly innovative, i just appreciate that style more)

[Charmingly Miserable]

New Bowie up. Tis A Pity She Was A Whore (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04nvxwz). 2:49:37 mark.

[botley]

http://youtu.be/09PogTIgmHw

[botley]

As expected, the 3-CD version of Nothing Has Changed is tremendously good, and at full lossless quality, it's the best that these songs have EVER sounded (original single version of "Starman", anyone?) — four hours of Bowie bliss.

[onthewall2983]

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

[henryeatscereal]

I'm such a victim of commercialism, bought "Nothing has changed" (3 CD's), even though i own most of these songs, at least the collection looks very nice and the sound is great, the new track is so-so (weird because i loved "The Next Day").

[Substance242]

3 CDs "Nothing has changed" will be delivered to me today, including 2 LP version - a gift for dad. When I was a child (70s/80s), parents listened to some good music like Foreigner, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones, but for some reason not Bowie. I had to discover him myself around Earthling album, Afraid of Americans, then Hours... which I see a lot of people are not keen on but I like it, moments like famous song is playing and I'm "wait, this is also Bowie? cool", buying Uncut magazine special (together with The Cure and Joy Division), and I was quite happy when he suddenly appeared again. Nothing has changed. Or, hasn't it. :-)

Update: I forgot to mention - so for me this release is good because being somewhat late follower, I am not THAT crazy to buy everything he released so far, and this compilation looks quite nice.

[elevenism]

i'd wager hours... (well, not exactly jaw-droppingly innovative, i just appreciate that style more)

what about heathen?

i fucking LOVED that record. The first song with the strange, strange guitar part, the grooviness of I Would Be Your Slave (or whatever it's called,) and the way the bits of futuristic sound mixed with traditional style...i found it fairly unique. Someone said Neo-classicist, or something like that...that's a good way of describing it.

I'm still waiting for Outside 2: Contamination, goddamnit. Outside was the Bowie album that hooked me...i was sixteen and OBSESSED.


Bowie blows my mind because he created music that my father loved and my grandfather couldn't stand, (Ziggy,) and decades later, was creating music that i loved and my father couldn't stand (outside, earthling.)

Is there a good album or bootleg of bowie remixes, BTW?

[henryeatscereal]

I'm still waiting for Outside 2: Contamination, goddamnit. Outside was the Bowie album that hooked me...i was sixteen and OBSESSED.

i would love a follow-up for "Outside" too, or at least a new deluxe edition for "Outside" with a bonus disc with all the B-sides and outakes that would have been the "Contamination" album. I'm not even sure if Bowie recorded any tracks for it before he decided to do "Earthling"

[fillow]

There is for sure enough unreleased/unfinished material from original 94 Outside sessions to fill at least a CD.

[armogi]

I am also in for outside 2, I seem to remember reading it was supposed to be a troligy actually, wasn't it?

Along with se7en and that era's NIN stuff, I was hooked!

[fillow]

http://33.media.tumblr.com/9a824cf2d17eaf76ec6e088c157995fc/tumblr_nhuxa68O5x1qaetdco1_500.gif

[Space Suicide]

LOL I was about to post that amazing gif.

[Ryan]

David Slowie [at performing live]

[botley]

Happy 38th birthday, Low!

HTTP://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsELFp6s-lo

[botley]

David Slowie [at performing live]
I read this (https://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/2015/03/11/the-last-tour/) and I wonder, I really do.

[Ryan]

I read this (https://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/2015/03/11/the-last-tour/) and I wonder, I really do.

I've never seen him live, so that's a bummer.

[thevoid99]

That bummed me even more as I've wanted to see him live for so many years and have blown it several times. I really hope he would do one more tour but slow things down so he can take his time for the sake of his health.

[fillow]

Discovered this today


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdjF-1zcK4s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdjF-1zcK4s)

[thevoid99]

That was not one of Bowie's great moments. I didn't like the hair he had back then. Plus, I don't drink Pepsi. I'm a Coke/Sprite guy.

[botley]

That was not one of Bowie's great moments. I didn't like the hair he had back then. Plus, I don't drink Pepsi. I'm a Coke/Sprite guy.
LOL that was a pretty bad haircut, yeah... circa '87? Even the dorky slicked-back Weird Science look from the same ad is better. I like seeing Tina dance with Bowie, though, and their re-cut version of "Modern Love" is cheesy fun.

[seasonsinthesky]

what about heathen?

i fucking LOVED that record. The first song with the strange, strange guitar part, the grooviness of I Would Be Your Slave (or whatever it's called,) and the way the bits of futuristic sound mixed with traditional style...i found it fairly unique. Someone said Neo-classicist, or something like that...that's a good way of describing it.

I'm still waiting for Outside 2: Contamination, goddamnit. Outside was the Bowie album that hooked me...i was sixteen and OBSESSED.


Bowie blows my mind because he created music that my father loved and my grandfather couldn't stand, (Ziggy,) and decades later, was creating music that i loved and my father couldn't stand (outside, earthling.)

Is there a good album or bootleg of bowie remixes, BTW?

i really wish he hadn't abandoned (to whatever degree) the Outside approach/aesthetic – heretical as it may be, it's the only Bowie record with no songs i dislike!

i guess that's unfair, though, since i am obsessed with the Dissonance tour, and that was why i got into Bowie at all.

no proper remix compilations but a bunch of bonus discs of more recent albums have a lot of remix material; try the jungle mix of "I'm Deranged," the Basquiat mix of "A Small Plot of Land," and definitely the '90s rework of "The Man Who Sold the World" (from the Strangers When We Meet single/Dissonance bootlegs too, i guess) if you haven't heard them!

[botley]

The Dissonance version of "Andy Warhol">>>>>>>>>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KAvaVUWAY0

[Shadaloo]

Oh my god please be true (http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music-arts/bowie-wife-lets-slip-rocker-planning-tour-article-1.1288314)

[thevoid99]

Oh my god please be true (http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music-arts/bowie-wife-lets-slip-rocker-planning-tour-article-1.1288314)

Wait... that was from 2013.

[Shadaloo]

Fuck. It popped up on my FB feed and I went slightly insane.

Well, I'm just hoping plans are still in progress.

[onthewall2983]

New song to accompany director Johan Renck's mini-series The Last Panthers (https://www.facebook.com/davidbowie/photos/a.424610777664.193516.30899502664/10153004541172665/?type=1&theater)

[Jinsai]

I just watched this live video from 78 in Japan, and I think everyone needs to see this.
I'm floored.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaKpJl4D8bc#t=324

[allegro]

I just watched this live video from 78 in Japan, and I think everyone needs to see this.
I'm floored.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaKpJl4D8bc#t=324

That's the same tour as "Stage" (live album). Same set list, backdrop, players.

I could do without Belew's massacre of Fripp's guitar part in "Heroes" but I love all the Ziggy stuff and that was an over-the-top treatment of "Warzawa" at the time. And I think I had that same hair in 1978 LOL.

[Jinsai]

ah, I thought Belew was amazing in that video. The only low point for me is the unfortunate mix at the beginning of Soul Love
Especially the solo at the beginning of Station To Station... that's just amazing.

[henryeatscereal]

I own that "Bowie on Japan" bootleg on DVD, it's a good concert (shame about the quality, though...)

[allegro]

ah, I thought Belew was amazing in that video. The only low point for me is the unfortunate mix at the beginning of Soul Love
Especially the solo at the beginning of Station To Station... that's just amazing.
I like the solo in the beginning of Station to Station but that's pretty much the same solo from the record (Earl Slick), so ...

I don't like some of the musical arrangements for "Stage" because it just seems too "Vegas" to me. Although it IS the late-70s and that is reflected a bit. And I guess I'm just an Earl Slick kind of girl.

Now, compare that to, say, this (Earl Sllck, Earl Slick, Earl Slick):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TEckcEICUM


Yes, Bowie's voice is affected by WAY TOO MUCH COKE but it's still less Vegas.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lshq61hCiuc&list=RD4TEckcEICUM&index=2

[allegro]

I saw this tour in Detroit at the Joe, I remember most of my friends getting LIMOS it was such a big fucking deal hahahahahahahahahhaaaa

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PZY-6MCj0M

Another tour with my boy Earl Slick! :p (And Carlos Alomar!)

http://allstarschristmas.com/images/artist-galleries/earl-slick/ES1.jpg