David Bowie

[eversonpoe]

I understand why people don't like Tonight now. That marimba especially makes everything worse. The covers are also pretty weak, and the only song I find memorable is Loving The Alien, but even that is stained by cheesy production. At least the material he did for Labyrinth is charming in its cheesy production.

it's really funny, too, because one of my favorite parts of Tom Waits' 80s albums is the marimba.

[Frozen Beach]

it's really funny, too, because one of my favorite parts of Tom Waits' 80s albums is the marimba.

And another funny thing is that I actually don't mind the instrument in those albums. But here, it sounds like some cheesy tropical music.

[thevoid99]

I'm now sure how many of us have heard this cover of "Nature Boy" but for anyone that knows Bowie's life knows that one of his mother's favorite singers was Nat King Cole. Bowie's vocals is on top with this song and this is a phenomenal cover.

[Mantra]

Never Let Me Down

Yeah, I pretty much agree with your whole assessment of this album. In general, it seems to be really underrated. The later part of the album definitely weaker, no doubt, but the first half is actually really solid. I always thought the hate for this one was unwarranted. In particular, I think the title has one of the best melodies/chord progressions in pop music. I love the way it evokes that old crooner/RnB style of songwriting from way back in the day.

[elevenism]

He was repeatedly quoted as hating live performance and hated the crowd-pleasing formula.

I remember being really surprised as a teenager when i heard him say that he would rather be curled up with a good book than on tour, but it makes more sense to me now, especially his disdain for the "greatest hits" formula. I'm sure it's frustrating when you're full of new music and anxious to share it, only to realize that most people don't care about what you've been working on and would prefer to be presented with something you showed them a long time ago.

On that note: are there good bootlegs of the Glass Spider tour out there? I read that the ABC version was woefully incomplete, to the point that it "obliterated" the intended theme.

[Jinsai]

I remember being really surprised as a teenager when i heard him say that he would rather be curled up with a good book than on tour, but it makes more sense to me now, especially his disdain for the "greatest hits" formula. I'm sure it's frustrating when you're full of new music and anxious to share it, only to realize that most people don't care about what you've been working on and would prefer to be presented with something you showed them a long time ago.

On that note: are there good bootlegs of the Glass Spider tour out there? I read that the ABC version was woefully incomplete, to the point that it "obliterated" the intended theme.

But he's talking about the shows where he felt like he had to grind out the hits... the clip of him playing that track off Earthling with Robert Smith for his birthday... he looks like the most alive, fired-up performer ever having the time of his life. I think every career musician grows to hate aspects of the live show. Even on the lowest, most basic level of pub performing, it can be a bit of a drag in a lot of particular ways.

[elevenism]

But he's talking about the shows where he felt like he had to grind out the hits... the clip of him playing that track off Earthling with Robert Smith for his birthday... he looks like the most alive, fired-up performer ever having the time of his life. I think every career musician grows to hate aspects of the live show. Even on the lowest, most basic level of pub performing, it can be a bit of a drag in a lot of particular ways.

Funny, i just got up from watching that show

[Frozen Beach]

Apparently the Outside outtakes aren't actually outtakes

Paperdragon, Bowie Station:


"I talked to one of the musicians who is on this and got a more complete story. First, these aren’t outtakes at all and, second, they weren’t initially intended to be a Bowie album. The idea was to form a sort of supergroup behind Bowie and Eno, and record an album as a one-off project for that group. This is essentially that album. So what we have here is a fully-realized concept album for a group that never came into existence.


It was then presented to the record company, who as we all know rejected it as “uncommercial.” After that, Bowie used parts of it as the basis for an entirely new project, which became 1.Outside. So, had this been released, Outside would have never happened. So, rather than this being outtakes from Outside, it’s actually more true that Outside was based on outtakes from The Leon Suites, an album in its own right."

[allegro]

But he's talking about the shows where he felt like he had to grind out the hits... the clip of him playing that track off Earthling with Robert Smith for his birthday... he looks no, like the most alive, fired-up performer ever having the time of his life. I think every career musician grows to hate aspects of the live show. Even on the lowest, most basic level of pub performing, it can be a bit of a drag in a lot of particular ways.

He always looked good performing but, no, I can link lots of interviews where he said he preferred writing and album-recording to live performance and did not love the live performance (particularly touring) aspects of his career. He DID it, could look good doing it, I suppose the birthday bash was especially enjoyable because it was celebrating his birthday, in his honor, loaded with all his friends and peers, but it was what it was. He reminds me of Eno, who at one point with Roxy Music decided to never tour again when he realized (after several dates into the tour) that he was compiling a "To Do" list in his head.

Here is an NPR interview, for instance.

GROSS: How is your sense of yourself as a performer different now at the age of 55 than it was when you were in your 20s and getting started and being - when you were in persona and doing the whole, you know, eye makeup and dyed hair and dresses when you wanted to?

BOWIE: Yeah, that was for 18 months, actually.

GROSS: Right.

BOWIE: Which out of a career of nearly 40 years, is not very long. However, I'll answer your question (laughter). I'm not actually a very keen performer. I like putting shows together. I like putting events together. In fact, everything I do is about the conceptualizing and realization of a piece of work, whether it's the recording or the performance side. And kind of when I put the thing together, I don't mind doing it for a few weeks, but then, quite frankly, I get incredibly, incredibly bored because I don't see myself so much as a - I mean, I don't live for the stage. I don't live for an audience. That really doesn't...

GROSS: Can I stop you and say that I'm really surprised to hear that?

BOWIE: Yeah. Most people are.

GROSS: Yeah, because...

BOWIE: I think...

GROSS: ...I always thought of you as somebody who really relished the theater aspect of performance...

BOWIE: No.

GROSS: ...And who very successfully made theater a part of music performance.

BOWIE: Frankly, if I could get away with not having to perform, I'd be very happy. It's not my favorite thing to do. As I say, I don't mind trying it out and making sure something seems to work well. But I really do rather want to move on because I think it's rather a waste of time endlessly singing the same songs every night for a year, and it's just not what I want to do. What I like doing is writing and recording and much more on the, I guess, the - on that creative level. It's fun interpreting songs and all that, but I wouldn't like it as a living.

GROSS: Did you grow up thinking of yourself as a singer, or did you start singing because you wanted to sing, you know, because you wanted to perform?

BOWIE: No, I want - I start - what I wanted to do when I was 9 years old, I wanted to be the baritone sax player in the Little Richard band. I probably also wanted to be black at that particular time as well (laughter). And so I got my father to help me out with the saxophone. And we bought it over, like, a two-year period. We had something in Britain then called the hire-purchase system, or HP. And I bought it on HP, which is like you pay two and sixpence a week.

GROSS: Oh, buying it on time?

BOWIE: Yeah, over, like, a thousand years. So at the end it cost you maybe twice as much as if you could have afforded cash (laughter).

GROSS: Right.

BOWIE: And I started playing around with local rock bands, you know, with the alto. And then, in a nutshell, somebody fell ill one night, the lead singer of one of the bands, and they knew I could sing, so they asked me if I would stand in. And I quite enjoyed it, actually, I must say, at 14. It was a real trip, you know, to have girls wave at you and smile and everything just because you opened your mouth and sang. And - but really, I guess - but, no, I really wanted to do, more than anything else, up until I was around 16, 17, was write musicals.

GROSS: Was write music.

BOWIE: Musicals.

GROSS: Oh, musicals.

BOWIE: I really wanted to write musicals. That's what I wanted to do more than anything else. And it kind of - because I liked rock music, I kind of moved into that sphere, somehow thinking that somewhere along the line I'd be able to put the two together. And I suppose I very nearly did with the Ziggy character. But I had such short attention span and got disinterested so quickly after I created some kind of project that I wanted to move on. And I never really got the book together for the thing, so I had all the songs and the characters. But by the time we'd gotten it on the road and I'd been doing it for 18 months, oh God, I couldn't wait to move on to something else.

GROSS: So when you say you wanted to write musicals, did you want to write, like, Rodgers and Hart kind of musicals or "Hair"? I mean, what was...

BOWIE: No, that was my point.

GROSS: Yeah.

BOWIE: No, my point was I wanted to rewrite how rock music was perceived.

GROSS: Oh, I see. Yeah, right.

BOWIE: And I thought that I could do some kind of vehicle involving rock musicals and presenting rock and characters and storyline in a completely different fashion.

GROSS: So was singing something you started doing to come - so that you could do that kind of theater?

BOWIE: It was - well, it was the conception that, I mean, God, I would love to have handed it on to somebody else. And I guess Ziggy would have been the perfect vehicle to have done with. I don't know why, to this day, I didn't find some other kid, after I'd done it for like six months, and said, here you are. Put the wig on and send him out and do the gigs, you know. I mean, it would have been much the best thing to do. And then I could have moved on quicker to something else.

But that comes back to what I was saying. I needed to sing because nobody else was singing my songs.

GROSS: Right.

BOWIE: So I had to do it myself.

[thevoid99]

I heard the song "Girls" last night. Why was that a B-side? It was too good to be a B-side and should've improved Never Let Me Down along with "Julie".

[Frozen Beach]

So having heard Never Let Me Down last night, it's much better than Tonight. However, the only track that's really memorable to me is Time Will Crawl.

Onto Tin Machine

[frankie teardrop]

speaking of tin machine, fans out outside would do well to check this out:

[henryeatscereal]

I remember the first time i heard Tin Machine:
It was the performance they did in 1991 at Saturday Night Live (Macaulay Culkin was guest host), i wasn't familiar with Bowie's full discography and i had no idea he had an "outside group" from his very own solo work.
I remember liking the song ("Baby universal") and me looking for the album in my local record store (with no luck, remember this was pre-amazon days...)

[thevoid99]

I remember the first time i heard Tin Machine:
It was the performance they did in 1991 at Saturday Night Live (Macaulay Culkin was guest host), i wasn't familiar with Bowie's full discography and i had no idea he had an "outside group" from his very own solo work.
I remember liking the song ("Baby universal") and me looking for the album in my local record store (with no luck, remember this was pre-amazon days...)

I remember that episode. I enjoyed "Baby Universal" as well as what Bowie was doing lyrically while it was a full-on band. I also loved the fact that Bowie had Macaulay wear his fedora hat at the end of the show.

[henryeatscereal]

I remember that episode. I enjoyed "Baby Universal" as well as what Bowie was doing lyrically while it was a full-on band. I also loved the fact that Bowie had Macaulay wear his fedora hat at the end of the show.

I just remembered that!, yeah, i used to love SNL and Macaulay back in the day, now that episode is extra special because it featured one one my favorite musicians...

[orestes]

[Substance242]

Listened to Earthling yesterday evening, and now I still have these great parts alternating in my head: "Don't you let my letter get you down" and then "I PRAISE TO YOU", mega intense moments.

[Jinsai]

wow...



"I think the internet... I don't think we've even seen the tip of the ice-berg, I think the potential of what the internet is going to do to society, both good and bad, is unimaginable. I think we're actually on the cusp of something both exhilarating and terrifying."

"It's just a tool though, isn't it?"

"No... it's not, no... it's an alien life form."

[Space Suicide]

Big enthusiasm. He's not wrong.

I like anything from 1993-1999 involving him so props for sharing.

[baudolino]

It always amazes me how patient he was with retarded interviewers.

[allegro]

"I think the internet... I don't think we've even seen the tip of the ice-berg, I think the potential of what the internet is going to do to society, both good and bad, is unimaginable. I think we're actually on the cusp of something both exhilarating and terrifying."

He really was right, though, we've barely scratched the surface of what is possible, once we get past this crazy marketing phase we're in right now. First phase: Unknown and vanity ("I kiss you!"), Second phase: Marketing (ads, Facebook, social networking), then beyond.

Of course, Bowie started his own ISP.

[seasonsinthesky]

speaking of tin machine, fans out outside would do well to check this out:

When it hits the "Outside" verse at 2:44 and then on from there, it's AWESOME. The song is suited so well to the harder edge. He easily could've done a reprise at the end of the record with a harder version and not bothered with the re-recording of "Strangers When We Meet."

[allegro]

David Bowie on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in 1980:

[Nyx]

It always amazes me how patient he was with retarded interviewers.

Well, sometimes he got annoyed.

[Frozen Beach]

and not bothered with the re-recording of "Strangers When We Meet."

But that rerecording is a million times better than the one on The Buddha Of Suburbia

[allegro]

David Bowie was going to be a grandfather in June.

[thevoid99]

David Bowie was going to be a grandfather in June.

That grandchild would be surrounded by good people. Not just the parents but also those that knew the child's grandfather. I'm crying again.

[orestes]

Me too. :/

[allegro]

Meanwhile, Iman posted this on Instagram today.

edit: She posted and tweeted this yesterday. Teddy Antolin played matchmaker and fixed up Iman with Bowie.

[thevoid99]

Aw man. That was a good dude. Thank you Teddy for playing matchmaker.