nothingfails

Well, I think Ronson was important for the Hunky/Ziggy/Aladdin sound, but IMO that is just a tiny period in a 40 year plus career. He's important for the era he was associated with Bowie, but I can't picture him on Young Americans or Low any more than I could picture Eno on Aladdin Sane.

Flashback

I guess that is why this was this was my favorite period. Which is not a knock at his career at all but just the albums (period) that I really connected with. Believe me in that I will pay to see Bowie live anytime it is possible.

Supermallet

The Ziggy Stardust movie does a great job of showing the Ziggy phenomena at its height. The performances are utterly electrifying, and you can see the raw sexuality Bowie brought to it, giving the show an extra edge. It's my favorite live set of his.

Diamond Dogs is a thoroughly underrated Bowie album. While melodramatic to the max ("Future Legend" alone is more over the top than anything Bowie had done to that point), Bowie is smart enough to use his theatricality to enhance the music. Of course, the album is best known for its two singles, the title track and the classic "Rebel Rebel," but the real treasure lies in its lesser known songs. "We Are The Dead" is a haunting rumination on defiance in the face of death, while a trio of songs, "Sweet Thing," "Candidate," and "Sweet Thing, Part II" is an evocative description of life in a dystopia. "1984" sows the seeds of funk that would blossom in Young Americans. My only problem with the album is "When You Rock 'n' Roll With Me," an insipid and asinine song that feels utterly out of place admist the bleakness that permeates the rest of the piece. Given that Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane both had hints of paranoid, Orwellian themes, Diamond Dogs is a logical conclusion to Bowie's glam period.

The Antipodean

I love some of the songs on Diamond Dogs ("Rebel Rebel," "Sweet Thing") but have to admit as a whole it doesn't quite work for me despite the amazing cover art. It's probably my least favorite of his earlier work after "Space Oddity," which is rather sketchy and unformed.

nothingfails

I love Diamond Dogs and don't find a bad song on it, but I do think the album might've been even better had he done a double record set with it. I believe there's a really good concept album there if the album was a little longer and fleshed out.

islandclaws

So... should we pick this convo back up? We haven't even gotten to the best (IMO): the Brian Eno/Berlin trilogy.

I'm currently on another Bowie kick, so I felt like resurrecting some good discussion on the man...

GreenVulture

I can get album details and Youtube links and pics and whatnot up and running when I get home, which should be shortly, if nobody else wants to.

GreenVulture

Here we go then!

YOUNG AMERICANS (March 7th, 1975)



Tracklisting:
1) Young Americans
2) Win
3) Fascination
4) Right
5) Somebody Up There Likes Me
6) Across the Universe
7) Can You Hear Me?
8) Fame

Bonus Tracks on 1991 Rykodisc Release:
9) Who Can I Be Now? [outtake]
10) It's Gonna Be Me [outtake]
11) John, I'm Only Dancing (Again) [b-side]

Bonus Tracks on 2007 EMI Release:
9) John, I'm Only Dancing (Again) [b-side]
10) Who I Can Be Now? [outtake]
11) It's Gonna Be Me [outtake; alternate version]
- Plus a bonus DVD of Bowie performing "Young Americans" and "1984" on The Dick Cavett Show

All Music Review (3.5 out of 5 stars)


Credits


What's that you say? You've never heard the album? No problem! Just hit the spoiler button for Youtube videos of all the songs. Alternatively, if you're lazy, you could click on this handy link to a Young Americans playlist I made.



I'll throw in my thoughts tomorrow, as I'm too scatterbrained from work to form any kind of cohesive thought.

Supermallet

Young Americans was the album where Bowie really proved he was a stylistic chameleon. Most people only knew him as a glam rocker, and while David Live showed some elements of soul (most notably on Knock On Wood), this album was a complete departure from anything he had ever done, and it was the first time he did it on such a large scale. Contrary to the Allmusic review, I think the album is littered with unrecognized gems, from the moving "Win" to the funky "Fascination" and the epic "Somebody Up There Likes Me." The back and forth between Bowie and his backup singers in "Right" is marvelous to behold. Of course, "Young Americans" is one of Bowie's best and most recognizable tracks, and "Fame" was his first #1 hit in America.

The only weak link is the lame duck cover of "Across The Universe," presumably only thrown on there because of John Lennon's involvement in the recording sessions (Lennon co-wrote and can be heard on "Fame," and "Young Americans" contains the line "I heard the news today," a clear reference to The Beatles' famous "A Day In The Life"). Its inclusion is made even more aggravating by the spectacular tracks from that recording session left off the album, including "Who Can I Be Now?" (which I always thought was Bowie asking himself where he was headed now that he had killed Ziggy Stardust), and the moving and brilliant "It's Gonna Be Me," one of the most striking tracks Bowie ever recorded.

While Allmusic notes a sense of detachment from the material, that didn't stop Bowie from being one of a select few white artists to appear on Soul Train, which to me proves the authenticity of the music. Also of note is the appearance of a young Luther Vandross, who, if I recall correctly, co-wrote "Fascination."

While I do enjoy Young Americans quite a bit, it's not as distinctive or exciting as the five albums that would follow it (Station To Station, Low, "Heroes," Lodger, Scary Monsters), as they mark the peak of Bowie's career.

Drop

I like his cover of Across the Universe, but I agree it doesn't touch the original. I find most of Bowie's covers to be better than the original, this one falls very short.

Young Americans is good, the soul quality is a nice change of pace, and the singles can be addictive.

mickey65

"Win" and the title track are my favorites on the album.

The Antipodean

I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with "Young Americans," I think there's some wonderful sounds on it but the production can't help but sound rather dated to me, more so than Bowie's work before or after. It's a very "fun" album but not as challenging as some of the others.

I do actually like the cover of "Across The Universe," but have to admit it's one of my least favorite Beatles songs so Bowie could hardly do it worse.

GreenVulture

Well, Young Americans isn't a bad album by any stretch, but it's definitely not a great one, either. The title track is a great intro and a deserved classic, but the follow-up, "Win," awash in dreamy sax and guitars and string sections, is even better, and a sadly underrated entry in Bowie's catalogue. "Fascination" is a hard-hitting blast of hard-hitting funk, and while you listen to it, you think "Wow! Can Bowie keep up this incredible pace for the rest of the album?" The next song, "Win," answers with a resounding "No." The song, along with tunes like "Can You Hear Me?" and "Somebody Up There" aren't bad, but they're all just generic soul numbers, basic filler with some interesting musical ideas in search of fully fleshed-out songs.

And then we hit the nadir, "Across the Universe." Bowie doing a shitty cover is nothing new, as he tends to do this on most of his albums, right up to Reality, but here it's particularly bad, with Bowie singing in an a melodramatic fashion, and quite badly at that. John Lennon may have played on it, but I'm convinced he decided to only after hearing a rough version and deciding it was some sort of amusing joke he had to be part of. Luckily, the album ends on a high note with "Fame," another funk number that has a catchy beat, but is almost unnervingly cold and minimalist, and a hint at the direction his next album would go in.

A pair of numbers recorded around this time, "Footstompin" (which can be found on the quasi-legal RarestOneBowie) and a fantastic, incredibly energetic cover of Springsteen's "It's So Hard to Be a Saint in the City" that betters Bruce's original would have been welcome additions to the album, as would the excellent outtake "It's Gonna Be Me." But alas, Young Americans should be best seen as an example of why it's not the best to record an entire album while you're coked out of your mind.

GreenVulture

STATION TO STATION (January 23rd, 1976)



Tracklisting:
1) Station to Station
2) Golden Years
3) Word on a Wing
4) TVC15
5) Stay
6) Wild is the Wind

Bonus Tracks on 1991 Rykodisc Release:
7) Word on a Wing [live]
8) Stay [live]

All Music Review (4.5 out of 5 stars)


Credits


Never heard one of Bowie's finest hours? Not a problem! Click on the spoiler button below to hear each song or just click on this playlist link to hear the whole thing.

Hollowgen

totally LOVE station to station.

it doesn't get nearly enough play from me, but the title track is just as fine as any of the best krautrock from kraftwerk, neu, or faust.

while none of the songs scream "HIT SINGLE" (well maybe golden years...) they're all fantastic.

it's totally transitional from Young Americans in style to what would come next... bowie seemed to have a master plan in his head way in advance.

Supermallet

Station to Station generally flip flops with a few other albums for my all time favorite Bowie album (the other ones being Low and Lodger), and not only does it start a stunning run of five perfect albums, but it's simply brilliant in its own right.

Without a doubt, the title track is my single favorite Bowie song. The piece starts with distorted chugging train sounds, interrupted by Earl Slick's increasingly atmospheric guitar work. The opening portion lopes forward, almost hypnotic in its slow rhythm. Bowie introduces us to his newest (and my personal favorite) persona, the Thin White Duke, "throwing darts in lovers' eyes." Then, almost without warning, the piece picks up, and Bowie takes us on a crazy ride, proclaiming "It's not the side effects of the cocaine, I'm thinking that it must be love," before warning us that it's "Too late to be grateful/Too late to be late again/Too late to be hateful." The song as a whole is Bowie's best long track (clocking in at around 10 minutes), and never fails to delight me.

Then, just to prove he hadn't fallen too far into the avant garde, Bowie gives us his best stab at disco with "Golden Years," a catchy tune that tends to fall by the wayside in Bowie's list of singles (sandwiched between "Fame" and "'Heroes'," one can see why), but is utterly underrated. Bowie takes a strange detour with "Word On A Wing." Could the song perhaps be a call for help from his drug addiction? It's possible, as Bowie entreats what appears to be God, singing, "Lord, lord, my prayer flies/Like a word on a wing/And I'm trying hard to fit among/Your scheme of things." It's the most directly religious Bowie has ever been in his entire career, if you take him sincerely at his word.

Then there's "TVC15," probably the strangest song in Bowie's catalog. Reportedly based on a story that Iggy Pop related to Bowie about his TV devouring his girlfriend (clearly a sign that Iggy needed to clean up as well), Bowie crafts a song that would almost be considered bouncy, if his vocal performance wasn't so utterly paranoid. The lyrics are frequently hilarious, and the tune, while off-kilter, is still memorable enough to not be alienating.

Bowie then serves up a slice of robotic funk with "Stay," before closing the album on an unexpectedly emotional note with his cover of "Wild Is The Wind." Now, I've said before that I think Bowie is one of the great interpreters in rock and roll (his "Across The Universe" cover notwithstanding), and this track proves it. With a sweeping string arrangement, Bowie simultaneously makes the song both grandly theatrical and highly intimate. His voice draws you in and all you can do is go along with him.

A bonus track from the Station to Station sessions (not the Young American sessions) is a striking and dramatic cover of Bruce Springsteen's "It's Hard To Be A Saint In The City." I truly wish Bowie had released the song in the 70's, because it's absolutely brilliant. I'm not even a fan of Springsteen, but in Bowie's hands, the song becomes a minor masterpiece, perfectly showing off the skills of his band and Bowie's vocal abilities. Definitely worth tracking down.

Another interesting element of this phase in his career was the accompanying tour, which used only white lights of varying intensities to create stark light and shadow. I really wish I could have seen Bowie on that tour, because by all accounts it was really interesting, especially coming off the massive and overdone Diamond Dogs tour. Given how different Station To Station sounds from Diamond Dogs (or anything, really), it's almost impossible to believe only two years had passed between the two albums. And while it seems like Bowie knew exactly what he was doing, in retrospect he stated that the period from Diamond Dogs through Station to Station found him very unsure of where to go to next.

If I recall correctly, Rolling Stone named Station to Station the best Bowie album of the 70's, and it's hard to criticize their choice, given the strange and compelling selections featured on the album. Everything here is a Bowie classic, although the album as a whole is almost criminally unappreciated.

One final note: The cover of the album was a still photo taken from the film The Man Who Fell To Earth, which Bowie starred in. In it, he plays an alien who comes to earth to get water for his dying planet, but becomes lost when he discovers booze and television. Bowie's performance is still impressive today, but even more so is the advanced, complex and sophisticated editing techniques that the film to tell the story and convey its themes. It was the perfect vehicle for Bowie in the 70's, as he had already played an alien who fell to earthly temptations with Ziggy Stardust. In a way, Station to Station is the culmination of what Bowie started with Ziggy, being the last album he would record while heavily under the influence of cocaine.

The Antipodean

Station to Station is in a neck and neck tie for my favorite bowie album with "Scary Monsters." The title track is a sheer masterpiece, quite possibly my favorite Bowie tune ever, and the entire album has a marvelous brooding epic style. It's more accessible than the Berlin albums (which I love, but which do kind of tend to meander off into more impressionistic soundscapes), and boasts some killer hooks. I also really love "TVC15," which to me is like Bowie doing his best Iggy Pop impression, paranoid is definintely a good word for it, it's one of those tunes that kind of worms its way into your brain and won't get out. Damn, now it's in my head!

Drop

Station to Station is usually my favorite Bowie album. It's seems like such an off putting album, it's only 6 tracks and most of them are long, but the sounds are so wonderful. I'd love to hear a 5.1 version of the album in a very dark room with a few candles and the album cranked to max.

Numanoid

OK, how could you guys let this thread die just when we were getting to the good stuff?

The Antipodean

All righty then, can't let this thread die yet -- although it might not make it to "Tonight"

LOW
1977


Track listing:
Side one
"Speed of Life" – 2:46
"Breaking Glass" (Bowie, Dennis Davis, George Murray) – 1:52
"What in the World" – 2:23
"Sound and Vision" – 3:05
"Always Crashing in the Same Car" – 3:33
"Be My Wife" – 2:58
"A New Career in a New Town" – 2:53
Side two
"Warszawa" (Bowie, Brian Eno) – 6:23
"Art Decade" – 3:46
"Weeping Wall" – 3:28
"Subterraneans" – 5:39

Bonus tracks on reissue:
"Some Are" (previously unreleased) – 3:24
"All Saints" (previously unreleased) – 3:25
"Sound and Vision" (1991 remix by David Richards) – 4:43

Personnel
David Bowie – vocals, guitar, pump bass, saxophones, xylophones, vibraphones, harmonica, pre-arranged percussion, keyboards: ARP synthesizer, piano, Chamberlin (credited on the album sleeve notes as "tape strings", "tape-cello" and "tape-horns")
Brian Eno – vocals, splinter Minimoog, report ARP, guitar treatments, piano, keyboards, synthetics, Chamberlin, other synthesizers
Carlos Alomar – rhythm guitar
Dennis Davis – percussion
George Murray – bass
Ricky Gardiner – guitar
Roy Young – piano, Farfisa organ

All Music review:
Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Following through with the avant-garde inclinations of Station to Station, yet explicitly breaking with David Bowie's past, Low is a dense, challenging album that confirmed his place at rock's cutting edge. Driven by dissonant synthesizers and electronics, Low is divided between brief, angular songs and atmospheric instrumentals. Throughout the record's first half, the guitars are jagged and the synthesizers drone with a menacing robotic pulse, while Bowie's vocals are unnaturally layered and overdubbed. During the instrumental half, the electronics turn cool, which is a relief after the intensity of the preceding avant pop. Half the credit for Low's success goes to Brian Eno, who explored similar ambient territory on his own releases. Eno functioned as a conduit for Bowie's ideas, and in turn Bowie made the experimentalism of not only Eno but of the German synth group Kraftwerk and the post-punk group Wire respectable, if not quite mainstream. Though a handful of the vocal pieces on Low are accessible — "Sound and Vision" has a shimmering guitar hook, and "Be My Wife" subverts soul structure in a surprisingly catchy fashion — the record is defiantly experimental and dense with detail, providing a new direction for the avant-garde in rock & roll.

Sorry I can't be fussed to do the YouTube links like Green Vulture did but if someone else wants to feel free!

My own thoughts: "Low" is up there with my favorite Bowie albums, and I think in a lot of ways it's his most successful at creating a mood-- I love to put it on late in the evening and just kind of drift away with it, particularly as the instrumental side kicks in. However I wonder often how much of it is Eno and how much Bowie? The "Eno sound" certainly is prevalent here. Nevertheless while it's not my FAVORITE Bowie disc ("Station to Station" or "Scary Monsters" for me) it's easily one of his best. There's a real sense of place and desperation here, a kind of journey through the stages of depression and isolation Bowie must've felt in his time in Berlin. He'd try to come back to the sound of "Low" with the next few albums but this one, particularly with its flow from vocal to instrumentals, does it best.

Favorite track: "Sound and Vision." Lovely stuff.

rexinnih

I generally rotate this and Scary Monsters as my favorite Bowie albums. Fantastic album and love the cover from The Man Who Fell to Earth.

Supermallet

1976 was not a great year for Bowie. Despite starring in The Man Who Fell to Earth and releasing Station to Station, by any account a masterpiece of an album, Bowie was heavily addicted to cocaine and getting increasingly paranoid. Also, an unfortunate incident led many to believe he was a neo-Nazi (which he wasn't, of course). Disturbed by these events, Bowie and companion Iggy Pop fled to Berlin to clean up and record new, forward thinking music (Bowie would later comment on how strange of a decision it was to go to Berlin to get clean when it was known at the time as the heroin capital of the world). The first fruits of the duo's labor came in the form of Iggy Pop's The Idiot, with music by Bowie and lyrics by Pop. The album is a fascinating listen, 100% removed from any music Pop was doing at the time. The album is dark, moody, restless, and Iggy's fractured vocals are perfect for the tortured lyrics, especially of tunes like "Sister Midnight" and "China Girl."

Bowie then recruited fellow ex-glam rocker Brian Eno to collaborate on his new album, Low. Eno brought with him a much needed creative shot in the arm, often in the form of his Oblique Strategies cards, a deck of cards with strange recommendations written on them, designed to unblock the creative mind in a very Zen Koan-esque fashion.

The new creativity Bowie was feeling is evident right from the first track, "Speed of Life" with its crunchy synths and strange electronics, the song does not sound like typical Bowie. It was also his first instrumental. He follows these up with a series of jagged avant-rock songs, "Breaking Glass" and "What In The World" before smoothing things out with "Sound and Vision." Even though "Sound and Vision" wasn't as confrontational, it was still a very odd song, with funny backing vocals and unfamiliar sounds. Bowie sings in his lowest register for much of the song, before going higher at the end, almost an exaltation. "Do you wonder sometimes, about sound and vision?" Bowie asks us, and at this point in the album, we most certainly are. He then slows things down for the beautiful and melancholy "Always Crashing In The Same Car" before "Be My Wife," a fan favorite, and closes side one with another instrumental, the upbeat "A New Career In A New Town," the title surely referring to Bowie's new musical style and new location.

Side two is all instrumentals. Moody pieces of electronic-based, almost ambient music. Eno's influence is felt the most here, but these songs are more active than Eno's ambient works of the period. They are all thoroughly arresting and on a sleepless night at 4 AM there's pretty much no better listening than side two of Low.

I will always admire and appreciate Low for being the album where Bowie threw everything to the wind and decided to take chances. Without this album and the three that follow it, Bowie may have not made it through the end of the 70's, nor would he be heralded as such a musical genius. It's an album like no other, both alien and familiar all at once. The start of great new things for Bowie, and proof that he hadn't lost his relevancy since the start of the decade.

Numanoid

This is the album that almost single-handedly inspired an entire genre of music: New Wave. You can trace elements from the best New Wave tracks and albums back to Low, and the subsequent Eno albums. Bowie was cited as a major influence by virtually anyone making groundbreaking music from 1978 through 1983, and many times the admiring artists would be downright clones, both musically and in appearance.

And as a New Wave fanatic, I can't thank Bowie enough.

mattressman

I absolutely love Low.

cungar

Are there any 5.1 Bowie releases besides Ziggy? I have a SACD of that album from Holland and it's fantastic.