David Bowie
To be read at maximum volume.

One of greatest and most influential musicians from the 70s onward. A lot of Americans simply don't know or don't care about David Bowie, which is surprising considering most of the music that young people buy today was directly shaped or at least influenced by Bowie's genius.

I enjoy his earlier albums most, while others advocate his recent works as well. If you like Radiohead's brooding and somewhat poetic lyrics, you will love David Bowie's sometimes brooding and frankly poetic lyrics. If you like Pink Floyd's heavy guitar and mild historical references, you will love David Bowie's sometimes heavy and thoroughly historical references. If you like Pulp's somewhat neurotic preoccupation with sex, but would rather explore these issues in a sophisticated lyrical form, you will love David Bowie. If you like the way Blur can take it from acoustic ballad to frantic pop overdrive and then drop down into distortion and ‘lost behind the concession stand’ sounds all in the span of 3 tracks, you will love David Bowie. Whether they know it or not, most of today's bands are simply heading where Bowie has already gone. It might be dangerous to listen to Bowie exclusively. You might never come down. "If you keep doing that, it's going to get stuck like that." Still, if you've never listened to Bowie with a nice set of headphones in a dark room, your life can get a lot better.

Theory One:

Every multimedia artist has a period of greatness during which there is an important and undervalued second man. Most are forgotten, some are not. Bowie collaborated with Tony Visconti (Bass) until around 1980 when he then began spending more time on films and his music suffered a dip in quality. Bowie would then reunite with Visconti on Heathen in 2002. Heathen is good.

George Lucas, Harrison Ford
Chuck Jones, Michael Maltese
Jean-Luc Godard, Roaul Cotard
Wong Kar-Wai, Christopher Doyle
David Bowie, Tony Visconti/Brian Eno?
Bagels, Cream Cheese



How to Get Bowie Albums

Quite sadly, the RYKO Bowie albums, the ones with 4 bonus tracks per album, are now out of print. You can get the original Bowie albums on Virgin now, but I'm led to understand they will only have 2 bonus tracks each. You can still find the RYKO discs on Ebay as I have seen many go on auction for $10-20. In any case, you want to buy the original albums. You DO NOT want to buy any of the multitude of sham CD's that were arranged by Bassholes to make a buck. Recap. Original albums - good, compilations and special releases - bad.
Essential Albums. You Can't Go Wrong With Any of These.

The Man Who Sold The World [running gun blues]
Hunky Dory [queen bitch]
Ziggy Stardust
Space Oddity [cygnet committee]
Alladin Sane [the prettiest star][time]
Diamond Dogs
Station to Station
Low [low 13.mov]
Heroes
Lodger [repetition]
Scary Monsters
Ashes to Ashes
Buddha of Suburbia
Outside
Heathen [slip away] [the WC thing.swf]



Subject: bowie

i talked to my mom the other day about bowie, and she said that her favorite album was ziggy stardust (sadly, though, she doesn't have a copy). pretty much everyone else i've talked to have been like, 'hey, isn't he that weird guy from labyrinth?' ha, i like that movie. gets weirder every time i see it. - jessica (from The Email Project)


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