Mr.Duck on 12/1/2016 at 21:32
Quote Posted by demagogue
Friends and assholes: don't worry, he'll be fine. God is an American.
One ticket to Hell, please.
RIP Bowie.
Red_Breast on 13/1/2016 at 01:14
I never really liked his voice, but I do like a lot of his tracks*. Especially the Mick Ronson era stuff. In fact the only Bowie I have, on my PC, are the instrumentals from a couple of the Berlin albums. But he influenced many artists I do like, and he produced two of my fave albums - Raw Power and Transformer. Also wrote some great stuff like All The Young Dudes.
* Don't know if that makes sense. Not sure how else to put it.
SD on 13/1/2016 at 13:43
Quote Posted by Muzman
Bowie was one of those artists who was a little like wallpaper. Sort of odd wallpaper in this case. But you say to yourself "I'm not really a Bowie fan as such. But I like a few of his tunes and his general style, or lack thereof". And some die hard Bowie freak starts rattling off names or playing tracks. Then you find yourself saying "Yeah that one's good. And that one. Yeah I like that one too. Oh yeah! That was one of his too!" and so on and so forth.
That's probably a testament to how ingrained his output was into the fabric of our culture, isn't it. Only when you sit down and think do you realise how much stuff, most of it really really good, he's responsible for.
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
Anyway, all decent art is made with some sort of limiting guidelines, and Bowie's was basically taking a scene or genre he was interested in, creating a character that fit into that, and then doing his own thing within those rules. I'm a massive fan of Cluster and Neu, and I still think Low is one of the greatest albums ever made even though it's basically "David Bowie doing Cluster and Neu". The guy was pretty goddamn creative, and the stuff of his that I don't care for tends to be more down to a distaste for the genre he was working in rather than a lack of inspiration or creativity on his part.
Bowie was an expert at taking things from elsewhere, putting his own spin on them, and coming up with something even better. Which is actually very English, we're good at that. Bowie really was a very English artist, I don't find it at all surprising that though he'd lived in the US for decades, he always felt like an outsider.
Fingernail on 13/1/2016 at 18:47
Where to begin?
Like some others this is probably the first death of a public figure that really hit me, and I had a couple of tearful moments through the day on Monday thinking about him and some of his songs.
Was really introduced to Bowie when my brother gave me Hunky Dory when I must have been 17/18. Oddly I think my next foray was Aladdin Sane (I think actually a running theme is that there is no really one place to start, I've had people tell me he only has good songs, not albums, which I disagree with strongly), and I clearly remember having packed up my first year university room ready to move back home for the summer, putting it on and lying on the bed with nothing else to do and in many ways very alone, and it just took me on a journey from the opening chords of Watch That Man through to the glittering piano on Lady Grinning Soul. I think it may have been what people mean when they say "it blew my mind".
Needless to say he had a huge impact on my own songwriting, and yes not all of his catalogue is musically to my taste (and I haven't discovered it all yet either), but I find there's always something behind it, it never feels flat or careless or empty to me.
A couple of people posted things on facebook, snippets of interviews and comments along the lines of "I never realised he was also really clever/witty/etc." - and it seemed odd to me because as I listen to his music, you can hear all of that, the intelligence, the humour and the humanity.
RIP
Fingernail on 13/1/2016 at 19:21
Quote Posted by SD
Bowie was an expert at taking things from elsewhere, putting his own spin on them, and coming up with something even better. Which is actually very English, we're good at that. Bowie really was a very English artist, I don't find it at all surprising that though he'd lived in the US for decades, he always felt like an outsider.
Yeah, although this interpretation makes it sound like he didn't have anything that was "his" exactly (probably not what you mean, I'm not sure) - I find that whatever styles he assimilated, they were always put through his own prism.
“I've only really worked with the same subject matter ... isolation, abandonment, fear and anxiety — all of the high points of one's life.”
This is kind of how I view it, there is that core running through everything regardless of the surface style. And at the same time that knowing irony and self-deprecation to a certain extent. That's definitely quite a British thing I think.
bjack on 14/1/2016 at 05:51
Quote Posted by faetal
Why is anyone even responding to this bangers thing? It's just an attention-starved bit of easy provocation - don't give it any attention and it'll shrivel up.
"Shrivel Up" one of the best DEVO songs of all time. I bet DEVO would not have been if Bowie did not occur. I was not a huge fan of DB, but I still have 4 of his records and 3 CDs of his stuff. I even bought Tin Machine. I treasure my video recording of those performances on SNL back in the 90s. I also dig TVC15.
Tomi on 18/1/2016 at 01:48
So it's been a week since we lost contact with Major Tom forever, and my little Bowie tribute week is coming to an end. I decided to listen to all the Bowie records that I own, but I ended up playing them on repeat all week... and I'm glad that I did, since I learned to appreciate his music even more as I discovered new things on the albums.
Anyway, dearest TTLGers, what are your favourite David Bowie albums (or just songs if you don't know the albums that well)?! :o ?!??!?! ?!? ?!??!!
A few years ago my answer would have been "what a dumb question lol, it's either Hunky Dory or Ziggy Stardust of course", but it's not so obvious anymore. Well, I think Hunky Dory will always be #1 for me, but a few other albums have come pretty close and possibly even overtaken Ziggy Stardust. Ziggy is full of wonderful songs (too) but somehow Hunky Dory works better as an album for me.
But it was only a few years ago when I really started getting into some of Bowie's other "classics", and during this week I've fallen in love with some of them. For example I never cared about the whole B-side of Low with all the instrumentals, but I've now realised that they're actually pretty damn good, and I don't normally even care about instrumentals that much. It's still nowhere as good as the first half of the album obviously - these tracks are solid gold - but this moment of enlightenment of mine has really opened my eyes (and ears?) and made me realise why so many people consider Low as their favourite by Bowie. I still haven't warmed up to Heroes though; it's good but it feels like "Low lite" to me.
Then there's Aladdin Sane - there are some lovely tunes on it and it's almost a great album, but there's something that's not clicking with me. Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), however, is an album that I hadn't even heard in its entirety until this week, so I was pleasantly surprised to find out that it's such a good album. The best of his 80's output for sure.
Of Bowie's latter albums (1990's onwards), I'm really starting to think that the brand new Black Star is actually the best! It's kind of creepy and depressing to listen to it now, but I think it's a grower and hopefully it'll be a bit easier to listen to as some more time has passed. The title track is absolutely fantastic, as are 'Girl Loves Me' (despite of the weirdest lyrics ever), 'Lazarus', and 'I Can't Give Everything Away'. Knowing that he won't be making any more music is quite heartbreaking, but what a farewell gift this is! His 1999 album Hours (a lot of those songs featured in Omikron: The Nomad Soul) deserves a special mention because it regularly seems to feature on "the worst Bowie album" lists that people make, and I have absolutely no idea why - I think it may be the second best album that Bowie has released during the last 25 years! Heathen and Reality are also pretty good, but Hours feels more coherent. I don't think I've ever understood 1.Outside, it just sounds too chaotic and weird (funny that sometimes that's exactly what I love about Bowie) so I was actually quite surprised to see that people rate that album very high. Perhaps I need to give it another listen...
tldr; My favourite Bowie album is Hunky Dory. What's yours? :p
Jason Moyer on 18/1/2016 at 04:38
Low, Diamond Dogs, Hunky Dory, Ziggy, and David Bowie (1967). Not sure which order I'd put them in other than the first two being 1 and 2. Low, to me, is pretty much perfect from beginning to end, and even the bonus tracks that have appeared on some of the CD issues of it are great.
faetal on 18/1/2016 at 12:09
Favourite is a funny word. The album which I think I have the most time for is 1.Outside, but possibly because it was my first Bowie album (I was 19 when I first started properly paying attention), so it's the bedrock of why I like Bowie in the first place - so every other album is tainted by it in terms of how it impacts me relatively. That said, I like the songs on Hunky Dory more than I think I like the ones on 1.Outside. Particularly Life on Mars is, for me, one of the most finely crafted songs in contemporary pop. I like Low, but haven't completely allowed it to get under my skin - though Breaking Glass in probably in my top 5 of his songs. Heathen is also pretty great - Slow Burn in particular is tremendous, though the whole thing doesn't have the energy of his earlier works.
I've been listening to all of the albums sequentially a few days ago, as well as watching some documentaries and I'm also chipping away at Nicholas Pegg's The Complete Bowie, which is an encyclopaedic run down of every song he's had any part in - I'm skim reading for tracks I am familiar with at the moment, with the intention of going back to new songs I discover I like as and when I first hear them. It's fascinating to hear the story and the process behind the songs.
froghawk on 18/1/2016 at 16:54
Top 5 in chronological order:
Station to Station
Low
Scary Monsters
Outside
Blackstar
