Joe Blevins's Blog, page 3

My Month of Bowie, day 16: 'Tonight' (1984)

Did David Bowie repeat the success of Let's Dance with Tonight?
The album: Tonight (EMI America, 1984)
Bowie prays for an Auntie Anne's pretzel.My thoughts: What was it about white British rockers and reggae music? Between the 1960s and the 1980s, they all took a sacred pledge to try it at least once. Remember that it was Eric Clapton, not Bob Marley, who topped the charts with "I Shot the Sheriff." But they all dabbled, everyone from Elton John and Paul McCartney to The Police and The Clash. I guess that, in 1984, it was finally David Bowie's turn. I'd like to imagine that he got an ominous letter in the mail with a picture of a skull with dreadlocks on the envelope. On the inside, there was a note reading: "YOU'RE NEXT." So he dutifully went into the studio and recorded his album, Tonight.
Bowie's sixteenth studio LP does not have a great critical reputation, and before embarking on this project, I was largely unaware of it. At the time of its release, the album did what it needed to do: sell some copies and keep David Bowie in the public eye for another year. He retained a lot of the personnel from Let's Dance (1983) but not producer Nile Rodgers. The result was a collection of what I'd call shopping mall music. Most of Tonight sounds like what you'd hear while picking out a new blazer at Chess King. Each copy should have come with a coupon for Orange Julius or Sbarro. Some of the slower, more sensual tracks could work as background music in a Cinemax softcore porn movie. 
Bowie himself trudges through the nine songs like Eeyore on quaaludes. I'm not sure what Bowie's sobriety situation was in 1984, but maybe he needed to get back on coke. So what are the points of interest this time around? Well, we have a seven-minute opening epic called "Loving the Alien." And could there be a more perfect title for a David Bowie song? There was even a posthumously-released Bowie box set by that name in 2018, plus a 1998 Bowie biography by Christopher Sandford. The song itself is decent, but I wasn't wild about the very '80s arrangement and production. I wish David could have recorded this track with his '70s band.
What else do we have here? Tina Turner shows up on the title track. That's nice, even if the song is a little bland for my taste. David's rowdiest pal, Iggy Pop, swings by for the album-closing "Dancing with the Big Boys," which sounds like a prototype for Peter Gabriel's "Big Time." Elsewhere on the album, "Neighborhood Threat" sounds a lot like Danny Elfman's theme song for the sitcom Sledge Hammer! (1986-1988). They may even use the same drum machine, for all I know.
I suppose the song that caught my attention the most was David's mournful cover of "God Only Knows" by The Beach Boys. I hadn't even glanced at the track listing for Tonight, so I didn't know the song was coming. Bowie slows the song way down and sings it as a dirge. Does it work? I can't really say, though it's more entertaining than most of Tonight. Again, I wish he'd done this same song maybe ten years earlier in his career.
I don't want to give the impression that Tonight is a catastrophe or an embarrassment. It's fine to have playing in the background at a party or something, even if "God Only Knows" might kill the vibe under such circumstances. What it lacks is urgency. "Blue Jean" isn't even his best "Jean" song. (That's "Jean Genie" on 1973's Aladdin Sane.) David was running dangerously low on inspiration when he cut this album, but EMI America must have needed something to fill a hole in their release schedule. Tonight is a take-it-or-leave-it album. I'm leaving it, personally, but I wouldn't blame you for taking it.
Next: Never Let Me Down (1987) var infolinks_pid = 3415273; var infolinks_wsid = 0;

My Month of Bowie, day 15: 'Let's Dance' (1983)

In 1983, David Bowie wanted his MTV, and the feeling was mutual.
The album: Let's Dance (EMI America, 1983)
Bowie's gonna fly now.My thoughts: You'd probably guess that legacy artists of the 1960s and 1970s had a tough time of it in the 1980s. In short order, the basic cable network MTV drastically changed the music industry, making instant superstars out of flashily-dressed young synth rockers with teased hair and heavy makeup. Suddenly, the music video was the format of choice, emphasizing style and image over substance. Surely, then, the decade would belong to the Adam Ants and Boy Georges of the world. The obsolete rock and pop acts who had dominated the charts in previous decades would be sidelined to make room for these brash upstarts.
And yet, look at what actually happened in the 1980s. Bruce Springsteen and Michael Jackson, both well established by the time Reagan took office, reached unprecedented heights of popularity in the new decade. Pop tunesmiths like Billy Joel, Elton John, and Paul McCartney didn't disappear from the charts either. Potential '70s dinosaurs like Yes, Genesis, Chicago, and Heart overhauled their sound to better suit the times. Legacy acts like Steve Winwood, The Moody Blues, and especially Aerosmith staged impressive comebacks. Nostalgia-themed films like Back to the Future (1985), Stand by Me (1986), Dirty Dancing (1987), and La Bamba (1987) kept classic rock alive on radio and TV.
In short, the past didn't go away. It was everywhere!
So David Bowie, still only in his 30s, had a better-than-average shot at making it big in the 1980s. Reinvention was his thing. He was more than photogenic enough to be a music video star. And he'd been incorporating electronic elements into his music for years. The cover of his first MTV-era album, Let's Dance, showed the singer as a prizefighter. Clearly, this was a fight he'd been training for. And he had a new producer in his corner: Chic's Nile Rodgers, who drew inspiration from his own (plentiful) hit records, particularly "Good Times."
One curious thing about Let's Dance is that it contains three inescapable hits that I heard dozens of times in the '80s—"Modern Love," "China Girl," and "Let's Dance"—and those are the first three songs on the album. Back to back to back, baby! I heard these tracks so many times as a youth that it's difficult to "review" them now. It's like trying to review your old yearbooks or your family vacation photos. I suppose I still like all of them in 2025, though my feelings are all tied up with complicated mixed emotions about my childhood. 
Who can forget the video for "China Girl"? Was it part of your erotic awakening, too? At the time, it might've been the sexiest thing I'd ever seen on TV. Somehow, they found a woman (New Zealand model Geeling Ng) who looks like the Asian female equivalent of David Bowie. They even have the same face shape! It's a truism that rock stars are attracted to women who look just like them. I'm aware that David first recorded "China Girl" with Iggy Pop for The Idiot (1977). If I have time at the end of the month, I may review the two Iggy albums that David did during his Berlin era. In the meantime, I have to show you this Family Guy clip that references the Bowie video.
When I hear "Let's Dance," my mind goes immediately to Frank Zappa's satirical response, "Be in My Video," from his Them or Us (1984) album. Frank saw the whole MTV phenomenon as being shallow and silly, and the lyrics to "Be in My Video" directly reference "Let's Dance" and "China Girl." Do you think Bowie ever heard it? What might his response have been? He might say that he did what he had to do to survive in the 1980s. And it worked! Let's Dance kept him relevant in the era of Oingo Boingo and Haircut 100.
As for "Modern Love," I'd be comfortable putting it on the list of the greatest Bowie songs of all time. It easily makes my Top 10. I'm not sure if true blue Bowie-holics would agree, but I've made a point of not caring what they think. "Modern Love" has the energy of a great Motown track. It could have been a Supremes song, recorded in the same session as "You Can't Hurry Love." It's typical of Bowie that he takes a song about alienation and makes it exhilarating and irresistible. 
But that brings me to something else that's curious about Let's Dance: Bowie himself. As the title of the album indicates, this is supposed to be a fun night on the town. And it is. But Bowie hasn't changed his demeanor much from his previous, less danceable albums. He still has that "spooky Victorian ghost" personality that he's had for most of his career. I'd say that, for most of Let's Dance, he sounds like a combination of Marlene Dietrich (or Lili von Shtupp), Marvin the Paranoid Android from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and the Cowardly Lion on downers. Vocally, he tends to stick to his lower register throughout this album. Or maybe that's just how his voice has aged. As I said in my review of David Bowie (1967), he never really sounded "young," even when he was 19.
Nothing else on Let's Dance has quite the impact of those first three songs. Then again, the other seven songs weren't in heavy rotation on MTV, so they're at kind of a disadvantage. But I didn't notice any real duds among them. At first, I thought including a song from David's movie Cat People (1982) was a bit self-indulgent, but that track turned out to be one of the more memorable tunes on Side 2. So I'm glad it's here.
As I listened to this album twice all the way through, I kept noticing the bluesy guitar solos on many of the tracks. "Boy," I thought, "that guy's good, whoever he is." Later, I looked up Let's Dance on Wikipedia and checked out the personnel list. The guitarist I'd been enjoying was none other than Stevie Ray Vaughan! Small world, huh?
So what now? Bowie managed to crack the MTV code. But what does he do for an encore? Guess we'll find out tomorrow. 
Next: Tonight (1984) var infolinks_pid = 3415273; var infolinks_wsid = 0;

My Month of Bowie, day 14: 'Scary Monsters' (1980)

Why did David Bowie never play a scary clown in a horror movie?
The album: Scary Monsters (RCA, 1980)
Send in the clowns?My thoughts: I went into Scary Monsters knowing it was David Bowie's attempt to make a more commercial album after the artistic experimentation of Low (1977), "Heroes" (1977), and Lodger (1979). So I braced myself for a more disciplined, less eccentric Bowie this time around. And what did I get when I pressed play? A Japanese woman yelling at me about god knows what.
That woman is Michi Hirota, Bowie's Japanese instructor at the time. What she's yelling is a translation of the lyrics of the opening track, "It's No Game." When David himself decides to join the song already in progress, his vocals are tense and strained, with a lot of little yips and yelps like David Byrne used to do. In fact, I'd say Scary Monsters is Bowie's second consecutive album, following Lodger, that sounds like an honorary Talking Heads record. I'm not sure if he was following their lead or they were following his. Looking at the timeline of various Bowie and Heads releases, I'd say they reached many of the same conclusions independently. Is it a mere coincidence that the 'Heads released an album called Little Creatures (1985) five years after Bowie released Scary Monsters?
This LP was supposed to be David's return to the pop mainstream. So is this album poppier and more radio-friendly than its predecessors? I guess so. David was a deeply weird guy drawing on many disparate musical influences, so this is about as "normal" as he was capable of being in 1980. Scary Monsters was never going to be another Off the Wall (1979), though I imagine David probably liked that album an awful lot. 
Which brings me to another point. About halfway through listening to Scary Monsters, a thought occurred to me: David Bowie skipped disco. I mean, he just completely sidestepped it. While John Travolta was getting down to "Stayin' Alive," Bowie was off in Berlin, listening to krautrock and trying to kick his drug habit. Certainly, other British rockers of Bowie's generation—Mick, Paul, Rod, Freddie, Elton—flirted with disco to some extent. But David's time was taken up by working with Iggy Pop and Brian Eno. By the time he recorded Scary Monsters, the disco era was already ending.
An album is only as strong as its songs, and Scary Monsters has another batch of good 'uns. I'd say the most memorable ones here are the quasi-fascistic "Fashion," the spooky title track, and the mournful "Ashes to Ashes," which acts as a sort of sequel to "Space Oddity" and gives us an update on poor old Major Tom. If you were wondering whether "Oddity" was about an astronaut or just some guy doing a lot of drugs, well, "Ashes" makes it clear: Major Tom's a junkie. Or maybe he became one after leaving the space program, I don't know.
When you listen to an artist's entire recorded repertoire in one month, you really don't have time to appreciate the subtle nuances of each individual album, let alone each individual song. When these albums were first released in the '70s and '80s, there were months or even years in between them. If you were a Bowie fanatic, you could live with an album like Scary Monsters for a good, long time and really familiarize yourself with its contents—not just the singles but the deep cuts, too—before the next one came out. 
I don't really have that luxury. I can only get a vague sense of the surroundings and move on. Based on that, I can't really say that Scary Monsters is an immediate favorite of mine. But maybe, if I spent more time with this album, the songs would burrow their way into my brain and take up residence there.
P.S. Since this was David Bowie's first album of the 1980s, I was going to write about how he had to reinvent himself, his music, and his image for the new decade. But that's not really applicable to Scary Monsters. The '80s hadn't quite become "THE EIGHTIES!" yet, at least not as we remember that decade. In particular, a certain American cable network hadn't started broadcasting. So we'll save that discussion for David's next album. Rest assured, a change is gonna come.
Next: Let's Dance (1983) var infolinks_pid = 3415273; var infolinks_wsid = 0;

My Month of Bowie, day 13: 'Lodger' (1979)

Bowie get smashed on Lodger.
The album: Lodger (RCA, 1979)
A flattened David Bowie.My thoughts: I didn't grow up listening to the music of David Bowie—except for a few intense months when I was about 14—but I did grow up listening to the music of Talking Heads. Their albums were dear friends to me when I was an adolescent. David Bowie's Lodger might as well be a Talking Heads album. It has that same sound: herky-jerky like New Wave but with more of a groove to it so it doesn't sound sterile or robotic. God, I wish I'd been smart enough to listen to this album when it could have done me some good. There are cuts on it that sound like they could have come directly from Fear of Music (1979) or Remain in Light (1980).
Obviously, the biggest connection between the two Davids (Bowie and Byrne) is Brian Eno. Now that I think of it, I've never actually listened to My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1981) all the way through. I'm gonna put that one on the to-do list. No time for it this month. I think I'll enjoy it.
By all rights, Lodger should sound like an ending. It's the third part of Bowie's Berlin trilogy and his last album of the 1970s. And yet, it doesn't sound like the end of anything. When it came out, Bowie was only a year away from divorcing Angie, his wife of ten years. But Lodger doesn't sound like a breakup album either. Well, on the opening track ("Fantastic Voyage"), Bowie does sing, "I don't want to live with somebody's depression." That doesn't sound like a man in a happy marriage. 
The aforementioned Mr. Eno is a big part of Lodger, cowriting six of the ten songs. But unlike Low (1977) and "Heroes" (1977), Lodger doesn't have any lengthy, spooky instrumental passages. It's more rock-forward and down-to-business than the other two. In that vein, "Boys Keep Swinging" shows that Bowie never stopped trying to make the ultimate pop record. He's as obsessed with that goal as Paul McCartney, Brian Wilson, Phil Spector, or any of the half-mad Captain Ahabs of the music world, always chasing that white whale.
Somehow, I had this (wrong) idea in my head that Bowie's Berlin trilogy would be drab and difficult, with the songs averaging 50 BPM. I guess the word "Berlin" threw me off. Maybe that's why I'd been avoiding these albums for so long. But even though Bowie's lyrics on Lodger are labyrinthine as always, hinting at some kind of internal struggle we're never totally privy to, the music packs a wallop. He's not in a mellow mood on Lodger. The music here is punchy and aggressive, the sound of a man who has survived the craziest decade of his life and is readying himself for the fight to come.
Now he's only 32. And all he wants to do is boogaloo.
Next: Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980) var infolinks_pid = 3415273; var infolinks_wsid = 0;

My Month of Bowie, day 12: "Heroes" (1977)

If David Bowie is a religion, then Heroes is the hymnal. 
The album: "Heroes" (RCA, 1977)
Bowie: Now you see him...My thoughts: There was an animated GIF I used to see rather frequently on the internet depicting David Bowie as he appeared on the cover of "Heroes," the second album in his famed Berlin trilogy. In the GIF, Bowie would wave his hand in front of his pale, unsmiling face, and his eyes, nose, and mouth would instantly disappear, leaving nothing but a blank expanse. Then he'd wave his hand again, and his famous face would be restored. And the whole process would loop over and over again because that's how GIFs work.
Before I actually listened to "Heroes" all the way through, I thought the GIF was just a typical internet nonsense joke. But now, I think it's a pretty good representation of the album itself. This LP was released less than a year after Low (1977), and Bowie was presumably drawing on the same musical influences this time around, namely German experimental rock and the ambient musical stylings of English musician Brian Eno. 
Based on that description, you'd think the Berlin trilogy would be unlistenable and impenetrable, maybe even the musical equivalent of a migraine headache. But "Heroes" isn't like that at all. Instead, the album feels invigorating and alive—contemporary and forward-thinking without being overly trendy. The title track, in particular, sounds like you've met up with Lou Reed when he's in a particularly chipper mood... or as chipper as he gets. This is a Lou Reed who would help you carry groceries to your fifth-floor walkup.
When I reviewed Low, I said that Side 2 of that album contained some long instrumental passages that sounded like they belonged in a science-fiction movie. This, I suppose, was the influence of Brian Eno showing through. Well, "Heroes" doubles down on that material. Triples down. Quadruples down. It feels like most of the second half is taken up with the eerie Eno-phonic instrumentals. There's something pleasingly tranquil about these tracks. It's the kind of thing you'd want to listen to while watering your plants or tending to a rock garden. Maybe, after the craziness of his life in America, Bowie wanted to recalibrate. This music helped him do that.
There are times when "Heroes" barely sounds like a David Bowie album, at least not the Bowie we've come to know over the course of the last 11 albums. But then, in the album's closing track ("The Secret Life of Arabia"), he sounds like himself again. That's why I said the animated GIF was such a good representation of this record. Bowie's rock star persona has become a disguise he can put on or take off with a wave of his hand.
Next: Lodger (1979) var infolinks_pid = 3415273; var infolinks_wsid = 0;

My Month of Bowie, day 11: 'Low' (1977)

David Bowie began his "Berlin trilogy" with Low.
The album: Low (RCA, 1977)
Was Low a new high for Bowie?My thoughts: By 1976, the year he made Station to Station, David Bowie was such a paranoid, drugged-out mess that he moved from Los Angeles to Berlin with Iggy Pop to get clean. How chaotic does your life have to be that Iggy Pop is a crucial part of your sobriety plan? 
Still in all, this sounds to me like the perfect idea for a prime time sitcom. Imagine persnickety Tony Randall as Bowie, a constantly-shirtless Jack Klugman as Iggy, Don Knotts as Brian Eno, Suzanne Somers as Angela Bowie, and Don Rickles as Drugs. (To clarify: Rickles would be the human embodiment of drugs, and he'd move next door to Bowie to tempt him every week, like the devil sitting on Bowie's shoulder.) It's The Bowie Bunch, Thursdays at 8:00 on ABC!
If such a sitcom were ever made, the instrumental "Speed of Life" would make an ideal theme song. That's the track Bowie uses at the start of Low, the first album in his famed Berlin trilogy that found him collaborating with experimental musician Brian Eno and taking inspiration from German bands like Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Neu!, and other ones I've probably never heard of. This is such a storied era in Bowie's career that it merits a documentary all its own .
I'd certainly heard of the Berlin trilogy—rock critics and historians have been overanalyzing it for years—but I can't say I'd ever actually listened to any of these albums all the way through until this project. So I really had no idea what to expect from Low. I probably thought it would sound bleak and sterile, perhaps even mechanical, but I didn't find the album to be any of those things. In fact, this album contains "Sound and Vision," one of those perfectly-realized '70s pop gems that Bowie was so eerily good at making. It's like a hot toddy on a cold night.
And then, there's "Be My Wife," which contains these very simple, straightforward lyrics: "Please be mine/Share my life/Stay with me/Be my wife." That's a message you'd expect to hear on a 1950s doo wop record. Take, for example, "Life is But a Dream" (1955) by The Harptones. That song famously starts with these stark lines: "Will you take part in my life, my love?/That is my dream." After making my way through ten albums with abstract, ambiguous lyrics, it was refreshing to hear David Bowie speak so plainly for a change. Or maybe he's been speaking plainly this whole time and I just haven't been paying close enough attention.
Supposedly, some of the tracks on Low are pieces that Bowie was workshopping for the soundtrack of Nicholas Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976). Ultimately, Bowie starred in that downbeat science-fiction film but did not record the soundtrack for it. (That task fell to John Phillips.) On Side 2 of Low, there are indeed some tracks with longish instrumental passages that sound like they belong in a pessimistic '70s sci-fi movie. But even these I found eerily pretty and not merely depressing. I was especially fond of Low's closing track, "Subterraneans," with its choral refrain: "Share bride falling star..." It reminded me somewhat of the Missa Luba  (1965), the famous Congolese interpretation of the Latin mass. 
I wonder, once I hear the second and third entries in the "Berlin Trilogy," will they somehow coalesce into something even greater? You know, like one of those combiner robots from a Japanese cartoon? One way to find out. And I'm just realizing now that "low" is the antonym of "high." Boy, what a dope I am sometimes.
Next: "Heroes" (1977) var infolinks_pid = 3415273; var infolinks_wsid = 0;

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 242: The House That Ed Built (2019)

Shane Schoeppner directs and stars in The House That Ed Built.
Ed Wood has long served as a patron saint to low-budget filmmakers everywhere. And why shouldn't he? Ed's movies, though the object of widespread ridicule for decades, are as personal and distinctive as those of any of cinema's great auteurs. Plato famously declared books to be "immortal sons defying their sires." Can't the same be said about movies? Eddie died nearly half a century ago, and we're still picking apart the cheap exploitation films he made between 1948 and 1978. Box office grosses, industry awards, and critical praise are nice perks (if you can get them), but I think being remembered tops them all. That is Ed Wood's ultimate vindication, his last laugh.
Making independent films can be a brutal, heartbreaking, frustrating, and even humiliating process. Ed Wood knew all about that. The hours are long, the risk is high, and the rewards can be nonexistent. And yet, if you're determined enough to make a movie of your very own, you'll accept all of that. What choice do you have? I'll recommend two great films to you: John Paizs' comedy Crime Wave (1985) and the documentary American Movie (1999). They're both stories about eccentric independent directors hellbent on making their own movies, perhaps past the point of reason. Neither of those films references Ed Wood, but I'm sure Eddie could have related to them both. His spirit dwells in them.
On the other hand, some low-budget indie directors have made features and shorts directly and unambiguously inspired by the life and career of Edward D. Wood, Jr. I have already covered several examples in this series: Jesse Berger's Glen or the Bride...  (2014), Bart Aikens and Scott Allen Nollen's Ed and Bela (1986), and Andre Perkowski's Devil Girls (1999) and The Vampire's Tomb (2013). Some of these I've quite enjoyed, others have been tough to sit through. But, again, I feel Eddie would have appreciated each one of these.
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My Month of Bowie, day 10: 'Station to Station' (1976)

David Bowie hears that train a-comin'.
The album: Station to Station (RCA, 1976)
Bowie was going places in '76.My thoughts: In the 1970s, David Bowie was as reliable as a car company. Every year, like General Motors or Ford, he'd release his new product line. Sometimes, it would be a total, dramatic overhaul; other times, it would be a tasteful refinement of what had come before. But it would all have that distinctive David Bowie stamp on it, as recognizable as a Chevrolet emblem. "Come on down and see the '76 Bowies! Drive one home today!"
What makes this so improbable is that David Bowie, the human being, was an utter mess in the 1970s. His tenth album, Station to Station, was made at a particularly fraught time when he was dealing with substance abuse and mental health issues. The title even reflects his uncertain, itinerant lifestyle. Station to Station should sound like a mental breakdown captured on vinyl, about as "accessible" as Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music (1975). But it doesn't. The lyrics hint, obliquely as usual, at the turmoil in Bowie's life. But the music sounds confident, assured, and even playful. 
How do I account for this? Well, either his collaborators knew how to keep him on track (pun intended) or Bowie himself was able to get his act together just long enough to record an LP. Then, once a new collection of songs was in the can, he'd let himself fall apart again. However he managed to do it, I'm glad he did because Station to Station is another corker—not a direct sequel to Young Americans, necessarily, but not a complete rejection of it either. Again, it's more like a refinement of an existing product line. This is state-of-the-art Bowie in the year of our Lord 1976.
Listening to Station to Station jostled loose some memories, because it contains a couple of songs I remembered hearing as a teenager, namely the epic title track and the New Orleans-inflected "TVC 15." As I was listening to the latter, with its celebratory, Professor Longhair-style piano, I realized that I had no idea what the song was about. So I looked into it. According to the internet: "This song was reportedly inspired by Iggy Pop’s drug induced hallucination that the television set, in Bowie’s LA home, had swallowed his girlfriend." See, that's what I'm talking about. Bowie's life was beyond crazy in 1976, but it (somehow) didn't result in difficult, discordant music.
One more thought I had while listening to this record: Bowie, like all musicians, is the product of his influences. I can hear traces of Chuck Berry, Lou Reed, and Jacques Brel in the grooves of Station to Station. I also detect the influence of '70s funk musicians like James Brown and Jimmy Castor. But I can hear how Bowie himself inspired the musicians who came after him. In particular, I'm guessing that this LP hit David Byrne of Talking Heads pretty hard. How appropriate that Byrne later inducted Bowie into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
This is a very exciting juncture in the project because I'm about to dive into Bowie's famed "Berlin trilogy." I've heard good things.
Next: Low (1977)
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My Month of Bowie, day 9: 'Young Americans' (1975)

Uncle David wants you.
The album: Young Americans (RCA, 1975)
1975: The year David got soul.My thoughts: Sure, I've questioned the wisdom of doing a monthlong series of articles about David Bowie, a highly-accomplished artist about whom I know almost nothing. Everything about this guy was so complicated: his personal life, his music, his career. At times, I've felt ridiculously unqualified to write even these simple little reviews of his records. David's eighth album, the dystopian nightmare opera Diamond Dogs (1974), was so opaque and impenetrable—apart from the gut punch of "Rebel Rebel"—that it nearly broke me. I mean, what am I actually supposed to say about this thing? It's... good?
But today, I arrive at the soul-infused Young Americans, an album so joyous and inviting that listening to it is like sinking into a warm bubble bath and then just deciding to live there full-time. Does it help that the LP is bookended by two of Bowie's most famous songs, "Young Americans" and "Fame"? You bet it does. In 1970, Frank Zappa released a Mothers of Invention album called Burnt Weeny Sandwich, which begins and ends with accessible doo-wop cover songs ("WPLJ" and "Valarie") but has a lot of challenging, often-wordless weirdness in between. That album's title is a clue to its structure. But Young Americans is built more like a Chipwich: cookie on top, cookie on the bottom, ice cream in the middle. 
I felt that David was treading water just a bit on Diamond Dogs, but I was not prepared for how dramatically he would switch up his style for Young Americans a year later. I know he's famous for reinventing himself, but these two albums sound like they were recorded by two different guys with very different priorities. It's no secret that British rockers of Bowie's generation were obsessed with Black American music. See: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Animals, Led Zeppelin, etc. But those groups took their cues from the raucous R&B of the '50s and the upbeat Motown sound of the '60s. Bowie might have been the first of his ilk to embrace the R&B of the 1970s.
Young Americans is united by its triumphant sax solos, which transported me to the fantasy version of New York City you sometimes glimpse in movies or in the opening credits of Saturday Night Live. But attention must also be paid to the album's sumptuous background vocals (some of which are by Luther Vandross) and its inventive drumming as well. The word I'd use to describe the sound of this album is tight. Stylistically, this was new ground for Bowie, but it sounds like he's been playing this kind of music for years, as if he was sent down to Earth specifically to make this album. 
I legitimately don't know what to expect from the next LP on the schedule. I'm torn between wanting a second helping of Young Americans and wanting to see what else Bowie can do. Either sounds appealing to me.
Next: Station to Station (1976)
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My Month of Bowie, day 8: 'Diamond Dogs' (1974)

David Bowie gets in touch with his animal side on Diamond Dogs.
The album: Diamond Dogs (1974)
My thoughts: Okay, so what the hell are "diamond dogs"? They must be awfully important to David Bowie. He named his eighth album after them, after all, and the title track is six minutes long. And before we even get to it, Bowie tells us, through portentous spoken narration, about a dystopian future in which it's the year of the diamond dogs. There are also "fleas the size of rats" and "rats the size of cats" in this future. (Wonder how big the cats are? The size of Volkswagens?) Oh, and did I mention that Bowie is depicted as a half-man, half-dog on the cover? Well, he is. Personally, I'm at a loss to understand any of this.
Normally, I've tried not to do any research on these albums before I review them. I want these articles to be about the music, not how or why it was made. I haven't even talked about such key collaborators as Mick Ronson and Tony Visconti, even though they loom large in the Bowie legend. But after listening to Diamond Dogs, I was so flummoxed that I had to do a little light Googling. Was this some kind of concept album with a story I was supposed to be following? Eh, sort of. 
What happened was, Bowie was working on a musical adaptation of George Orwell's Nineteen-Eighty-Four (1949), but that project was nixed by Orwell's widow. Bowie took the songs he'd already written for it and combined them with material he was working on for other projects at the time, including an abandoned Ziggy Stardust stage musical. He'd also been experimenting with some songs based on the writings of William S. Burroughs, who was famous for his chaotic "cut-up" technique in which he'd literally chop up a text and rearrange the phrases into something new. And all of that stuff—Orwell, Ziggy, Burroughs—got tossed into the stew that was Diamond Dogs.
The infamous cover art for Diamond Dogs.
God, we're four paragraphs in, and I haven't really talked about how the album sounds. It sounds fine, I guess, verging on pretty darned good. It's what I've come to expect from a mid-1970s Bowie album: some rock star heroics, some theatrical decadence, and a little random weirdness just for good measure. By this point, David definitely knew what he was doing in the studio. The song you know from Diamond Dogs is "Rebel Rebel," and there's a good reason for that. Side 1 of the album is kind of a murky morass, and then all of a sudden, there's this guitar riff that snaps the listener to attention. Maybe that's when the amyl nitrate finally kicked in.
I listened to Diamond Dogs twice yesterday, and I'm struggling to remember most of it now. Maybe I should have written this yesterday. Serves me right for being lazy. Perhaps looking over the track list will jog my memory. The title track works itself into a nice Stones-y groove. It could have been on Sticky Fingers (1971), cheek and jowl with "Brown Sugar." Side 2 starts with "Rock 'n' Roll With Me." That was a good one, too, surprisingly tender and emotional. And "1984" reminded me a bit of Isaac Hayes' "Theme from Shaft" (1971) and The Temptations' "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone" (1972). Not sure if that's what Bowie was going for.
I've heard that Diamond Dogs was pretty much the end of Bowie's "glam rock" phase. Maybe he figured he'd taken it as far as it would go. I'm ready for David to move on, too. Not that I disliked Diamond Dogs, but I feel like he's spinning his wheels a bit, creatively. Before I forget: the "diamond dogs" of the title are rebellious, violent punks in the dystopian future Bowie has envisioned for this record. Maybe they're like Alex and his droogs in A Clockwork Orange (1971). I guess that's why this album is considered a forerunner of punk rock. A generation of dissatisfied British kids took these songs to heart. But I think David meant this LP as a warning, not an instruction manual.
Next: Young Americans (1975)
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