Space soul oddity
I know that many people, from many generations, have been huge fans of David Bowie, the master musical chameleon who has influenced hundreds of musicians across many years and who is an undoubted superstar. Indeed there are many for whom he remains the ultimate artist, their favourite rock star, and he has always elicited a stunning degree of devotion. And all this despite the horror of side project Tin Machine, his drum'n'bass phase, and not to mention more direction changes than a blind man playing Super Mario Kart. However, for this writer he has never exerted much of an influence, and for a long time I considered him to just be over-rated. Put simply I couldn't see what the fuss was all about.
In my early musical upbringing the only Bowie tunes I was really aware of were "Changes", "Sound and Vision" and "Young Americans", all of which I thought were absolutely brilliant and still do, but none prompted me to explore further. Nor could I ever get a grip on the context for these songs, the phases they came from, or their internal chronology. As I got older, of course, I also knew in passing about Bowie as Ziggy Stardust and a few of the songs from that seminal album, and was vaguely aware of his more Teutonic period in the 1970s and influence on artists such as Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, but again it just never translated into any kind of deeper fascination. However, as is often the case in our fickle lives, it was the influence of a special lady who convinced me to really give Bowie a proper chance. And what I found was less a trumped up follower of fads, an astute manipulator of musical fashions and marketing, but instead a man who, in many ways sometimes verges on creative genius.
Here is not the place to go into the history and influence of Bowie's music, facts that can be found easily elsewhere and a path very well trodden, but suffice it to say that if you too are a hater, or dismissive of Bowie, I would urge you to try again. You might still find it to not be to your taste, but don't let a confusing array of offerings put you off from diving in fully-clothed, as I am sure that there is something for everyone in the Bowie canon. And once you are in, it is surprisingly easy to find yourself seduced into further exploration and develop a real liking for his work. I realise of course that many people reading this will be wondering why I am stating the obvious, surely no one can be ignorant of Bowie's work I hear you say, but experience has shown me that he is still an artist who seems to split opinion quite cleanly.
Anyway, the point I really wanted to make was that an interesting entry point, and one which I followed myself, came from one of my afore-mentioned tunes I could really claim to love, and probably the one I liked best. "Young Americans" from 1975 is a quite astonishing album, even more so when one considers that it follows the dispassionate Orwellian funk of precursor "Diamond Dogs" (itself an album that has grown on me greatly). But rather than following through with his Dystopian vision, Bowie instead kept the funk element of this earlier work alive, and combined it with the sounds of Philly soul to produce a sublime album of blue-eyed and commercially viable soul. The title track stands out, but also quite brilliant are many other of the tracks from the album including the huge-selling "Fame" which broke Bowie fully in the states, "Win", "Somebody Up There Likes Me" and "Fascination". Bowie's collaboration with producer Tony Visconti continued on this album, but significantly the album was recorded at Gamble & Huff's legendary Sigma Sound studio, with members of the incredible house band collective MFSB contributing to backing. Not to mention the first significant musical recording of a young Luther Vandross as a backing singer, adding his own smooth vocal stylings to proceedings, and even co-writing "Fascination".
Surely reasons indeed to give this album a second chance if you are not yet convinced. I still have some issues with Bowie's work, but I think that these are simply residual from my earlier lack of interest as actually, when I think about it now, I love a lot more of his work than not. And one simply cannot deny his own musical curiosity and aptitude, a creative mind always searching for new sources of fascination and expression and often pulling these quirky direction changes off with aplomb. Or maybe that restlessness was just the narcotic mountain he consumed throughout the same period. But whatever the case, "Young Americans" remains a touchstone for a huge amount of music that followed, setting an oft-subscribed-to aesthetic and luxurious soulful sound, not to mention slightly shallow rhetoric of excess and celebrity that continues to be aspired to in pop music today. So still not everyone's cup of tea, but you have to give credit to the man for attempting such a strange brew in the first place.
In my early musical upbringing the only Bowie tunes I was really aware of were "Changes", "Sound and Vision" and "Young Americans", all of which I thought were absolutely brilliant and still do, but none prompted me to explore further. Nor could I ever get a grip on the context for these songs, the phases they came from, or their internal chronology. As I got older, of course, I also knew in passing about Bowie as Ziggy Stardust and a few of the songs from that seminal album, and was vaguely aware of his more Teutonic period in the 1970s and influence on artists such as Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, but again it just never translated into any kind of deeper fascination. However, as is often the case in our fickle lives, it was the influence of a special lady who convinced me to really give Bowie a proper chance. And what I found was less a trumped up follower of fads, an astute manipulator of musical fashions and marketing, but instead a man who, in many ways sometimes verges on creative genius.
Here is not the place to go into the history and influence of Bowie's music, facts that can be found easily elsewhere and a path very well trodden, but suffice it to say that if you too are a hater, or dismissive of Bowie, I would urge you to try again. You might still find it to not be to your taste, but don't let a confusing array of offerings put you off from diving in fully-clothed, as I am sure that there is something for everyone in the Bowie canon. And once you are in, it is surprisingly easy to find yourself seduced into further exploration and develop a real liking for his work. I realise of course that many people reading this will be wondering why I am stating the obvious, surely no one can be ignorant of Bowie's work I hear you say, but experience has shown me that he is still an artist who seems to split opinion quite cleanly.
Anyway, the point I really wanted to make was that an interesting entry point, and one which I followed myself, came from one of my afore-mentioned tunes I could really claim to love, and probably the one I liked best. "Young Americans" from 1975 is a quite astonishing album, even more so when one considers that it follows the dispassionate Orwellian funk of precursor "Diamond Dogs" (itself an album that has grown on me greatly). But rather than following through with his Dystopian vision, Bowie instead kept the funk element of this earlier work alive, and combined it with the sounds of Philly soul to produce a sublime album of blue-eyed and commercially viable soul. The title track stands out, but also quite brilliant are many other of the tracks from the album including the huge-selling "Fame" which broke Bowie fully in the states, "Win", "Somebody Up There Likes Me" and "Fascination". Bowie's collaboration with producer Tony Visconti continued on this album, but significantly the album was recorded at Gamble & Huff's legendary Sigma Sound studio, with members of the incredible house band collective MFSB contributing to backing. Not to mention the first significant musical recording of a young Luther Vandross as a backing singer, adding his own smooth vocal stylings to proceedings, and even co-writing "Fascination".
Surely reasons indeed to give this album a second chance if you are not yet convinced. I still have some issues with Bowie's work, but I think that these are simply residual from my earlier lack of interest as actually, when I think about it now, I love a lot more of his work than not. And one simply cannot deny his own musical curiosity and aptitude, a creative mind always searching for new sources of fascination and expression and often pulling these quirky direction changes off with aplomb. Or maybe that restlessness was just the narcotic mountain he consumed throughout the same period. But whatever the case, "Young Americans" remains a touchstone for a huge amount of music that followed, setting an oft-subscribed-to aesthetic and luxurious soulful sound, not to mention slightly shallow rhetoric of excess and celebrity that continues to be aspired to in pop music today. So still not everyone's cup of tea, but you have to give credit to the man for attempting such a strange brew in the first place.
posted by Twelve Bar at 7:59 AM
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