David Bowie

I don't know if there are any other David Bowie fans here, or it's just me, but this is pretty neat.

Arkadin wrote:

I don't know if there are any other David Bowie fans here, or it's just me, but this is pretty neat.

Thanks for the link, Harms.

As much as I've worshipped at the altar of Bowie for practically my entire life and grabbed every new album upon it's arrival, I've always been a bit indifferent over this project TBH, as indeed were Virgin Records at the time; I guess I've always felt that if it was great enough then it would have seen the proper light of day by now as an official release, which I'll probably still wait on arriving as opposed to fishing out some lower-quality online leak of it. Afraid being so prominently placed on the album has never looked like a good omen to me either, as I felt it to be the weakest (or maybe joint weakest) track on the otherwise pretty damn good Heathen album. Some of the older versions of the Toy songs listed here were hardly great songs to begin with IMO, although I kinda like In The Heat Of The Morning and really liked both the Conversation Piece original and the (Toy?) version which turned up on the Heathen bonus disc. So yeah, I blow hot and cold on this project; I can live without it, though I'd likely buy it if it was ever released officially.

All I really want from Bowie now is a better final (?) album than Reality, and I hope to God he can just get one more album out which feels more like a final statement and a closing of the curtain than Reality did; If not, then I'll always wish he'd gone out with Heathen, as there are quite a few songs there which really put across the feeling of something coming to pass, most importantly the closing track.

Lazenby. wrote:

Afraid being so prominently placed on the album has never looked like a good omen to me either, as I felt it to be the weakest (or maybe joint weakest) track on the otherwise pretty damn good Heathen album.

Really? I dunno. I'd take "Afraid" over some of the other tracks on HEATHEN.

Lazenby. wrote:

Some of the older versions of the Toy songs listed here were hardly great songs to begin with IMO

Sure, but as far as I understand it, the point of their use on this album was to refashion them into something different and new.

Arkadin wrote:

Lazenby. wrote:

Afraid being so prominently placed on the album has never looked like a good omen to me either, as I felt it to be the weakest (or maybe joint weakest) track on the otherwise pretty damn good Heathen album.

Really? I dunno. I'd take "Afraid" over some of the other tracks on HEATHEN..

I dunno, Afraid just sounds a bit too straightforward to me, lacking any real sharpness, beauty or invention, plus the vocal sounds strained at times, as if it were just a first take or something. Most of the other tracks seem to serve some purpose or other through either their quality or their positioning on the album, but to me Afraid is just there. I don't necessarily dislike it, I'm just neither here nor there with it, could have lived just as easily with the album losing it as I can with it being included.

Arkadin wrote:

Lazenby. wrote:

Some of the older versions of the Toy songs listed here were hardly great songs to begin with IMO

Sure, but as far as I understand it, the point of their use on this album was to refashion them into something different and new.

Yep. I'm just a bit hesitant over it, as Bowie himself seems to have chosen to let us have some tracks from it but not others, while Virgin, despite Bowie's previous album having gone top 5, didn't seem to deem it worthy of release. There were opportunities to give us all of this stuff on the bonus discs of the last two albums, yet that opportunity wasn't taken for some reason, especially strange in that a handful of the tracks were already available to us anyway, while three of either them turned up or were reworked for the Heathen release. I'd like to hear what Bowie himself thinks of all of this and whether or not there'll be a physical top-quality release of this album before I just go and rip it off some fileshare site though. I don't doubt for a second that some of this stuff could be good, but I've waited long enough (ten years!) to be able to wait a bit longer in case of an impending official release, I suppose.

Keep us informed though. I trust your taste and opinions a lot of the time, so if you download it and find it worthwhile then I may well succumb to doing the same.

Well, I've been listening to TOY all day, and while it's not a perfect album, I have to say, I really, really dig a lot of it. The first few songs are a bit rocky (well, aside from "Uncle Floyd" a.k.a. "Slip Away," which makes for a great opener), but then it picks up as soon as we hit "Conversation Piece," with "Shadow Man," "In the Heat of the Morning," "Silly Boy Blue," "Liza Jane," and "London Boys" all making a great impression.

Well, my resolve on this didn't last very long.

Having had a fellow Bowie fan at work prattering on about this "album" for the last two days and saying annoying stuff like "the CD's in my car if you wanna borrow it", my resistance was never gonna last, coupled with the obvious "It's BOWIE, who the f*** am I kidding, of course I'm gonna download this" voice growing increasingly louder in my head. Anyway, I succumbed earlier today and downloaded the thing.

My opinions after one listen to it:

I have to agree about the "rocky" first few tracks; While I'd have probably adored Uncle Floyd back in 2001 had this album been released as (and when) intially intended, the shadow of the utterly majestic (and IMO superior in practically every possible way) version ultimately released on Heathen looms very large, and renders listening to this Toy version a tad pointless to me. Obviously through no fault of Bowie's and more obviously simply due to what was released to us and when, I'll forever deem Uncle Floyd/Slip Away as part of Heathen, and a pretty big part at that. Ditto Afraid, even though I partially prefer the Toy version of this track, as Bowie's vocal sounds a bit more comfortable in the more pared-down and slightly poppier version here, plus this Toy version partially explains one of the nagging problems I have with the Heathen version of Afraid, in that the Heathen version uses apparently the exact same vocal track as the earlier Toy version; Afraid is the one track on Heathen where I feel Bowie's delivery feels a bit strained/struggling at certain points, not to mention the Heathen version having a Visconti string arrangement chucked over it to leave the voice struggling even further at times. Again though, time has unavoidably made this track part of Heathen to me, hence I'll probably re-jig the Toy running order on subsequent listens to leave out the two opening tracks.

Track three, Baby Loves That Way, is kinda decent, the only thing bringing it down IMO is that the vocal isn't quite high enough in the mix for me (yep, nobody had learnt a thing from Watch That Man having exactly the same problem 30 years earlier, though that track is otherwise great of course), though maybe it's more the choice of Bowie's vocal mode here that doesn't quite elevate the track as I'd like. Fourth track I Dig Everything is just a bit too straightforward and unremarkable, not much more I can say about that one except that it at least seems to put a bit more muscle into it's musical execution than the previous three tracks, even though it still doesn't really step out of the middle of the road. As mentioned earlier in this thread, I love track five, Conversation Piece, in both it's other incarnations, the version here on Toy sounding ever-so-slightly different to the Heathen bonus disc version, though I'd have to go back to that version to check if I'm correct there, maybe it's just a sound quality issue. Love it regardless, great song.

Let Me Sleep Beside You is another track which I liked anyway in it's earlier form and, while this version here doesn't really put a foot wrong and welcomely rocks this particular album up a bit, I still prefer the quainter charm of the original. Toy (Your Turn To Drive) is a pleasant enough mid-album track, despite the nagging sense that there's something missing, maybe some variation to elevate it higher than "good b-side" status; Nice repeating piano motif, but little else there unfortunately. Hole In The Ground is okay, a decent enough "second half filler track". Next track Shadow Man is undoubtedly a highlight though, a track whose reinterpretation lends itself very nicely to the more emotional and introspective phase Bowie was in at this time on the back of the Hours album. Very good vocal here too.

In The Heat Of The Morning probably elicits much the same opinon from me as Let Me Sleep Beside You. You've Got A Habit Of Leaving is okay, at the very least it sounds like it's in the exact correct place on the album. Silly Boy Blue gets reinterpreted successfully, perhaps a tad via Survive from Hours, with another nice vocal here, while the revised Liza Jane is a nice "swing-jazz" curveball, very welcome. Finally, London Boys also gets a good updating, though again it's a track I''ve always appreciated anyway.

Overall, Toy is a tough "album" to judge. Do these tracks make great b-sides/bonus disc tracks? Hell yeah, and the couple of best tracks here are probably better still than that. Placing myself back in 2001, would I have been okay at the time with this "album" turning up as the follow-up to Hours...? Possibly, at the time, though mainly on the condition that it was just a quick follow-up, a "tide the fans over till the next album" stopgap kinda thing, though in that department I infinitely preferred 2000's Bowie At The Beeb collection. But in retrospect, and with my knowledge of what Bowie went on to actually release after recording Toy, do I wish Toy had been released in 2001? Hell no, to be bluntly honest. I love much of Heathen, and wouldn't have wanted what would later become the majestic Slip Away "wasted" on Toy, thus not turning up on Heathen as a beautiful first half centrepiece. Also, having already released a perhaps slightly too "middle of the road" album music-wise with Hours prior to the recording of Toy, there's no way I'd have wanted Bowie's subsequent albums following that same "middle of the road" path; In short, I'm happy with things as they panned out, as what ultimately happened led to Heathen and the return of Tony Visconti as full-on producer, a massive plus which is highlighted all the more by the sometimes overly "session musicians" feel to the music on Toy.

Ultimately, of course I can never assess Toy properly, given the out-of-context way in which it finally appeared, out of it's time and in the wake of the two far superior albums which were actually released after Hours, but it's a belatedly welcome enough release nonetheless, with some nice tracks which I'll happily add to my collection. Hopefully, after a few more listens and a possible re-arranging of the running order, it may even feel a lot more welcome.

Thought I remembered seeing a David Bowie topic in here.

Just thought I'd let his fans know that there's four and a half hours of David Bowie programmes on BBC4 tonight, starting from 9pm, with repeats of some of the programmes later into the morning.

Mike Garson's a legend. A huge contribution to possibly my favourite Bowie song of all.

Bowie sure knows how to choose a good collaborator.

Largo's Shark wrote:

Mike Garson's a legend. A huge contribution to possibly my favourite Bowie song of all.

This whole album is genius. My second favourite Bowie after Diamond Dogs!

Garson's welcome additions aside, I actually find Aladdin Sane to be one of Bowie's lesser efforts of the 70s, a less consistent and rushed Ziggy follow-on which, through anticipation, became popular more through fame and sales than for any real brilliance within (Time, Lady Grinning Soul and a few piano solos aside). I do like the album by and large (it's 70s Bowie after all, all of which ranges from good to great to f*cking mindblowingly brilliant), but I'd definitely put Hunky Dory, Ziggy, Diamond Dogs, Station To Station, Low, Heroes, Lodger and possibly Scary Monsters & Young Americans ahead of Aladdin Sane.

Sane and Diamond Dogs are my favourites. I call them the Bowie, Stones albums. There's some Stones worthy rock n'roll on both albums. Both Jagger and Bowie were caught up in the glam-scene of the time of which Bowie was probably the hight priest. But Bowie has said that he was also influenced by the Stones rock n' roll swagger. The influence is quite apparent in a few tracks, I think most notably in Diamond Dogs, title track. And Rebel Rebel is among the best rock n' roll songs ever recorded IMO. The Jean Genie too.

Lazenby. wrote:

Garson's welcome additions aside, I actually find Aladdin Sane to be one of Bowie's lesser efforts of the 70s, a less consistent and rushed Ziggy follow-on which, through anticipation, became popular more through fame and sales than for any real brilliance within (Time, Lady Grinning Soul and a few piano solos aside). I do like the album by and large (it's 70s Bowie after all, all of which ranges from good to great to f*cking mindblowingly brilliant), but I'd definitely put Hunky Dory, Ziggy, Diamond Dogs, Station To Station, Low, Heroes, Lodger and possibly Scary Monsters & Young Americans ahead of Aladdin Sane.

I'd agree with Time, Lady Grinning Soul, but there's more than just a "few piano solos" that give Aladdin Sane some strength. You've got eponymously named track above (one of the songs Bowie ever wrote, Garson's atonal cadenza aside - it's a very simple but poignant song), the barnstorming Panic in Detroit (a great tribute to Velvet Underground and The Stooges) and the glam rock anthem Jean Genie.

Apart from those, I'd agree that it's easily weaker than the albums you list above. Too much filler. It would have worked better as an EP.

tiffanywint wrote:

Sane and Diamond Dogs are my favourites. I call them the Bowie, Stones albums. There's some Stones worthy rock n'roll on both albums. Both Jagger and Bowie were caught up in the glam-scene of the time of which Bowie was probably the hight priest. But Bowie has said that he was also influenced by the Stones rock n' roll swagger. The influence is quite apparent in a few tracks, I think most notably in Diamond Dogs, title track. And Rebel Rebel is among the best rock n' roll songs ever recorded IMO. The Jean Genie too.

Yeah, there's definitely great rock n' roll in places on those albums (on that note, Watch That Man would have been awesome had the vocal been put a tad higher up in the mix), but I prefer Bowie branching out a bit more. As far back as The Man Who Sold The World and on Queen Bitch from Hunky Dory, he'd already done the straight-ahead rock thing before Ziggy and Aladdin came along. For me, Aladdin and Diamond Dogs shine brightest when Bowie really pushes his grand theatrical side on tracks such as Time and Sweet Thing. This stuff led us to tracks like Station To Station, which is clearly a precursor to Low. I'm probably more a 76-79 Bowie fan than a 69-75 one, but to be honest I love it all. Diamond Dogs is a f*cking great record and one of my Bowie faves. I even think his '69 self-titled album (later renamed Space Oddity) is a bloody good record and often unfairly overlooked. Bowie's run of albums from 69-80 is my favourite stretch of music from any artist.

As much as I like Bowie's Stones inspired rock n' roll numbers, I can appreciate the entire bodies of work. Even the Stones only put 3 or 4 real rockers on their albums.Variety helps makes a great album. Diamond Dogs is brilliant as a whole. The Orwellian nightmare theme permeates the whole album. It's a desert island albumfor sure. I'm a Bowie loyalist as opposed to a big fan or expert. I've even got his last 4 albums. I know that when I pick-up a Bowie album, I'm always getting something interesting and quite listenable.

Has any popular music artist so consistently challenged and reinvented themselves as Bowie has? He's a giant.

(For what it's worth, my favorite Bowie period is the mid-70s to early 80s.)

Largo's Shark wrote:

there's more than just a "few piano solos" that give Aladdin Sane some strength. You've got eponymously named track above (one of the songs Bowie ever wrote, Garson's atonal cadenza aside - it's a very simple but poignant song), the barnstorming Panic in Detroit (a great tribute to Velvet Underground and The Stooges) and the glam rock anthem Jean Genie.

Apart from those, I'd agree that it's easily weaker than the albums you list above. Too much filler. It would have worked better as an EP.

The riff and chug of Panic are fine, though Jean Genie has always been a bit too straight-ahead for me, a bit of an "easy-pleaser" if you like, a safe "preaching to the converted" on the back of Ziggy. The title track honestly doesn't do that much for me apart from it's beautiful swathes of piano. As you said, it's very simple, which is the aspect which puts me off; Garson brings his A game, but Bowie brings his B. Maybe there's a bit more than an EP's worth of greatness, I'd stretch to about 5 or 6 tracks I'm happy with. But the rest can sometimes feel comparatively uninspired or act as mere consolidation.

tiffanywint wrote:

As much as I like Bowie's Stones inspired rock n' roll numbers, I can appreciate the entire bodies of work. Even the Stones only put 3 or 4 real rockers on their albums.Variety helps makes a great album. Diamond Dogs is brilliant as a whole. The Orwellian nightmare theme permeates the whole album. It's a desert island album for sure. I'm a Bowie loyalist as opposed to a big fan or expert. I've even got his last 4 albums. I know that when I pick-up a Bowie album, I'm always getting something interesting and quite listenable

As someone who stuck with him through his much-maligned post-Scary Monsters 80s releases (especially '84 onwards), I can understand that. His last four albums are by and large fine, especially Heathen, which is the album I really wish he'd gone out on (the recurring theme of things coming to pass would have been as perfect a signing-off as we probably could have hoped for from him). In fact, his last six albums all have their moments, and are all a massive step-up from his 84-92 output. Actually, even that period wasn't entirely a washout; There's nowt wrong with singles like Loving The Alien, This Is Not America, Underground, Time Will Crawl and (especially) Absolute Beginners.

HEATHEN is wonderful, but I'm glad that the last song of his last album was "Bring Me the Disco King." It's an appropriate exit.

Lazenby. wrote:

The title track honestly doesn't do that much for me apart from it's beautiful swathes of piano. As you said, it's very simple, which is the aspect which puts me off; Garson brings his A game, but Bowie brings his B.

I admit apart from the solo, it's the opening chords + verses that do it for me. Reminds a lot of some of John Barry's compositions (i.e. THE LION IN WINTER or DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER). It's got that same simplicity, rawness and emotional sucker punch to it. Less is more. I think Bowie does a fine job with this one, written after his brother's sectioning, and reading Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies - ruminating on the (lack of) meaning in the rock n roll lifestyle. It's got all that apocalyptic air to it, with some of Bowie's most poetic imagery.

Motor sensational
Paris or maybe Hell
Clutches of sad remains
Waits for Aladdin Sane

M wrote:

Thought I remembered seeing a David Bowie topic in here.

Just thought I'd let his fans know that there's four and a half hours of David Bowie programmes on BBC4 tonight, starting from 9pm, with repeats of some of the programmes later into the morning.

The Ziggy doc was excellent, very glad I recorded it. Covered not only Ziggy, but pretty much Bowie's very beginnings then right through to about '74. Would love a second part covering 74-81, but this doc was still a great new Bowie addition to my collection.

Might make sense to put the story itself into this thread, as most of his albums are on YouTube in their entirety. Here's where I usually begin, in the year which saw not only the best James Bond emerge in George Lazenby, but also the first good Bowie album. From 1969, an underrated and often lovely record which (probably unintentionally at the time, to be fair) brings a nostalgic curtain down on the hippie/free love movement. Boasting not only the classic title track, but also IMO one of Bowie's best ever tracks in Cygnet Committee, this is Bowie's 1969 album originally released as simply David Bowie in some territories and Man Of Words, Man Of Music in others. Following the success of Bowie's classic single Space Oddity, this album was later re-titled with the same name....

David Bowie just released a new single.

His new album, THE NEXT DAY, comes out on March 12.

Harmsway wrote:

David Bowie just released a new single.

Not bad at all.

Bit of a "meh" single, not up to par with vastly superior late-era Bowie ballads such as Slip Away, but all's well if this is merely an indicator towards this being an appropriately reflective final(?) album. But I pray the album artwork is not the awful tossed-off desecration of the Heroes sleeve which is doing the rounds. And am I the only one already 100% pissed off with these "lyric videos" which just distract from a song and a listeners own interpretation of it? Otherwise, this video has some nice moments.

Still, bring on March 12th, as long away as that seems right now.

Am I the only one who thinks the second single isn't up to much either? :scratch:

Amid a slew of 4 and 5 star rave reviews for this album, I'm actually starting to feel a bit sceptical. There's nothing in the two singles to suggest a great album here. I can only hope that for some baffling reason he's just released tempo/tonal filler tracks as singles and the album is actually good.

Hate him streaming the bloody thing online though, the marketing campaign and publicity for this album has been absolutely bang-on (well, that's to say it's worked spectacularly even despite the release of two singles I'm not really keen on). There's nothing but goodwill towards this album, and strong sales I'd guess are practically set in stone already. So why risk indifference (and leaks) creeping across the internet by streaming the album? People only have to wait a f*cking week to buy the bloody thing.