David Bowie's discography, 1 - David Bowie


I'm going to have to tackle this at some point. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon...

... Well, now that it's raining through yet another clump of my increasingly rare days off, i guess i might as well start. If i'm going to go album by album through his entire discography, you might as well hop on at the start and take the whole trip with me.

As far as i know, David Bowie's self titled debut is pretty much gone from our collective consciousness. That's a shame, because it's quite enjoyable.

It's a collection of interesting, sometimes strange, stories and character songs, and i suspect it's exactly the context required for understanding his later career. I mean, so many of his albums are actually David Bowie portraying a character, sometimes fictional sometimes pseudo-(auto)biographical.

It's 60s pop pretty much across the board, but highly literary. That's not to say there's a coherent narrative or theme to any of it, but the songs aren't sing along mottos or messages, it's all very much David Bowie singing. David Bowie the performer, here's what he writes, sings, thinks about, for you to listen to. I don't think he's really trying to communicate anything more than the conflict between the individual and the public; the one verses the many, self vs. other. There is, however, a definite post world war mentality, i'm not sure if it's part of Bowie himself, or just intrinsic to his generational Britishness. We'll see more of it though.

Part of this gigantic listening project is to change my own opinion: i like some of his stuff, hate a few specific things, but a lot of it i just haven't bothered to care about. I thoroughly enjoy this collection of early songs, i  love the arrangements and tunes, i like his theatrical vocal style. We've already established that the psychedelic baroque-pop of the Beatles makes me moderately angry because they didn't seem to actually care about what they were making. I get the complete opposite sense from Bowie, he clearly cared that the actual songs were good. They are. I can't single any one out for being great or terrible, they are all great.

2 - Space Oddity

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The 4 Seasons - The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette

Image
This might be my longest  album review ever. But i swear a couple times, so it's worth the read ;) How could i possibly mention Jefferson Airplane, The 4 Seasons, and Frank Zappa in the same context? Zappa said "this is rediculous" and a few years later The 4 Seasons said "you know what, Frank is right. This IS ridiculous." To which Jefferson Airplane said, "Oh. Ok. Got it." The real question is: which one is the most transgressive? Zappa said stop fighting, you look like idiots. Jefferson Airplane said i guess if love and community is a bad thing, then sure we're criminals and we'd be happy to move out into the fields and live peaceful lives without your garbage, let us go already. The 4 Seasons said hold my champagne for a moment. In 1969, The 4 Seasons released the single most ironic, acidic, extravagant, and downright befuddling album ever created, The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette. Zappa was accused of writing "shitty doo-w
Read more

Welcome to my blog, and my record collection.

This is a blog about my love of listening to albums. It started off as a nightly perusal of my dad's record collection (which sadly became mine) on my personal facebook page. Over the last two months it has become quite an enjoyable process of simply ranting about what i think is a real art form, the album. It needs a more permanent home. Some of my reviews are positive, some negative. They might not be what you expect from album reviews, but i hope you at least find them entertaining. For the most part i do very little research, and they tend to be train of thought reactions rather than calculated essays. If nothing else, know that i'm really listening to them and whether they are amazing or abysmal i want you to go listen to them too.  I'll start migrating the 60+ i've written so far over here in the next few days, and hopefully get to the point where i just start writing them here. I'd probably even take suggestions if you're just dying to know my tho
Read more

Pat Benatar - Seven The Hard Way

Image
I don't know about you, but i love Pat Benatar. Yes, that's also her debut album with the single most underrated song in the universe (My Clone Sleeps Alone) in the background, but that's just a generic non-self-titled debut album. We're jumping ahead to her 6th album, Seven The Hard Way, because that, ladies and gentle germs, is how you kalaidescope a concept. Not one, not two, not three, but 4 protien-packed layers to this metaphor. You don't really need to know the overly complicated rules of Craps to know that A) it's gambling, B) "the hard way" refers to rolling doubles, so good luck rolling two 3.5s, and C) you're going to lose, one way or another. It's a joke, but more importantly, it's Pat Benatar and the roll out is Sex As A Weapon, so the innuendo is not intended to be subtle. Wait wait wait, that's only 3, Bottle, where's 4? You're right, last but not least, side B opens with Seven Rooms of Gloom, a Holland-Dozier-Hol
Read more