Category Archives: Sound

Space Oddity

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It just suddenly struck me that in my desire to “interpret” some of my favorite Bowie tunes, I’ve forgotten probably his signature song, Space Oddity. If you don’t know the lyrics to this one by heart, you’re probably not hanging out here much. My interpretation is it’s a song about isolation, about being totally alone floating around Earth. However, another interpretation is Scott Carpenter, the astronaut, went into space about that time and did some very odd things while there, like reciting poetry and such. A lot of people credit this event as being the inspiration to Space Oddity. I believe it’s a combination of both. Regardless, there are MANY versions of this song, some better than others. But, it was this song that got me hooked on Bowie around 1975 or so when he appeared on The Midnight Special. Here is what I saw then:


It was basically the final farewell as Mick and David wouldn’t perform together for nearly two decades. The original demo to Space Oddity is a riot. But, it just doesn’t seem quite right here. So, I’ll save it for later. For reasons beyond my comprehension, the 1980 Floor Show has never been released in any capacity. Bowie would quickly ditch Ziggy after this show for the Young American and his glam days were over. But, boy, did he go out with a bang. More on that later.

All The Madmen

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When I was a kid, I used to watch Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert a lot. I also was glued to The Midnight Special. One particular evening this oddball guy with bright red hair and wearing bizarre clothes came on and sang a couple of songs on Don Kirshner’s show. I loved both songs and decided I had to have them. Now, you gotta understand, living in a small rural town pre-MTV and pre-internet made that no small task. I searched K-Mart and the local stores and just couldn’t figure out what the songs were. So, I did what most people did at that time, I went to the local head shop. The hippie running the place immediately identified the first song, Space Oddity, but he couldn’t put his finger on the second song. So, I did what every kid did at that time with money to spare and no bills to pay, I ordered Bowie’s first five LP’s. When they arrived, I started in chronological order with Space Oddity. My second fave song at that point was there, but not the one I had to have. The first album was a folksy sounding album with ultra-strange lyrics. But, it didn’t really catch me at that time. The second album, Hunky Dory, was more of the same. Folksy sounding, but a little brasher, with ultra-strange lyrics. However, I had a hard time getting past the third album. I couldn’t stop playing it. The Man Who Sold The World was completely different than the previous two. It was loud, it was in-your-face, it had LONG guitar solos, but it still had the strange tales. It was everything I wanted in a rock album right there. Several songs stood out, all in their own way. The album started off with a major bang with The Width of a Circle. This was the type of song usually reserved as the last song of a major effort. The Width of a Circle would become the highlight of the Ziggy Stardust tour. However, the second song was the one that stuck with me the most. All The Madmen flowed smoother, the lyrics seemed to mean something, but I couldn’t say what. And, it had one of those catchy refrains at the end, “Zane, Zane, Zane. Ouvre le chien”. Now, living in rural Kentucky, I did what any logical teen would do, I asked my French teacher what it meant. She just looked blankly at me and said “Open the dog”. Needless to say, for a fourteen year old, that was DEEP. I later learned she was wrong. I also later learned that the cover I got was not the original, this was:

Getting past All The Madmen, the album took a breather with a couple of songs, then came hammering back with Running Gun Blues. Now, this song would make Slipknot and Korn nervous with lyrics like:

I count the corpses on my left, I find I’m not so tidy
So I better get away, better make it today
I’ve cut twenty-three down since Friday
But I can’t control it, my face is drawn
My instinct still emotes it

But I’ll slip out again tonight
Cause they haven’t taken back my rifle
For I promote oblivion
And I’ll plug a few civilians

And, the chorus went something like:

I’ll slash them cold, I’ll kill them dead
I’ll break them gooks, I’ll crack their heads
I’ll slice them till they’re running red
But now I’ve got the running gun blues

That was kinda unnerving to me. I hadn’t heard quite a harsh tune like that before. Saviour Machine didn’t let up too much either with lyrics like:

‘Please don’t believe in me, please disagree with me
Life is too easy, a plague seems quite feasible now
or maybe a war, or I may kill you all

Don’t let me stay, don’t let me stay
My logic says burn so send me away
Your minds are too green, I despise all I’ve seen
You can’t stake your lives on a Saviour Machine

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any more violent, along comes She Shook Me Cold:

We met upon a hill, the night was cool and still
She sucked my dormant will
Mother, she blew my brain, I will go back again
My God, she shook my cold

I had no time to spare, I grabbed her golden hair
And threw her to the ground
Father, she caved my head, Oh Lord, the things she said
My God, she should be told

I wasn’t really sure what to make of that. He was either getting a blow job or committing violent rape. I went with the blow job. He then returned to his older style with The Man Who Sold The World and the spacey The Supermen.

It took me a while to move on through the other albums. The song I was looking for was Time from Aladdin Sane. Once I got back to Aladdin Sane, I grew to like that album almost as much as The Man Who Sold The World. To this day, this is probably my third favorite Bowie album.

Here’s my versions:

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Brian Eno

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I honestly don’t have a clue how to do this one right. Brian Eno. That should say it all? Problem is, it doesn’t. Especially to the younger audiences. The VH1 and MTV greatest lists never mention Brian Eno. You don’t see kids getting blisters trying to emulate Eno riffs. You don’t see classical performers comparing Eno keyboards to the likes of Bach or Beethoven. You don’t see Eddie Vedder praising Brian Eno. Hell, you don’t even see Alicia Keyes praising Brian Eno. All of them should. Here’s just a little list of Eno’s contributions that I personally enjoy a lot.

Low David Bowie Sound and Vision, Breaking Glass
Heroes David Bowie ‘Heroes’ is possibly my all time fave.
Q: Are We Not Men? Devo Whip It, Mongoloid
More Songs About Buildings and Food Talking Heads Take Me to The River
Fear of Music Talking Heads Life During Wartime, Heaven
Remain in Light Talking Heads Once in a Lifetime
The Unforgettable Fire U2 Pride
The Joshua Tree U2 Where the Streets Have No Name, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Waiting For, With or Without You, Bullet The Blue Sky
Achtung Baby U2 Zoo Station, Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses, Mysterious Ways, One
Us Peter Gabriel Steam
Zooropa U2 Numb, Lemon
Beautiful Day U2 Beautiful Day
About Everything John Cale ever did. John Cale  

The list goes on and on for practically eternity. Eno seemed to zone in on the bands I liked best. And, they usually came out with a classic as the result.

Here’s some of my Mooned Eno’s:

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Stevie Ray Vaughn

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Stevie Ray Vaughn had been sort of lurking in the shadows of rock stardom. Everyone knew he was great, but he hadn’t had that breakthrough song to put him over the top. In 1982 or so, David saw Stevie doing a show and invited him to work on his newest album. Let’s Dance is not my favorite Bowie album, but it did provide a distribution mechanism for one of my favorite songs, Cat People. However, this post is about Stevie. Stevie took an otherwise droll pop song Bowie did and turned into a classic hit that is still played today. The hook to Let’s Dance is all Stevie Ray Vaughn. Stevie got the mass audience he deserved when Let’s Dance became Bowie’s first #1 hit in 1983. In 1986 Stevie would find his own claim to fame when Pride and Joy was released. Four years later, Stevie died in airplane crash. The original Let’s Dance sounds like a studio recording. There’s several very similar versions floating around on radio. What you won’t ever hear on the radio is the Serious Moonlight dress rehearsals. Stevie just does his thing all the way through the songs. On the Let’s Dance rehearsal, he plays both the hooks that make the song fun, but he also fills in the vocal track as well. It’s more fun to listen to than the studio recording. Someone did a midi that I think is supposed to be the dress rehearsal of Let’s Dance. I prettied it up some, but not much. It gives a good feeling for what the live Stevie sounded like on the Let’s Dance dress rehearsal tape. Hope you enjoy it.

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Ziggy Stardust

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No Bowie fanzine would be worthy of its bytes unless it had a tribute to the song that really kicked Bowie into hight gear. Although other songs that will be saluted here sold more, Ziggy was what set the stage for all the rest to make it. It put Bowie on the level of the various members of the Beatles, the Stones, Elton John, and the other great writers of the 70′s. From this point forward Bowie could pretty much do whatever he wanted musically. Ziggy shattered the bubblegum mystique that big stars had to be pretty, wholesome, sing well, or write songs about important issues. Ziggy was none of that. An ashen skinny kid with orange hair and dressing in curtains singing about questionable sexually oriented aliens and the end of the Earth. Yeah buddy, that’s gonna sell. Oh, and did we mention we’re gonna do mime during the show as well? If that don’t get it, we simulate homosexual felacio on guitars.

Well, to the surprise of everyone except probably Bowie, it did sell. All of a sudden, everyone was going over the top, the punks were accepted, Elton John came out of the closet, Bowie taunted John, Right when it was pretty much accepted that Bowie could do glam and hard rock forever, he ditched it for soul. Ziggy sold the world, and Bowie then set out to sell it again.

Here’s my Ziggy

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Here’s the orignal, of course and others:

‘Heroes’

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When I first began listening to Bowie, Young Americans was a hit. But, it wasn’t really my style at all. I bought the album, but outside of “Young Americans” and “Fame”, the album didn’t appeal to me at all. He very shortly afterwards released “Station to Station”, which was a far superior album, and closer to my style, but it still didn’t click quite the way his old stuff did. Bowie then cranked out “Low”, which was so bizarre it was hard to get any of my friends to sing along to. My interest in Bowie was starting to wane. I heard that he was working on Part 2 of the Eno Trilogy

David Bowie and Brian Eno, so it had to be good, but Part 1 had left me somewhat disappointed. A couple of good songs, but nothing exciting. Around Christmas time we went on one of our usual family vacations. I was in a hotel room somewhere in Florida with the entire family in the same room. I heard that Bowie was going to be on the Bing Crosby Christmas Special and new I was going to have problems getting to see it. About the time it was to come on, I actually had to turn the hotel tv around backwards, crammed up against the wall with barely enough space for my head to wedge between the tv and the wall. I could barely turn the volume up at all without my dad yelling, so I kept it very low, and in order to get a better idea of what was going on, crammed a cassette recorder against the tv speaker. He came on and did a skit with Crosby doing an improvised version of Little Drummer Boy that is still a classic, and much later in the show, they played his new video. It was “Heroes”. I got so excited seeing something that looked like rock from Bowie that I turned the tv up a little. For a long time I treasured that recording. My first exposure to what would become possibly my all time favorite song by Bowie, by anyone for that matter, with my dad yelling at me in the background. In order to get that recording, I had to be a hero. Just for one day.

I don’t know that too many people ever actually get to feel a sense of pride in their favorite performer, but when Bowie played “Heroes” for the 9/11 emergency personnel, seeing Bowie pleasing those heroes with the song that had always pleased me just made me feel like a king. I knew he could do it, and he did it fabulously. He even remembered all the words this time.

The second most notable performance of Bowie doing “Heroes” had to be the Freddie Mercury tribute. Seeing Mick Ronson play the song he should have been playing all along, knowing he wouldn’t be around much longer, was just heart wrenching for me.

The third most notable performance for me had to be when I saw him during Glass Spider. I took my significantly younger date with me. All through the show Bowie performed pretty much the show I would have asked for. I yelled, I danced, I screamed, I was a kid. At the time I thought I was just embarassing her, but I didn’t care. When he did Heroes I went ballistic. I think it was about that time she asked me when he was going to do Rebel Yell or White Wedding. I never took her to another show. In fact, I don’t think we saw each other much after that.

 
Another favorite performance of “Heroes” was a bootleg video I found scouring the ‘net. It’s suggested to be his trial run for the song. The venue is definitely German, which is where he recorded it, so I have no reason to doubt it. It’s definitely rough, and Bowie as usual, slaughters the lyrics. But, it’s about the only time I’ve seen him feature the instrument that gave the recording its unique sound, the ‘lectric fiddle combined with the crying guitar. He should have tried that combo more, it’s a very haunting sound.

Here’s my version, I stick fairly close to the original:

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Cygnet Committee

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Another of my all time favorites. Bowie’s first truly production album featured Space Oddity. However, as great a song it is, Cygnet Committee was Space Oddity on steroids. At over nine minutes long, it tells the story of a rebellion from both the perspective of a financial supporter, and then from a rebellion leader as well. It meanders, the music builds somewhat, and it ends in a over-emotional plea that the rebellion member just wants to live. This to me was Bowie at his most bizarre and creative self. He didn’t have elaborate instrumentation, Wakeman and Ronson were yet to on the scene. It was primarily Bowie with accoustic guitar and little else. This was folk on acid. The lyrics are funny as hell in their bitterness and IMO, confusion. Before you listen to anything else from this pre-Ziggy era, listen to Cygnet Committee.

Here’s my version. I think it sounds better musically, but I’ve got a lot more to work with than Bowie did then. It’s also from another Lunamagic midi as well, which means it’s great.

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And here’s the original, it’s on the remastered version of the remastered version.

Silly Boy Blue

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I was introduced to Bowie during Diamond Dogs/Young Americans. Living in the country made trying to figure his career out initially quite confusing. We didn’t have MTV, VH1, or for that matter, FM radio. You did it by reading Rolling Stone and other rock mags. So, what you wound up doing was seeing someone on something like Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert or the Midnight Special, and then just blindly buying albums until you figured whether you liked them or not. When Young Americans and Fame became hits, RCA rushed out a bunch of albums cashing in on their investment. One of those was “David Bowie“, recorded and released in 1967. Bowie would release “Rubber Band”, “The Laughing Gnome”, and “Love You Till Tuesday”. IMO, it was at that moment Bowie began his knack of not releasing the best songs on any album. Hidden away, never released, and since the album flopped, pretty much totally forgotten was “Silly Boy Blue”. Ever since I found my original copy of “David Bowie” way back whenever, this has been one of my favorites as well. It was recorded raw, as Bowie didn’t have much instrumentation to work with in 1967, but I could tell that with just a little nurturing, this could be a beautiful song. Some time ago, the Bowie midi-maestro Lunamgagic, redid Silly Boy Blue in midi. No one does Bowie midi’s better than lunamagic. I then took it and played with it in Cakewalk. This is my version, I like it a lot:

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The lyrics to this very early Bowie effort were outstanding:

Mountains of Lhasa are feeling the rain
People are walking the Botella lanes
Preacher takes the school
One boy breaks a rule
Silly Boy Blue, silly Boy Blue

Yak butter statues that melt in the sun
Cannot dissolve all the work you’ve not done
A chela likes to feel
That his overself pays the bill
Silly Boy Blue, silly Boy Blue

You wish and wish, and wish again
You’ve tried so hard to fly
You’ll never leave your body now
You’ve got to wait to die

La la la la la la la la la la (x2)
La la la la la (x2)
Silly Boy Blue, silly Boy Blue

Child of Tibet, you’re a gift from the sun
Reincarnation of one better man
The homeward road is long
You’ve left your prayers and song
Silly Boy Blue, silly Boy Blue
Silly Boy Blue, silly Boy Blue.

Unless you can find the original “David Bowie“, here’s a good alternative. I gotta warn you tho, this is NOT the Bowie you’re used to.

Moonage Daydream

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Moonage Daydream was the song that would make Ziggy famous. Somehow it morphed from a funky folk ballad Bowie originally sang as Arnold Corns with Freddie Buretti. That version was a classic in itself, but to me, the Ziggy Moonage Daydream was the heaviest thing I’d ever heard. I don’t really know what Mick was doing to his quitar, sounds like he was playing along with synthesized strings, but his solo just went everywhere. It was the closest thing to rock mayhem Bowie would get on vinyl for a long, long, time. I’m not sure who convinced Bowie to let Mick loose for once, but it worked. They should have done it a lot more, Mick’s talent was rarely fully explored with Bowie. Moonage Daydream has always been my Bowie staple. Other songs come and go in my Top 10 list, but Moonage Daydream, both versions, have remained way up there on the list, usually #1.

It’s one of my favorite remixes:

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September 25, 2006 UPDATE: Here’s Bowie’s best performance EVER of Moonage Daydream.