Someone stuck a poll on Sodahead.com. Which do you like better, David Bowie or Elton John.
Sir Elton NEVER did anything like this:
I will give him credit for trying his best with Pinball Wizard, but it was a one-off effort whereas Bowie tossed out several incredible albums worth.
Love this!
In 1996 Jack Gillis married Meg White. He then became Jack White, they became The White Stripes. Pretty much the first thing they did was a cover of Moonage Daydream:
Eventually they would do another little ditty called Seven Nation Army:
This one’s for Eric Schmidt. If you got skeletons in your closet, you better not let Google know about it.
Well, sorta. And, definitely not in that way. More like this:
This is part of a collection of Adam Lambert album cover parodies. Several are good. However, the comparison is there for a reason I imagine. Adam Lambert loves glam. Bowie loved glam. Therefore, they have to be compared, right?
I don’t really think so. Here’s the performance that got everyone all worked up:
And, here’s the glam I enjoyed as as kid:
Now, the difference being primarily, for me, that in Bowie’s glam days, it was the music that initially set Bowie apart. Then you tossed in the odd outfits and sometimes bizarre stage shows. Toss in a gay reference occasionally to keep them guessing. But, with Bowie, it was more of a WTF moment than a statement on sexuality. With Lambert, particularly this song and performance, it seemed to be purely a sexual statement. The music is lame. And, I mean, way lame. This guy can sing, but doesn’t at this time. Then you’ve got gay, S&M, bondage, blah, blah, blah. If you can’t figure what these people are emulating, you never will. This is no WTF moment.
People just don’t get what glam was. Sure, it was some outlandish costumes, but the music was what set it apart. As rich as the visual experience was, the music was much moreso. Until a Lambert or someone gets it, I’ll be disappointed. Quite frankly, I don’t think Lambert ever will.
My friend JeniQ noticed something I had always noticed, but never really put much thought to. It’ll make itself kind of obvious as this post meanders. Some history first.
In 1969, following the success of Space Oddity, Bowie went back in the studios to release his next big hit. He teamed up with Marc Bolan, who was pretty hot at the time. And, he was pretty much totally infatuated with a babe named Angela Barnett. Tony Visconti was producing this round, and had a particular song in mind:
London Bye Ta Ta wasn’t floating too well with Bowie. So, Bowie and Bolan put together a little ditty pretty much featuring Bolan’s guitar work:
Catchy guitar riff, smooth lyrics, nothing shocking or weird. It went absolutely nowhere. A few years later, Bowie was a star, and he was putting together a quick album to follow up on the popularity of Ziggy Stardust. Most of the songs for Aladdin Sane were harsh, cold, disenchanted, and loud. Except for one song:
Not content that The Prettiest Star was so horrible no one would buy it, Bowie re-made it with Mick Ronson on guitar. Visconti once again was producing the song he didn’t want to produce in the first place. There was one very noticeable difference. They added doo-wops. What got left on the cutting room floor was the guitar solo intro. Starting instead with the classic guitar riff.
Fast forward a decade or so and Bowie’s friend Julien Temple was producing a movie. He got Bowie to do a supporting role. And, more importantly to me, record the theme song to the movie. This type of collaboration had previously yielded Cat People. So, the concept was promising. However, the song was not quite as creative as Cat People. It enjoyed a quick stint in the charts and pretty much faded from most Bowie fans’ song lists. There was most definitely a reason for this:
For those that had been around Bowie for a while, we had already heard it. He even brought back the opening solo.
But, it was still good. And, both are in my Top 20 Bowie tunes of all time.
Now, I’m pretty sick and tired of trying to figure out what on the ‘net is either public domain, limited copyright, or protected-from-any-viewing-at-all by copyright ( see NBC ). One that really takes the cake IMO is Bowie’s first official video for Space Oddity. If you try to view it on youtube, it’s copyprotected from US viewers. But, apparently it’s not copyprotected from the rest of the world. However, if you want to view it, embed it, or link it, you’re more than free to do so from MTV’s site:
So which is it? Is it copyprotected or not? Why is it OK for sub-Saharan peeps to watch it but not for US peeps? Go figure that one. And, since I try to a very small degree to respect SOME copyrights that don’t gestapo something to obscurity by promoting a product they won’t, I’ll just stick with the MTV link until I assume the copyright gestapo decides it’s better for us to watch it than it would be for them protecting themselves from actually making some money by selling the song to people not familiar with this very old stuff.
In my RSS feed this morning I was thrilled to see that David Bowie is still being quoted for some of his rather quotable stuff from the past. This one made a site called “Have U Heard?”
“You can neither win nor lose if you don’t run the race.” – David Bowie
OK, before true Bowie fans get too worked up trying to remember which song that came from, it didn’t. That’s actually a Richard Butler quote from his days with the Psychedelic Furs
There’s an army on the dance floor, It’s a fashion with a gun my love
In a room without a door a kiss is not enough inLove my way, It’s a new road
I follow where my mind goesThey’d put us on a railroad
They’d dearly make us pay
For laughing in their faces, and making it our way
There’s emptiness behind their eyes, there’s dust in all their hearts
They just want to steal us all and take us all apart
But not inLove my way, it’s a new road
I follow where my mind goesSwallow all your tears my love, And put on your new face
You can never win or lose If you don’t run the race
Now, this wouldn’t be so weird to me but I just did another post on mis-attributions a few days ago.
Apparently the new WordPress update is kinda harsh on the theme I”m using here. Bear with me while I update the theme to something more compatible.
In case anyone hasn’t noticed yet, I got banned from Youtube for posting the ‘Heroes’ 78 video. They not only deleted the video, they pretty much banished me forever from youtube. Over the next bit of time, I’ll be moving the references over to a service that has been a LOT more pleasant to deal with than Youtube. I’m not even going to try to appeal or whatever with Youtube. So, just bear with the videos for a little bit, they’ll be back. These people freaking out over obscure videos no one has seen for nearly thirty years and they won’t market or allow others to see is really getting on my nerves. I would have been more than happy to have acknowledged the copyright owners and point people to a source to buy their product. However, I had NO CLUE a performance broadcast free to the entire planet is supposed to be heavily protected property that no one is allowed to see. This attitude is killing the music industry, and they could care less.
Just a word for those lawyers visiting this site, when someone broadcasts something into MY home, it becomes MY property and I’ll do with it as I please. If I want to put what I saw on MY tv on MY computer, I’ll do it. If I want others to see what I saw on MY tv via MY compute, I’ll do it. I make no money from doing this and only want the world to enjoy what I have enjoyed for decades and remind artists that they all don’t have to be trash. It’s pretty dang hard to do that with the gestapo attitude of copyright lawyers. If the people who own the copyright to the ‘Heroes’ 78 broadcast had any God given sense in their heads at all, and this includes NBC as well, they’d realize that if it were not for people like me pushing these obscure videos that have been locked in vaults for decades, those obscure videos will become totally lost and forgotten and therefore their copywritten product will become 100% worthless. How many copywritten performances have already been completely forgotten? How many people were sitting around discussing David Bowie’s tv performance in 1978? This is absurd and ridiculous and yeah, I’m po’d.
