And so new year, new edition (or episode, look you see) of Random Bowie. Well, as confessed earlier, an increasingly less random thing, for the end is near. Just the three officially (or unofficially too) recognised releases to go. This particular one might benefit from being called How It Started, for it goes all the way back to the first album, at least as per the commonly agreed method of counting them.
With that, a confession - I have never, ever owned this debut album, David Bowie, in its standard released format. Something of a surprise, perhaps, but I have never seen the point of the expense. As shall be explored here, all of the songs what form the album are available across numerous compilations and cash ins.
Such confessions are, I suppose, a tradition for this first day of a new year. I have always been of a mind that so-called "New Year's Resolutions" are nothing more than "New Year Confessions", for whatever it is you have resolved to do or stop doing is a confession of something lacking in your life, no? Well, anyhow, if someone out there somewhere wants to gift me the David Bowie album proper at some stage, I would be delighted to accept it. For now, however, I get along just fine with all the tracks (and more) spread over a couple of discs. About four or so, I believe.
Of all the myths and legends in the world of rock and roll, please let the one of exactly why David Bowie became a musician be true. According to the legend, David's heart, mind, talents, aspirations, dreams and ambitions were all focused on being an actor. Right up until the point at which Hermione Farthingale broke his heart. It is apparently at that point he elected to turn his back on "her" profession, that of acting, and concentrate on music.
How plausible is it that the above is true? Quite. As Bowie confirmed in VH1 Storytellers, peculiar reactions were not out of the question. This is a chap who, assuming the music direction decision is true, would also go on to shave off his eyebrows in response to Mott The Hoople rejecting his offer of the song Drive In Saturday.
Anyway, to the music. Let's skip the 1965 "Davy Jones and the Lower Third" business, for actually I might not have them songs. But I do have a CD called 1966, now credited to David Bowie but at the time it was all credited to David Bowie and the Lower Third.
Is the CD, are the six songs on it, any good? Well, they are not bad as such. Mostly I would say it's 15 minutes of "not quite top division, but far from lower division" standard 60s pop stuff, with the one exception. That exception would be Can't Help Thinking About Me. It's a really good song in its own right, but would seem to have extra special significance in the wider context of the works of Bowie.
First off, he himself, as in David Bowie, clearly thought fondly of it. Not only did he perform it as part of his VH1 Storytellers set, he also included it in the Nothing Has Changed compilation. There are plenty of clues in the lyrics as to why this one might have stood out. A few themes that would recur throughout his career - time, guilt, solitude, remorse and questions of faith - get a look in during this less than three minute song. He also references someone calling his name and having a conversation - something I think only ever happened again on a song once more, Teenage Wildlife off of Scary Monsters.
On to the music that would form the album David Bowie, then, the so-called "Decca" recordings, called such probably because they were recorded by Decca and released on the Deram record label. Yes, the record label that famously rejected The Beatles, and so signed absolutely everyone else thereafter for fear of missing out on something quite so lucrative. And, you would have to say, that worked out well for them, since they signed The Rolling Stones.
How best to describe the music of David Bowie on David Bowie and the era recordings? To my mind, "trippy hippy" works very well indeed. If I were to use (admittedly at the time far more successful) contemporaries and peers as a description, virtually all of the songs seem influenced by the narrative lyrical style of The Kinks and Small Faces, with the musical sound being a breezier version of the psychedelia being brought to the world by Pink Floyd and Cream. Add a dose of whimsical Donovan to that, and there you have the sound.
This may seem like a cliche, but the one song more or less exempt from the above is Space Oddity. Yes, here in its original format it very much has a "trippy hippy" sound. It's easy to say this in retrospect, knowing what happens next, but it does stand out as different from the rest of the material. Not necessarily better or worse, just entirely "different" in content lyric and style.
Indeed, ha ha ha, hee hee hee, it would be wrong of me not to mention that The Laughing Gnome is of course included in these records. Was this a desperate shot at fame with a novelty record, or did it reflect what would become David's renowned ahead of his time thinking in understanding that children's records, books, etc all tend to have a very long shelf life? In either case or any other, the song isn't one I play often, but it is fun. No way is it as "cringe-worthy" or "embarrassing" as some have dismissed it. The word they are looking for is "fun".
For all you fans of throwaway trivia, it was of course around the time of the 1990 (ish) SoundAndVision "Greatest Hits" shenanigans that Bowie's The Laughing Gnome came back into public consciousness. No, not at the behest of David himself. When promoting his "greatest hits" concert, Bowie set up something which came to be known as the "dial a Dave fave" telephone line in each country where he was to perform. The idea was that the fans phoned in and voted for songs they wanted on the set, with the winning songs (presumably those with the most votes) would be performed, ostensibly as an encore. NME, or if you will NME, wasted no time at all in setting up a rival voting system, encouraging people to phone their special number so as to prompt David to perform The Laughing Gnome as part of the UK leg of the tour. I seem to recall that the NME claimed they got "a lot" of support. As for what Bowie made of it, there were reports that he was either "amused" or "quite cross" by it all. It is entirely likely that his reaction was both of them, and then a few things in between.
My favourite song from this era is When I'm Five, which for some reason had a promotional film made for it, despite not featuring on the David Bowie album, or being released as a single. Go figure. There are a number of reasons why I like this one. The grandiose production values for a start. And, to be sure, that it is a first indication of the singing style to come - very much David Bowie, but Bowie "channelling" a character, in this instance the four year old narrator. Much of the other material from this time has Bowie sounding like he is trying to sound "a bit" like the likes of Ray Davies, Steve Marriott and indeed Donovan.
Lyrically it's a treasure trove. Evocative and provocative images are abound. Like, for instance, the "magazines in Mummy's draw", an image he, you could argue, conjured up again with the mischievous "pictures on my hard drive" lyric in The Loneliest Guy. The frequent Daddy references are also quite an untold story told in the plain sight of this song. My favourite line, however, has to be "I saw a photograph of Jesus and asked him if he'd make me five", a line repeated presumably for David to see if anyone was listening properly and picked up on the fact that such a photo existing might be rather unlikely......
Beyond the songs highlighted above, are there any lost gems lurking on either the David Bowie album or any of the associated recordings? Not particularly, in truth. And yet just about all of the songs provide decent, easy on the ear listening. It all sounds pretty similar to the vast quantities of easy beat, swing tunes produced (churned out?) in the 60s, with record labels and aspiring bands alike all hoping to hit the big time. Yes, back then people went and bought records, with real coins of money. Quite a sustainable business model it was too, for a little while.
A trick with the similar sound to what was going on at the time was that these recordings became, to a degree, anonymous. This debut album - and the general consensus is that the label hastily cobbled together what recordings they had rather than it being a thought out album structure - didn't sell particularly well on release. But, you never know - of those who bought it, maybe one or two clocked that this David Bowie guy was the future; that what they heard was enough for them to know he would go on to be one of the greatest and most important artists of the next decade, if not for most of the last half of the 20th Century and a little bit of the 21st.
There is, then, no way I would come along and say "oh, you can see the genius in these early recordings, you just knew he would go on to greatness" on the basis of the David Bowie recordings, not even knowing what we know now. Which prompts a kind of interesting question. Just what if the USA and USSR didn't get all excited about a "space race"? Had there been no superpower race to the Moon, and subsequently no Moon landing for which the BBC elected to use a song called Space Oddity on their coverage and broadcasts, would we still have had the David Bowie we know of today? Probably not, no, in truth. Perhaps in some parallel universe where no Moon landing took place every now and then Love You Til Tuesday or When I Live My Dream gets a spin on a radio station, introduced as a "hidden gem" from the 60s, recorded by an obscure and strangely named London lad called David Bowie. I am then quite happy to be living our version of the universe, then, where he is much better known. Formidably so.
So, all things considered, are these pre-Space Oddity (album) songs and recordings worth the time of you, the casual Bowie fan, or you, the music fan? Well, kind of. Overall they are decent quality songs, if not masterpieces. Curiously, they would be most splendid for anyone who doesn't really care for Bowie's better known work, but happens to be quite the admirer of any of the 60s acts I have mentioned above as being clearly influential on the songs. No harm would befall anyone who selected to purchase these recordings and elected to play them. Least of this harm would be financial, for the sets - other than the album called David Bowie itself - usually go quite cheap.
Hey now, then, well, that's about that for this episode. Just the two more to come, then. After this there really is only one album I can go to next I suppose, at least for those reading all of this in the order I throw them out onto the internet. Or "net of inter", should that sound better.
My thanks as ever to those of you who take the time to come and read these posts, or drop by to have a look at the pictures.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment