David Bowie Was Sound Track to My Growth From Child to Adult

David Bowie died today. He was 69 years of age. He leaves us with a massive music legacy where he mostly not just performed but wrote his own music, with classic hits spanning decades. Bowie created 27 studio albums of music (plus countless live and compilation albums). He released 111 singles. He entertained us with 51 music videos across 13 video albums. For me, Bowie happened to be relevant to many significant changes and evolution to my life, growing up, that his sound was the only consistent sound track to me growing up. I want to take note of those here. Some of my older readers may have lived through similar changes.

BOWIE CAREER

From David’s first released single, Liza Jane (as David Jones with the King Bees) in 1964 to his last relased while still alive, Lazarus last week, Bowie created fresh music for 52 years. But he also made hits. His first charting song in the UK was the Laughing Gnome in 1967 (peaked at number 6), and he still had a Top 10 hit in 2013 with Where Are We Now? (also peaked at number 6). He was not a one-hit wonder, Bowie was on the charts for literally 46 years. A pop star if there ever was, like Bowie was quoted early in his career "I am in instant star, just pour water."

If we say a hit song is one that charts into the Top 30, then Bowie had 47 hit songs in Britain in his career, essentially averaging one hit per year for his whole productive period. But Bowie was not the smash song creator. He only topped the charts ie with a number 1 hit in the UK only five times, the first time in 1969 with Space Oddity, and the last time in 1985 with Mick Jagger, with their duet cover version of Dancing in the Street. If you think thats a bit unfair, then Bowie’s last solo hit in his home country of the UK was two years prior, in 1983 with Lets Dance. Very prolific and lots of hits but rare superhits. Bowie tried hard to succeed in the USA and had hits there too, but only two number 1 hits, Fame in 1975 and Lets Dance in 1983.

Fame, what you like is in the limo
Fame, what you get is no tomorrow
Fame, what you need you have to borrow
Fame

What Bowie did which is far harder, was to also be successful with the hit album. From 1973’s Aladdin Sane (an album title I always loved because of the play on words, 'a lad insane' ie crazy boy - you know me, I love being mad) to 2013’s The Next Day, Bowie had six bestselling studio albums in the UK plus one of his compilation albums also topped the British charts. In the USA his albums didn’t do as well, his 1976 album Station to Station was his best peaking at number 3 on USA album charts. But its also fair to say, his most successful period where most of his best-known songs came from, was the time that he was on the top of the single charts, from 1969 to 1985. I was nine years at the start of that period and 25 years old at its end. He was the music artist who provided more of the soundtrack to me growing up than any other music artist. As an adult for me and my music tastes, Prince and Madonna have taken over and Madonna manages to continue to this day to have her hits feature among my musical faves. But Prince and Madonna came to my musical life after I turned 20. Bowie was there when I grew up from being a child to a young man. And now, that he died, I was looking back at Bowie’s discography and posted some Tweets about him. And I had forgotten how much Bowie was with me, and usually slightly ahead of me, where I evolved as a young man. So I want to take this moment to look back at how Bowie impacted me.

MY PRE-BOWIE YEARS

Bowie’s superstar status started when his 1969 song about the spaceman Major Tom lost in space, Space Oddity hit number one in the UK. Bowie released the song on the week man walked on the moon but the BBC refused to even play the song until the Apollo 11 crew was safely back on earth. I do remember watching the TV broadcasts about Apollo 11. Living in Finland, as a 9 year old, I had no idea who David Bowie was and never recall hearing that song until years later (I do like the song).

Though I'm past one hundred thousand miles
I'm feeling very still
And I think my spaceship knows which way to go
Tell my wife I love her very much, she knows

I started to appreciate ‘pop music’ or ‘rock music’ about at the age of 11. The first band I liked was British glamrock pop/rock band The Sweet, which was grouped with Bowie and other glamrock artists at the time, like T.Rex, Mott the Hoople, Slade, Alice Cooper, etc in that style of music. What I may have heard of Bowie never struck me as particularly noteworthy except that he apparently had a weird hairdo. Please remember in Finland at this time we had nearly no pop music on the radio, so it was very rare to even hear any pop or rock music, especially as a poor young teenager. The only way we could hear pop music was to go to the local bar and play the jukebox. Shall we play The Sweet Poppa Joe again, or maybe Wig Wam Bam? Maybe we’ll rather play Hot Butter’s instrumental, Popcorn instead or Mungo Jerry’s In The Summertime. For me this all changed in the summer of 1973, when my sister and I were sent to a horseriding camp in England (turns out, I am extremely allergic to horses and most animals, so the riding ended after the second day of continuous sneezing). That summer I got to hear the 24 hour pop music played on BBC. I felt this was heaven, this was ultimate nirvana. I was so envious of the British who could get all that on their radios, for free. And that summer I heard Bowie’s Life on Mars, and for the first time I grew to recognize this particular glamrock artist and knew of one song of his.

Take a look at the Lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man! Wonder if he'll ever know
He's in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?

Note, Life of Mars was not my fave song that summer, not even close. I liked Suzi Quatro’s 48 Crash and Nazareth’s Bad Bad Boy and Gary Glitter’s Leader of the Band much more than Bowie’s Life on Mars, but I also liked that Bowie song. But now, I wanted the chance to hear music ‘always’, in Finland, like they had it in Britain. So back home in Finland, I did some study of the weird and wonderful of radio, discovered Medium Wave AM radio broadcasts, which reach quite far, and on those wavelengths, I discovered Radio Luxembourg, which at the time was doing ‘pirate radio’ broadcasts into the UK, with DJ’s speaking English and playing British popsongs, all night. The sound was not in stereo, and it had some noise as AM radio often does, but I found a way to listen to pop music ‘for free’ and to record new pop songs, from a clone of British pop music radio, from Luxembourg. Radio Luxembourg broadcast the weekly Top 20 chart every Tuesday night and rebroadcast it on the next Sunday. So I also was now permanently exposed to the newest pop songs that would then arrive to Finland often months later. I would tape-record the songs to cassette, even with the lousy sound quality and hissing and whine of AM radio, I would learn the lyrics and know the pop tunes well before my friends in school even knew that artist had a new hit song out...(Radio Luxembourg would eventually become the media empire of RTL)

HOW I BECAME THE VIDIOT

I am probably the person who has collected music videos (pop music songs with dedicated video performances, not recordings of concerts) the longest of any person on the planet. I like to joke that I am so addicted to video that I am a vidiot. And yes, I far prefer the ‘artificial’ music video to any live performance of any band, ever. Yes I do. And I hate it if the artist has cut up the song with say talking in the middle of the video, or if they’d mixed in audience noise from some live event. I love music video as an artform and entertainment genre. So whats all this about ‘longer than any person’? Well, you can’t collect videos without a video recording technology. Before DVDs and YouTube videos, it was the VCR, the video cassette recorder. The most famous VCR standards were VHS and Betamax but the first consumer VCR was produced by then-world’s largest consumer electronics giant, Philips, on their VCR 1500 cassette system, which appeared in pre-sales promotional ‘semi prototype’ limited run in the autumn of 1973, when the first run of VCR units was 50, they were only on the European PAL broadcast standard(s) and Finland received two of those home VCR units. They were quite massive, heavy and extremely expensive. The VCR cost more than the largest, most expensive color TV that Philips made at that time. And you couldn’t buy one. Philips brought only two units to Finland to start the promotion of this tech to eventually sell, so it was brought to the various trade shows, and at other times was a highly popular object at Philips’s flagship store in mid-town Helsinki.

So my stepdad was the CEO of Philips’s Finland subsidiary. So he of course took the other of the two units to ‘test’ at home, to see if he approved of its sale to the Finnish market...  haha... so yeah, we had one of the only two home VCRs in Finland, from literally the world’s first production set of 50 units that all went to Philips main stores or the CEOs of the various Philips local affiliates in Europe and to several of the top execs at Philips HQ in Eindhoven in the Netherlands. But lets talk about the TAPES.

The video cassette tape was so expensive to make and so rare, that we only received 5 videocassettes in total to Finland. There were two lengths to the tape, one was 30 minutes, the other was 45 minutes in total length. Yes, there was no one-hour tape at the start. So you could not even record a one-hour episode of a TV show, far less a two-hour movie. There were literally only 5 video cassettes in Finland in September of 1973. And one 30 minute tape was in the store, and one 45 minute tape was in the store, for demo purposes. The other 3 tapes (two 45 min tapes and one 30 min tape) came to our home... :-)

The three tapes together were so valuable back then, that they cost more than the VCR. The price at that time was such, that for the cost of the VCR and the three tapes, you could have bought a good used car. It was incredible luxury for that period (anywhere). And one of the three tapes, in fact, one of the 45 minutes tapes, my parents decided to give to us kids, my 11 year old little sister and myself, at age 13. We could record anything we wanted to our tape, as long as we didn’t interfere with the tapes that had programs our parents had recorded. They thought we’d record cartoons (so did we). But then Bowie happened...

Sits like a man but he smiles like a reptile
She loves him, she loves him but just for a short while
She'll scratch in the sand, won't let go his hand
He says he's a beautician and sells you nutrition
And keeps all your dead hair for making up underwear
Poor little Greenie

In September 1973, Finnish broadcast TV decided to launch a youth-TV program, not kids program, but youth program, called ‘Iltatahti’ (Evening Star). Yes, a pop star TV show. The first edition of Iltatahti had two performances of music that we today would call ‘music videos’. At that time such word did not exist, they were called ‘film clips’, promotional short films that some musicians had started to produce, to help promote sell their music. That first episode had two famous international rock artists doing one song each. David Bowie did The Jean Genie and Alice Cooper did Under My Wheels. And I was sitting at the VCR, like I did for the nightly Radio Luxembourg pop music broadcasts, knowing, start to record the moment the song starts, don’t wait to determine if the song is good. You don’t want to miss the beginning, if its a good song. If its a bad song, you can rewind and record the next song over that one... So we also caught both songs essentially from their very beginning. And to see what it was, let me show you the link to YouTube videos of those songs:




David Bowie early music video of The Jean Genie



Alice Cooper early music video of Under My Wheels

Note that while Finnish broadcasts were already upgraded to color at this time, the youth programming was considered of such low value, the music show was broadcast in black-and-white, so those two above videos, when I recorded the, as the first two music videos ever recorded by a consumer into a music video collection, they were broadcast - and thus also recorded - as black-and-white versions. So if your video player or laptop can adjust the colors so that the above videos become black-and-white, thats how they were seen in Finland on Iltatahti TV show, and saved onto our pop music videotape. And funny coincidence relating to The Jean Genie and my then-fave band, The Sweet. Many thought The Sweet's hit Blockbuster, was plagiarizing Bowie's song (Sweet's hit was at number 1 while the slightly older Jean Genie was still on the same chart at number 10) but both sides accepted the guitar riff was pure coincidence and there was no lawsuit (I liked both songs..)

Now, I cannot imagine really anyone else, in any of the other Philips CEO families in other countries at that time, giving tapes to their kids, who would then use that incredibly expensive and rare media format, to save something as frivolous as ‘music videos’ haha. I do not know for a fact that I was the world’s first collector of music videos, but its highly likely that I was. The third song to that tape was from the second Iltatahti episode the next month, and it was Suzi Quatro doing Can the Can. The next TV show to produce pop music content also for our tape beyond the monthly Iltatahti was the next broadcast of the Eurovision Song Contest, which in 1974 featured a particularly iconic music video artist in its international TV debut, Abba, doing Waterloo, which was also the first time we had any pop artist recorded in color to our collection. And the rival TV station in Finland would then launch a music video show of its own, called Levyraati which would give us even more music video content. I don’t need to tell you, our VCR and that tape, was the highlight of any kids visiting our home, and after any new song being seen by our friends, they’d call us and ask, did we record it, can they come over to watch it.. Our home in the Westend of the suburbs around Helsinki (technically in the municipality of Espoo) was the place of the awesome music video colletion, and the best parties...

From 1973 till today, I have continuously collected music in ‘music video’ format, in addition to other formats like LP records, C-Cassettes, and later CDs, MP3s etc. Still today I carry on my smartphones a collection of music videos. I still like the music and artform format. I would later also turn this into a semi-professional endeavour, evolving my DJ gigs to eventually mixed DJ and VJ (Video Jockey) gigs, where I also played dance music videos, mixed in with songs from record/CDs. The last time I DJ’s with videos was in 1997 at the age of 37. But it started with David Bowie’s The Jean Genie in 1973. For 43 years I have collected music videos. Bowie’s was the first in my collection, probably the first of any consumer who ever collected music videos as a hobby.

And Bowie clearly invested in this new artistic opportunity. He put a lot of effort into his early videos, when most artists tried to recreate a ‘concert-like’ feeling to their videos. There is no real ‘inventor’ of the music video, as one artist who started it. By the time MTV launched with their famous first video (The Bugles doing Video Killed the Radio Star) the format already existed. But I, as a serious music video collector haha, would say the three early pioneers of roughly as much contribution to the young artform were Bowie, Abba and Queen. By the time Duran Duran came along and somewhat took the experience to new levels, the basic idea was invented, that you don’t try to pretend to perform on stage, and you should not just be lipsynching the whole song pretending to play your guitar, you can act various short stories within the music video format like little 3 minute movies. And you can see the clear difference in the above two clips, how much Alice Cooper is just on the stage, but Bowie took the camera also to the street doing his little hand gestures and tomfoolery with the camera not just singing. By the time MTV was looking for greatest music videos ever made, several Bowie videos were always ranked highly, with his 1980 video for Ashes to Ashes considered one of the greatest of that era.

Do you remember a guy that's been
In such an early song
I've heard a rumour from Ground Control
Oh no, don't say it's true

They got a message from the Action Man
"I'm happy. Hope you're happy, too.
I've loved. All I've needed: love.
Sordid details following."

So then when videotapes got a lot cheaper (and I had moved on to VHS) in 1983 I decided it was time to expand my collection of just collecting (many tapes of) music videos and I decided I needed to create the 'ultimate best music videos' tape, to show random visitors, and not necessarily dance-related music vids. The first song I recorded to that tape was.. Ashes to Ashes. Duran Duran's Hungry Like the Wolf came next. So these were now the first time I invested videotape to have DUPLICATES of some of the 'absolute best' videos and yes, David deserved his place to start that collection too.

FIRST ALBUM

(I always laughed to myself singing that line, 'I'm heavy, hope you're heavy too') So Bowie launched me to a bizarre new hobby nobody else had, or ok, he happened to be the first artist featured in that first TV show broadcast in Finland when we just had received the brand new VCR and I had barely learned how to operate it (BTW it had no remote control, you had to sit next to the VCR to press the heavy buttons to start the machine or stop it. There was no pause in the first Philips VCR unit). And then I immediately also experienced that powerful reaction so many early ‘victims’ of music videos had, you had to go listen to the artist, the album(s) and buy the music. I would now go to the record stores and listen to music albums including several by Bowie and Alice Cooper etc. Then as a very broke 14 year old, I would save money in 1974 to buy my first album, the freshly released Diamond Dogs by David Bowie. Note, Bowie was even at this time not my favorite artist. It was still The Sweet. But Bowie’s ALBUMS were far better in total, than those by The Sweet who were only good at making a hit pop single and then did crappy albums (of which I later bought several, regardless, in fact The Sweet’s Desolation Boulevard was my second album I bought but I ended up buying many more Bowie albums). So Bowie was again there, when I started my music collection also as a paid hobby.




(cover art of Diamond Dogs)

 

The Halloween Jack is a real cool cat
And he lives on top of Manhattan Chase
The elevator's broke, so he slides down a rope
Onto the street below, oh Tarzie, go man go

I loved the prologue to the title song Diamond Dogs, itself a great tune, and the album has many great tracks. Rebel Rebel is my favorite track from Diamond Dogs. The title to the song Rebel Rebel in very many ways captures me as a teenager (and well into my adulthood)..

Hey babe, your hair's alright
Hey babe, let's go out tonight
You like me, and I like it all
We like dancing and we look divine

SCI FI FAN

I got early into reading Science Fiction, Arthur C Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinelein etc. As we did not see the full run of the original Star Trek on Finnish broadcast TV, when James Blish released his paperback books covering several Star Trek episodes per book, it was a kind of ‘printed book video collection’ of the TV show and I devoured those too. It felt funny seeing rerunds of original Star Trek when I know I have never seen this episode, but I remember how it ends...

There's a starman waiting in the sky
He'd like to come and meet us
But he thinks he'd blow our minds

So what do most popstars sing about? Love this and love that. Lost love here and passionate love there. But what did Bowie sing about? The Starman, or about Major Tom in Space Oddity, or asking is there Life on Mars? Or telling us about post-apocalyptic nuclear holocaust worlds in Diamond Dogs, where "fleas the size of rats, sucked on rats the size of cats..". Bowie told us stories, stories about space and fantasy. Marc Bolan also sang weird songs of fantasy (his band, T.Rex, early had the same producer as Bowie, Tony Visconti, hence perhaps a similarity to the sounds of both bands early on, plus Bowie and Bolan were at least friends, some rumors said they were gay lovers for a while) but Bolan’s songs were weird, to the level of being severely stoned for them to make any sense. But Bowie’s songs were stories we could understand. Stories about space, before anyone had seen the first movie about Star Wars and suddenly space stories were cool.

BETRAYAL

So I was really liking Bowie. He wasn’t my top star, by now I had switched from the glamrock band The Sweet to another glamrock artist, T.Rex (with frontman Marc Bolan) but hadn’t abandoned The Sweet and Bowie was always in the mix. Then he did his first major pivot in his various style changes, when he abandoned the starman ‘Ziggy Stardust’ image with the red hair, and shifted to the dance music direction. What later would be called ‘disco’ and for a while seemed like every rock band had to do, from Queen (Radio Gaga) to ZZ Top (Sharp Dressed Man). But Bowie was just about the first major rock artist to make that pivot, and developed a rock-dance fusion sound, which started in 1975 with Young Americans. Then he released Fame, and Golden Years, all in that dance music ‘disco’ type of sound. Soul music sung by a white middle-aged English guy who didn’t even know how to dance. For me at that time, it felt like total betrayal.

Some of these days, and it won't be long
Gonna drive back down
where you once belonged
In the back of a dream car
twenty foot long

Funny story. Bowie’s tour came to perform in Helsinki. I had seen the others of similar glam rock era artists who did Helsinki like The Sweet, Suzi Quatro, Gary Glitter, Mud etc, but when Bowie came, because of that ‘betrayal’ in his new music style, I decided to boycott that concert. There! That’ll learn him! My classmates all went, and they told me I should have come, because (of course) Bowie played all his big hits, not just the new stuff, and I would have loved it. Yeah... we don’t regret what we tried, we regret what we decided not to do.. I shoulda gone :-)

JUST AHEAD OF MY TIME

But remember, I am 15 years old at this time, just getting into the dating thing, at very early stages, not knowing what really is what. And I of course had zero idea what it is that women want... So in our class, at that time, we had two American girls, Vicky Coopwood and Jackie Clement. Both were very good dancers. And as a peculiar ‘lets be nice to the Finnish boys’ kind of gesture, one class party we had, the two girls decided, they’ll teach all the boys of our class to dance. And they assured us, girls like boys who know how to dance. (young impressionable teenage boys... very easy to convince with that argument haha). So they taught us all, a couple of dance moves that were easy and these were taught.. to soul music. We did KC and the Sunshine Band’s Thats the Way (I Like It) and Van McCoy’s The Hustle and Hues Corporations Rock the Boat etc (oh, and that horrible Kung Fu Fighting by Karl Douglas). Now..... shortly AFTER the Bowie concert, I ‘discovered’ the ‘magic’ of dance music.. how it REALLY did work, with the women. They did like a guy who can dance. And my life changed.

I am a D.J., I am what I play
I got believers (kiss-kiss)
Believing me

About this time punkrock appeared as a musical response to the over-produced Abbaesque sound of pop and dance music. And I liked many punk bands and songs, and would play some when DJ’ing but I had moved on from traditional hard rock type rockmusic to my new interest - soul music (and what soon was to be called ‘disco’ music). Now my fave bands became artists like Hot Chocolate, Silver Convention, Baccara and Chic. And now.. a year or more after Young Americans, Fame and Golden Years, the Bowie disco songs were actually VERY GOOD indeed. That I would often play, as well as his newer dance stuff like TVC-15, Sound and Vision, Boys Keep Swinging and DJ. Again, Bowie was not my fave dance artist, but he created much great dance music, alongside others who specialized in that area. None of my youth’s fave bands managed this transition. Queen came a bit later, and is the only other one of the early pop/rock bands who did good dance music too, after they made their pivot. Bowie did, however, shine a light into a direction I was determined never ever to follow. And after some encouragement by some young women, I soon rushed to that path in my musical evolution. Bowie went there first. I never thought I would, but I did follow. And I love those songs of his now just as much as his earlier stuff.

FROM ENGLAND TO USA

Another interest very strong with Bowie, but not by any means unique to him, was the desire to succeed in the USA, obviously a far larger market. John Lennon moved to New York. Paul McCartney and his Wings did a massive USA tour just to break there. So this was not unique but not all British artists obsess about it. Bowie did want to. And he even wrote songs to work that way, like Young Americans. At this time I felt that the best pop music came from England and American bands (like say Yes, Eagles, etc) were far worse than British bands. That wouldn’t change until I fell in love with dance music, then I soon found the massive collections of Motown music and the more modern American dance music (such as Prince and Madonna) and then from 1979, the new concept of rap music. But when I grew up in the 1970s, I did feel that Britain and London was a kind of utopia for a teenager, because of the best music was made there (all my fave glamrock bands) and they had it for free on the radio. A similar epiphany happened to me then in 1979 when I visited a relative in the USA, and suddenly discovered the ‘black music’ stations that played DANCE music 24 hours a day. I found artsist like the Gap Band and Shalamar and SOS Band and Midnight Star and Rick James who were far better than the occasional Europop disco bands I had been listening to like gosh, Boney M.

You ain't a pimp and you ain't a hustler
A pimp's got a Cadi and a lady got a Chrysler
Black's got respect, and white's got his soul train
Mama's got cramps, and look at your hands ache

So in 1979 I shifted the definition of utopia in my mind, from being London and Britpop music to being New York and ‘black’ dance music (soon to include rap, hiphop and house music too). This was a major reason why I never considered going to study at University in the UK, but had to go to study in the USA. Now, who was the guide to this transition for me, who first showed the way, that no, its not England, for all thats great about it, the musical nirvana is.. the USA, and its dance music heritage? David Bowie of course.

There's a brand new talk, but it's not very clear
That people from good homes are talking this year
it's loud and tasteless and I've heard it before
You shout it while you're dancing on the ole dance floor

At this time Bowie was doing some of what I consider his very best work such as Fashion, Lets Dance, China Girl and Blue Jean. And again, true to Bowie, his videos were also always excellent. At this time I would definitely rank Prince as my fave artist but Bowie kept doing great work and his songs were often among my faves while never the best song of that moment. And most of his songs were incredibly dancable too (perhaps most glaring exception is the utterly undancable Modern Love that the video tries desperately to peddle as a dance tune, illustrating once again that Bowie was a white British dude, not a black guy, so he could not know HOW to dance, even if he liked the style of music).

Then we arrive to the end of the 1980s, I got my MBA and I went to work. The time of youth was over, my student years were done, and also Bowie’s place on the top of charts came to an end. He still made many good songs, but nothing that really touched me that much. And it does now, looking back at my life, really touch on several of the main influences to my life, changes to my life, moments in my life, that Bowie was there, or led the way. My first album. The first music video I recorded. Then the shifts from rock music to dance music and the shift from considering London the ultimate place to live, to considering it to be New York instead.

I don’t think Bowie actually propelled me to where I ended up going. He was just a musical muse who went into that direction before me, that I ended up following. Now as I look back at my life, I can see the Bowie soundtrack was the only one who was with me from a young teen 13 year old, all the way past puberty, early girlfriends, dating, dancing, moving to America and college years, till I ‘grew up’ and as an adult, started to work. Bowie is the only musical constant through those though changes and yet songs as different as 1984 (from 1973) is from China Girl (of 1983).

She could've been a killer
if she didn't walk the way she do,
and she do
She opened strange doors
that we'd never close again
She began to wail jealousies scream
Waiting at the light know what I mean
Scary monsters, super creeps
Keep me running, running scared

MUSICAL MEMORIES

And now I’m thinking of Bowie. What a massive catalog of music. So many memories. What were my absolute faves? I mentioned several already. The Jean Genie is a great one. Under Pressure (with Queen) and Cat People (Putting out Fires with Gasoline) are great. Lets Dance was massive. I really liked the Little Drummer Boy as perhaps my all-time fave Christmas song, so of course its the only classic Christmas Song that Bowie would do (as a wonderful duet with Bing Cosby just before he died). Dancing in the Street (with Mick Jagger) is a rare case where the remake is better than the original.

Hey man, Henry, don't be unkind, go away
Hey man, I can't take you this time, no way
Hey man, droogie don't crash here
There's only room for one and here she comes
Here she comes

I have to mention the awesome Scary Monsters and Super Creeps. Just a great great Bowie tune often forgotten. Ashes to Ashes I would rank as his best music video but if you wanted to see a Bowie Video not often seen thats truly excellent, I would rather show you Fashion. Of songs for which there is a music video, I would pick Rebel Rebel as the best (even as its video is crappy, very early nerdy-tech video gimmickry and boring as a video but that was made 8 years before MTV went on the air). But of all of his songs, what would most get me into a super mood, just the best of his many awesome songs. Its Suffragette City for which he never made an official video and the live versions are lame. Here is the link to sound-only version of Suffragette City total David Bowie classic from 1976, from his album ChangesOne. It doesn’t get better than this.

Comments

[steve epstein]

changes was a great song...
It was the theme for my 9th grade graduation speech in 1975.

also Let's Dance was the key discovery for stevie ray vaughn...
even if Bowie fake guitar'd in the video
cheers...
steve

[Wayne Brady]

Great personal take. You must be a tad older than me (1965). I was never a Bowie fan outside his American hit singles, Loved Abba, and UK music was awesome. We Americans are it up...the whole British Invasion that started with The Beatles.

There was a lot of great American music before disco. Elvis of course. Motown (Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, The Jackson 5 to name a few). There were the Beach Boys and CCR, Simin and Garfunkle, Billy Joel, Carpenters, Carol King, Dan Fogelberg, Foreigner, Boston, America, Bread, Jim Croce. And no, these are all from memory. I'm not looking at any charts.

;)

David Bowie was an original. May he RIP

[cornelius]

@Tomi
I don't know which Yes you are talking about but Yes was a British band. Not only its members are British (I am talking about Steve Howe, Jon Anderson, Bill Bruford and Rick Wakeman, I don't know about other less important members) but their music is also very British (I am talking about albums like "Fragile", "Close to the Edge" and "Relayer", other less important albums can be safely discarded).
But you are right, British bands in general are so much better than American bands. The main difference is that British bands are trailblazers, they showed the way, they said: "This is the way" and others followed. I am talking about Beatles, Yes, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Judas Priest, Sex Pistols, King Crimson. Of course there are a few American exceptions like Jimi Hendrix and Elvis, but even Jimi Hendrix was a completely unknown blues guitar player in USA until Chas Chandler of Animals took him to Great Britain where he became famous. So Jimi Hendrix raised to fame in Europe.
I agree that in general rock bands tend to release a few good albums and then they start being more and more commercial, softer and more disco which is a real shame. I guess when your inspiration is gone, then you play disco music. Very few bands managed to keep the quality up. David Bowie is *NOT* one of them (unlike for example Beatles, Judas Priest).
I have also boycotted David Bowie exactly because his music became too soft, too easy. I have never learned to dance and I never liked to dance and I always thought music is for listening, and when you dance, you focus on the rhythm only and you ignore the rest of the song.

[cornelius]

I should have mentioned a few other great
British bands: Free, Ten Years After
and American bands: CCR, Janis Joplin and Stevie Ray Vaughan
But in general the great American rock bands have their roots in blues.
Note: When I mention Janis Joplin as a band I mean Big Brother and the Holding Company, Kozmic Blues Band and all that. Same for the others like SRV and The Double Trouble.

[Wayne Borean]

Tomi,

Ever seen the TV show Life on Mars? I'm talking the original BBC series, not the shoddy American knock off.

http://youtu.be/HX_LEQhA4BE

and then there is Ashes to Ashes, set about ten years later

http://youtu.be/Kk0ioIvpjb4

Both of which star the 'Gene Genie' and yes, that is the correct spelling..

[Wayne Borean]

I went to small schools for grades 1 to 6, all of which were modified one room school houses (the largest has five classrooms, the smallest two). Grades 7 and 8 were in slightly larger schools, and then came high school. Which was huge by my standards, we had 1,300 kids!

While it was still very much a 'small town' school, the townies were far more sophisticated than we were. Most of us had no idea what a 'faggot' was. We thought it as a piece of wood.

So when I said I liked David Bowie, I was told I was a faggot. I was really puzzled. Why did they think I was a piece of wood?

Yes, Canada in the early seventies was wildly homophobic. It took me a while to live that down, though the drooling I did whenever a pretty girl in a mini-skirt walked by convinced them.

[Wayne Borean]

Last comment, I promise.

Bowie was one of the greatest artists of the late 20th Century. As a big fan of NASA and the space effort, his Space series really caught my attention. The man was a fantastic song writer and performer.

It's too bad he went so young.