The Lost Highway: David Bowie - The Best of Bowie
Posted by Mary Markham on 07.27.2006
my momma said to get things done you better not mess with major tom
I know I haven't written a column in months, it seems and I really have no excuse. So here is my feeble attempt to get back into the writing game and the good graces of my readers.
Listening to David Bowie has always been a liberating and artistic gift for me. He truly is an earth shattering entity whose talents are legendary. "Heroes" alone would be a groundbreaking accomplishment for any musician, so imagine a decade of albums that changed the way we comprehend music and it's ability to morph and manipulate a sound that would become familiar for future generations.
Bowie's unabashed openness in the 70's gave the world something unusual and original. Albums like "Space Oddity", "Low", "Aladdin Sane", "Hunky Dory", "Diamond Dogs", "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars", "Station to Station", "Lodger", "The Man Who Sold the World" and "Heroes".
Accomplishments that far outweighed their success. Each album telling a different story accompanied by a new and unique sound. Not many musicians can compete with that. Maybe a slew of great albums but not the chameleon like sound that Bowie produced. Everything from dirty bluesy rock to operatic, theatrical epics to heart tugging chord changes that is specific to his sound. His innate almost otherworldly sixth sense of pop culture the way he creates it in his own soul is unnerving. To put it quite simply: Bowie changed the music world forever. It has never been the same since. His web of magical, sometime apocalyptic sounds in the 70's has paved the way for many other amateurs who tried to emulate him. "Five Years" is 34 years old and STILL makes me sob from the deepest corners of my heart. That is the signature of a prodigy.
So it is in your best interest Bowie fans to rent The Best of Bowie. It's a 2 set DVD of performances that span a good deal of his career in the seventies and eighties. I am only writing about the first disc which consists of many different performances. A few full length BBC studio recordings that is brilliant. It's almost eerie how tight and perfect the songs are. Not a flawed performance from any of the players. Bowie's bizarre vocal range and changes in tone are what sets him apart from the rest. The musical romance between Ronson and Bowie is a driving tour de force. The Mick and Keith of their own time. It was a sad day when they parted ways. Bowie's ambitious understanding of his talent is subtle and powerful. His involvement in different instruments makes him even more honest as a genius. Feminine in his looks, there is nothing but a ballsy rock star inside. There are great little gems, such as Mick Rock's strange videos for "John I'm Only Dancing" and "Life on Mars". The minimalist white background with just Bowie in that fabulous suit is vision before it's time. The white background shows up again in "Be My Wife" with a much more serious, low key Bowie and his guitar. These were the years of him living in Berlin and trying to get clean. Cocaine had become his "main man" evident in the "Young Americans" performance on the Dick Cavett show. Bowie is unnaturally thin and his voice is shot. By the time we get to the video for "Heroes" we have a stripped down solitary Bowie. No makeup, gimmicks, or outlandish fashions. Just a gold cross around his neck. Overtones of Germany's influence on him perhaps. Then a new energized Bowie in "Boys Keep Swinging" and "DJ". And of course the groundbreaking video for "Ashes to Ashes". Understand MTV generation this was before the launch of the music video explosion and before MTV had even aired. The video did get heavy rotation when MTV first started. The rest of the first disc is just videos from "Let's Dance" and "Scary Monsters" stuff from the Serious Moonlight tour. This is when I lose interest. Bowie loses his edge as the eighties get into full swing. But I will always forgive him his mistakes quite simply because of what he did for music in the 70's.
Bowie's iconic and edgy style made him a pinup star for the girls whose music was rockin' enough for their boyfriends to appreciate. He slipped in and out of androgyny with ease. Leading the pack of a bevy of glitter boys such as Marc Bolan, David Johansen, Gary Glitter, Freddie Mercury, Elton John, Bryan Ferry and Eno and of course Mick Jagger. The 70's was rife with ideas, fashion and musicians that weren't afraid to flaunt it. The important thing to remember is that they had the chops to back it up. A 10 year vortex of imaginative creativity that has never been seen again. Bowie's willingness to share his vision, manipulative though it may have been invited those he admired or was fascinated by to willingly collaborate. This openness to others ideas and contributions is a big part of his longevity.
"And no one will have seen and no one will confess. The fingerprints will prove that you coudn't pass the test. There'll be others on the line filing past, who'll whisper low I miss you he really had to go well each to his own, he was another piece of teenage wildlife"
