Till Dawn: Top 10 Album Kutz

In the 38 years since Marc Bolan was killed in a car accident his influence has only grown wider. The glam rock stomp and style he perfected is everywhere. Whether it's via his own songs, which are used in movies and commercials several times a year, or in the sounds of new bands. There was even a pronounced T.Rex influence on the new Wilco album, Star Wars. In Rolling Stone, Jeff Tweedy owned it: "Some of those sounds reminded me of glam rock and T. Rex and things like that, which I love. I really adore that stuff, but I've never been androgynous enough to pull it off, you know, stylistically."

Even with all the exposure, Marc Bolan and T.Rex are known mainly as singles artists, especially in this country where you could easier get bipartisan collaboration in Washington than get classic rock radio to play anything other than Jeepster and Get It On. But over the course of the T.Rex phase of his career, the quality stuff was not confined to the jukebox. 

Here then is a list of some of my favorite album cuts from 1970-77. Hopefully you will be intrigued enough to further investigate the entire oeuvre of the man David Bowie called The Prettiest Star.

1. Diamond Meadows (T.Rex, 1970) - Starting with a little guitar noodle, this quickly evolves into a blissful miniature, with Tony Visconti's delightful strings supporting guitar, bass, and Bolan's sweet vocals. Let's do it like we're friends...

2. Rip Off (Electric Warrior, 1970) - Even elves get angry. The last track on Bolan's mega-breakthrough takes potshots at the 60's in surprisingly trenchant fashion: "Dancin' in the nude, feelin' such a dude, it's a rip off." But this is no chaotic catharsis - while the band works up a real head of steam, there's also sax, strings, suspended chords, and an elegiac ending. He knew it was over.

3. Rock On (The Slider, 1972) - This tight-as-hell little wonder could easily have been a single. Visconti's production couldn't be more perfect, with layers of keyboards underpinning Bolan's nasty riff, and signature Kaylan-Vollman backing vocals behind Marc's tough vocal. Bolan's bite-size guitar solo is a marvel. Rock on!

4. Left Hand Luke (Tanx, 1973) - A soul and gospel-drenched mini-epic to end what many think is the last classic T.Rex album. The way Bolan interacts with the backing singers is gorgeous and prefigures some of the things Bowie did on Young Americans. Also, he used the word "myxomatosis" (it's an "animal disease," apparently) 30 years before the Radiohead song.

5. Change (Zinc Alloy and the Hidden Riders of Tomorrow, 1974) - In Dandy In The Underworld, Bolan sang "change is a monster and changing is hard," but the mood is even darker on this brooding song: "Change is coming, you better run." Through the cocaine and brandy haze, a moment of quiet clarity.

6. The Avengers (Superbad) (Zinc Alloy and the Hidden Riders of Tomorrow, 1974) Bolan fell even further in love with funk in 74, and with soul singer Gloria Jones, whose outrageous vocals outdo Kaylan and Vollman. The album, Bolan's last with Visconti, is a bit cluttered, but it all comes together on this sly number.

7. Till Dawn (Bolan's Zip Gun, 1975) - This is really the one that got away. Marc updates 1950's milkshake romance to extravagant lengths. A swoon in song form that should have been a single. There are many alternate takes and they're all fantastic. 

8. Theme For A Dragon (Futuristic Dragon, 1976) - Marc should have been doing soundtracks but his devotion to pop-song form kept things concise. Shredding guitars, sweeping strings, audience noise, and a touch of disco make this a blast from start to finish in just over two minutes.

9. Casual Agent (Futuristic Dragon, 1976) - Frothy, fun, and still funky. It's addictive.

10. Hang-Ups (Dandy In The Underworld, 1977) Bolan gets earthy on this nifty shuffle from his last album. "Get off my back and leave me/Aw, shit, let's get it on," goes one self-reflexive lyric, while the chorus "I'm such a contradiction, I'm just hung-up," makes me think Bolan was becoming more self-aware and understanding his place in what came to be known as the "Me Decade." Somehow, I think he would have sorted out the 80's too.

David Bowie Is...In Chicago

When I fell for David Bowie back in 1981, I fell hard. While I had always prided myself somewhat on maintaining enough critical distance from musicians to avoid sheer fandom, Bowie fascinated me like no other artist and I went willingly down the rabbit hole of his career. The catalyst had been the casual purchase of the ChangesTwoBowie compilation as a holiday gift for my brother. I think it may have been only the second Bowie album in the house, believe it or not, with the other being Changes One.

Perhaps because it covered a longer period than the first collection, it gradually dawned on me how varied his work was. "All of these songs are so different," I remember thinking, " but they're all so good. What's going on here?" Game, set, match to Bowie as I began haunting my favorite used record stores for decent pressings of his catalog as the RCA "Nice Price" reissues used flimsy vinyl and indifferent color correction on the sleeves. In short order I had acquired them all and was busy absorbing song after song.

Interestingly, Bowie himself was basically absent from the world stage as I was losing myself in his past. The end of his RCA contract had coincided with the disastrous realization that he had essentially been turned into his own employee. Having almost nothing financially to show for creating one of the greatest multi-album runs in recorded history he had retreated to lick his wounds and plot his next steps. They turned out to be...dance steps. I stayed up late one night to hear the New York premiere of Let's Dance and it was instantly obvious that something had changed. It was a great song, fun to dance to, but the Nile Rodgers production gleamed just a bit too brightly and the seams in the songwriting were a little too obvious.

I didn't buy the album (it would be six years before I bought anything by him (I still stand by the first Tin Machine album, by the way!) but its success meant ubiquity for Bowie and I eagerly snatched up every magazine with him on the cover and paid a scalper $50, which felt like a fortune, to see him at Madison Square Garden on the Serious Moonlight tour. He was as astonishing a performer as I had hoped and I was thrilled when Stevie Ray Vaughn was replaced by Earl Slick, who was a connection, along with Carlos Alomar (ever-present on rhythm guitar) to the RCA years. How the heck was Vaughn going to play Heroes, anyway?

Many articles on Bowie start out remarking on how hard it can be to be a Bowie fan, what with his sometimes wayward career after Scary Monsters. But that's old news. Despite the 10 year hiatus between Reality and The Next Day, that makes three great albums in a row, with the latter being one of his strongest records period. And there seems to be more on the way: BBC 6 just premiered his new song, Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime), a striking collaboration with jazz composer Maria Schneider, that will appear on an upcoming retrospective, cleverly titled Nothing Has Changed.

All of this is to say that when it was announced that David Bowie Is, the comprehensive exhibition created by the Victoria and Albert Museum was touching down only in Chicago, I knew I had to get there. Thanks to my lovely and supportive wife, a plan was hatched to make a family trip of it and spend Columbus Day weekend in the Windy City. I knew I was in the right place when I took a random run near our hotel and came across a huge Aladdin Sane mural on the side of the museum. Above it was a sign: David Bowie Is Watching.

After a day of sightseeing on Saturday, we were among the first people at the Museum Of Contemporary Art on Sunday with our 10:00 AM timed tickets. The facade of the ultra-modern building hinted at the glories within, with another mural and Bowie's lyrics on the stairs to the entrance. When we told the greeter we were from New York, she said to our kids, "Wow. Do you know how cool your parents are right now?" I was beginning to really like this place! We checked our bags, ascended to the third floor and walked through the empty queue to pick up our headsets and enter the show.

Somewhere I had read that the average stay inside the exhibition was 90 minutes. I was in there for four hours, so deeply immersed it felt like mere minutes. Alongside the traditional vitrines and frames, the show uses cutting-edge display techniques like huge 3D shadow boxes with internal projections, which serve to bring various periods of his career to life. Also, wearing the headphones, which delivered content triggered by where you stood in each gallery, had the effect of putting Bowie in your head, spoken words and music colonizing your consciousness.
Bowie saved everything so each room contained more than one astonishing artifact, from the document that made his name change official, to his coke spoon from the Thin White Duke era, to the ring of keys from his years in Berlin. And that's not even mentioning the creative memoribilia - hand-written song lyrics, sketched out vocal arrangements, storyboards for an abandoned film called Hunger City, instruments from guitars to keyboards. Then there are the costumes, some for performance and others for street wear. Along with the evidence of his inspirations - Anthony Newley, Lindsay Kemp, Ballard and Burroughs, etc. - this all has the effect of connecting you deeply with his process. Then when you turn a corner and are confronted with his product, say the performance of Starman on Top of the Pops, the impact is enormous (my wife watched that one four or five times, marveling at the bromance between Bowie and guitarist Mick Ronson).

I'm not sure there has ever been a museum show that so explicitly lays out the path of an artist from preparation to experimentation to the creation of a new original. For Bowie, periods of research, drawing on seemingly disparate materials, are followed by an assembling of collaborators, often a familiar group with a wild card or two, and then working in the studio with lightning speed to capture a song before it ossifies. The way Bowie works is tailor-made for an exhibition like this and, having long found his methods instructive for the way an artist can operate, seeing it all in front of me was thrilling.

The rooms were laid out mostly chronologically, with strategic intrusions from other eras when it made artistic sense. You slowly realize that, even with his chameleonic ways, there are constants: the canny combination of abstraction and specificity in his lyrics, the draw of dance music, the clothing that reshapes his figure, the appeal of squalling guitars. He often stuck with collaborators like Ronson, Eno, Tony Visconti, or the designer Freddie Burretti, as long as possible, not casually casting people aside to get a quick infusion of new blood, and occasionally returning to people years later. One flaw in the show, although an understandable one, is that a neophyte could walk out thinking more about Bowie's extensive work with Alexander McQueen just because his name is on the wall, and have no idea who Mike Garson, Carlos Alomar, Dennis Davis and George Murray are, just to mention a few of the musicians who were crucial to many of his best records and performances.

Speaking of performances, throughout the show, there is the occasional throb of what almost sounds like a live concert, noticeable even while wearing the headphones. This makes you wonder what you're missing and pulls you through the galleries. I was able to resist the temptation to dash ahead and let myself get thoroughly absorbed in everything. I knew I was getting closer when I got to the room where a well-edited loop of Bowie's film and theater work was running and the throb got louder. From his first appearance in the 1967 short The Boy, he was perfect for the camera, magnetic and controlled. By the time of The Man Who Fell To Earth and The Elephant man, he had learned how to invest his seemingly natural charisma with pathos and had become a great actor. Unfortunately absent is his spectacular turn from Extras, singing Pathetic Little Fat Man to Ricky Gervais, which proved comedy was also in his grasp. Based on the evidence in this room, there probably is more he could do with his acting talents if he so chose.

Finally it was time to enter the room where the noise was coming from. This turned out to be a larger than life showcase of some representative performances which were projected on three walls. Some of these were heard through the headphones but others were blasted into the open air, almost replicating the collective experience of being at the show. There was a stonking take on Jean Genie with Mick Ronson playing to rule the world - I almost applauded when it ended - and three versions of Heroes playing at the same time. One was part of The Concert for New York City, which was put on in the wake of 9/11 to raise funds for the rescuers. Gradually everyone in the room gravitated to that wall, mesmerized by Bowie's obviously heartfelt performance.

As the camera panned over the audience, filled with police officers and firemen in uniform and their families, I couldn't help but be reminded of all the emotions surrounding the city in those terrible days. And then I thought about how remarkable it was that this artist extraordinaire, who made the world safe for freaks and outsiders of every stripe, was also able to provide succor and uplift with grace and generosity to people who really needed it. Just one more incredible moment in the life and work of the man born David Robert Haywood Jones, someone who has enriched my musical, creative and emotional life immeasurably. As I left the show to puruse the extensive gift shop, I was filled with a sense of gratitude for his work and for the dedication of the curators who gave me this opportunity to engage with it on an entirely new plane.

David Bowie Is will go down in history as one of the greatest museum shows of all time. If you can't get there, I highly recommend ordering the beautifully executed catalog, which features essays by Camille Paglia and Jon Savage, among others, along with a generous selection of photographs. When you get your copy, dial up either this career-spanning mix or the original track list of ChangesTwoBowie, put on your own headphones, and dive in to the world of David Bowie. May your time there be as rewarding as mine was.

Bowie: Where Is He Now?

When I was 16 I discovered both David Bowie and Burning Spear. I remember writing to a friend that Spear made me feel grounded, at one with the earth, while Bowie made me feel above it all, a god's-eye view, where troubles and joys had the same value. Spear lives in Queens now, not the loamy hills of Jamaica, but when I saw him in concert a few years ago I still got that rich, natural feeling. And how am I feeling now that Bowie is back? Pretty damned tall.

The story of The Next Day has been told in detail by so many publications that I don't feel the need to go into it here. I will say that I come down on the side that Bowie's comeback was, and continues to be, one of the most remarkable public relations coups of recent years. From the "cone of silence" over the recording sessions themselves, to his own continued silence ("He's letting us do all the work," as bassist and vocalist Gail Ann Dorsey put it), Bowie has proved that he is still a master manipulator of media. Remember, this is the man who created Ziggy, a superstar persona that resulted in actual superstardom, after about a decade of trying.

When the song and video Where Are We Now? burst into the consciousness of the world on his 66th birthday, some commented that Bowie looked and sounded frail. But it was instantly clear to me that he was still the actor, with every blink and swallow carefully enacted. Using only his attenuated face, Bowie gave as precise a performance as his legendary run on Broadway in The Elephant Man. The song itself was gorgeous and witty, a wry and romantic look back at Bowie's Berlin days. Nostalgic, yes, but far from cliched. Admit it: you never heard the word Dschungle in a song before, certainly not sung so casually. Produced by Tony Visconti, the sound was lush yet spare, a small ensemble masterfully employed.

Andre Bazin, the French film theorist, created the idea of doubling, where what we know of a film actor's real life informs their performance of a character that is not them. In Where Are We Now? Bowie makes use of this "Bazinian doubling" to lend depth to our experience of the song. He knows what we know about his time in Berlin and allows us to fill in blanks - but that doesnt mean that it is Bowie himself who is singing the song. Bowie is not a confessional songwriter, after all. The "old Bowie" persona in Where Are We Now? may be one of his canniest creations yet, one which gives us access to the emotions of the song rather than distancing us from them. Then the album arrived, with its brilliant cocked snook of a cover, and it was clear that Bowie would not be wallowing in his past but simply standing on it to get to a new place in his art.

The title track kicks the album off with a dry thwack, snarling guitars matched by Bowie's swaggering sneer. While it has a similar swing to Repetition from Lodger, The Next Day is driving and confident with phantasmagoric lyrics based in Bowie's medieval studies. It's an etching of an execution repurposed by The Starn Twins. Cleverly sung from the POV of the slain ruler, the line (by now much-quoted) "Here am I/Not quite dying'" savagely puts paid to the rumors of Bowie's ill health in true Bazinian fashion.

Dirty Boys, ugly and ungainly like its subjects, comes next and solidifies the sense that Bowie is fully engaged as an artist and unafraid to challenge himself. The spacious sound gives room for the three-guitar knife-fight of Gerry Leonard, Earl Slick and Visconti to compete for dominance. Aided and abetted by Steve Elson's baritone sax, the herky jerky rhythm of Dirty Boys is the perfect lead-in to the sweeping onrush of The Stars (Are Out Tonight).

Instantly in the pantheon of Bowie's greatest songs, with a fascinating video to match, The Stars is a dark look at the relationship between the famous and their fans, but instead of the latter parasitically leaching off the former, the roles are reversed: "They burn you with their radiant smiles/Trap you with their beautiful eyes." Leave it to Bowie to find something original to say about our celebrity-obsessed culture, and to wrap it up in such a seductive package, with David Torn's processed guitar lending depth and atmosphere.

There have been some comments (complaints?) that Visconti is not doing enough as a producer on The Next Day. In some senses, he and Bowie employed an old-fashioned approach by having musicians play together in a studio, shuffling players in and out as each song demanded. It is also true that there is little of Brian Eno-style treatments and everything pretty much sounds like what it is. But listening to Love Is Lost and then checking the credits to see that its grandiose sound is the product of just four musicians, with minimal overdubbing (except for the layered vocals), is to realize that all is not as simple as it seems. One of Visconti's greatest achievements, after all, is the gleaming perfection T.Rex's The Slider, which is more the result of the organization of sound and the deployment of resources than any studio wizardry. The same is true of The Next Day.

Valentine's Day also features a small group sound with a complex vocal arrangement, and is one of Bowie's compassionate portraits of an outcast, this time a high school loser who imagines "...how he'd feel/If all the world were under his heel." Maybe all will be well if he meets the girl with the mousy hair from Life On Mars - but I doubt it. It's no accident that Valentine's Day is followed by the overwhelming power of If You Can See Me, with its prog rhythms and shattering vocals from Gail Ann Dorsey soaring overhead. This is Valentine become "the spirit of greed, a lord of theft," and at the head of an rampaging army, his divided self embodied by Bowie's processed singing. It's the kind of song you can imagine on Buffalo Bill's iPod and it sounds like nothing else in Bowie's catalog.

I'd Rather Be High is a Sixties-infused slice of anti-war greatness, with a chorus of Bowies providing the perfect backdrop for the swooping melodies. It's a fantastic song, informed by Apocalypse Now and Generation Kill, and one that John Lennon himself would likely welcome as the b-side of Rain. Like The Stars, it's a bitter pill with a creamy coating and the pure expression of a genius songwriter at the top of his game. One can only wonder at the renewable font of creativity on display.

Boss Of Me and Dancing Out In Space are probably the weakest songs here, redeemed by sheer pop craft, committed singing and unexpected lyrical twists. Bazin welcomes us to contemplate Bowie and Iman's long and happy marriage while listening to Boss Of Me, and Dancing Out In Space is filled with Torn's glorious soundscapes and perhaps the only reference to Georges Rodenbach, the 19th century Belgian symbolist, in a rock song. Both songs are a little silly, but Bowie seems in on the joke and they'd be easier to dismiss if they weren't so catchy.

How Does The Grass Grow? evokes Europe in the throes of a post-war rebirth fertilized by the blood of young men. In a nod to sampling culture it contains an "interpolation" of Jerry Lordan's Apache (a huge hit for The Shadows in 1960), which although I am unable to tease it out leads to the song being co-credited to Lordan. Perhaps this is Bowie's meta reference to his roots in bombed out pre-Beatles England, or it could be a way for Lordan's heirs to get some income. Coincidentally, Lordan went to Finchley Catholic High School, so maybe he was one of the "dirty boys" who stole a cricket bat at Finchley Fair in the earlier song. Or maybe I'm just on a Wikipedia-fueled tangent while Bowie chuckles in the corner.

I'm no fan of Jack White but I recognize the influence of his fractured riffs in the punky intro and hard-rocking verse of (You Will) Set The World On Fire. It's essentially a song of encouragement, unexpectedly set in the Greenwich Village folk scene of the 60's, with the narrator pledging to do whatever it takes to bring the talents of another to fruition. If you're having trouble accomplishing something, consider programming your alarm clock to wake you each morning with this song's explosive energy.

With its Hearbreak Hotel title and Leonard Cohen melody, You Feel So Lonely You Could Die has the form of another Bowie ballad, but its theme is vengeance: "Oblivion shall own you/Death alone shall love you/I hope you feel so lonely you could die." This is Bob Dylan bleak and a long way from the consolations of Rock'n'Roll Suicide. Like much of The Next Day, the contrast between form and content is enthralling.

Bowie's love and high regard for the music of Scott Walker has been well known at least since he covered Nite Flights on Black Tie White Noise in 1993. But album closer Heat is a much more fitting homage, with a sepulchral vocal and the chilly refrain of "My father ran the prison." One way Bowie is most unlike Walker is that while he likes to appear alienated (and maybe he is), he never wants to alienate. So Heat is still beautiful to listen to, unlike one of the room-clearing tracks from Walker's more recent albums, like 2012's monumental Bish Bosch. Nite Flights was the title track of the last album by The Walker Brothers and contained four songs by Scott Walker, which, along with Harmonia's Deluxe, were the biggest influence on Lodger, so this is a debt well-paid.

Bowie is obviously at a prolific place as the deluxe edition of The Next Day comes with three bonus tracks and, while perhaps not essential, they are worth the extra couple of bucks. So She is a short and twisted pop gem, while Plan is the brittle instrumental heard at the beginning of the video for The Stars (Are Out Tonight). I'll Take You There is a fast-paced rocker in the mold of How Does The Grass Grow, though not as fully realized.

Any time we listen to music, it's filtered through our expectations and experiences. With an artist as legendary as David Bowie these two factors are cranked up nearly to the breaking point. Is it even fair to judge The Next Day next to his nearly flawless RCA years, as great a run of albums as there has been in recorded music? Considering that contemporary critics often misjudged those albums as they were released, I would hesitate to compare The Next Day to one of Bowie's 70's classics. Time will likely be the best judge of that. I think there are better questions to ask: Does this album speak to me and move me today? Has it withstood close listening and scrutiny of the music and lyrics? Does it reveal growth and change in Bowie's artistry?

I can answer all of these queries with a resounding YES. The Next Day is a nearly a complete triumph, and one that is far less dependent on Bowie's artistic capital than his last two albums, Heathen and Reality, which were both quite good. As a singer, songwriter and arranger he shows enough variety of inspiration so as to be almost protean, an astonishing feat for an artist in his 60's. He sounds excited and energized and is an inspiration to those of us who plan to continue believing in rock & roll for the rest of our days. Don't wait until tomorrow: The Next Day is today.

The Year In Disappointments

As the world begins to assemble top ten lists and look back over the year in music, I find myself thinking about those moments in the past 11 months where my excitement turned to disappointment upon hearing an anticipated record. 

1. Goldfrapp - Head First. After three wonderful records filled with high-impact analogue synths, whomping beats and gorgeous melodies, the duo took a breather with Seventh Tree in 2008. It brought acoustic sounds into the mix and, though controversial among some critics, it was a fine extension of their sound. It also made me curious to see where they would head on the next album. My anticipation was high enough that, if not for Lala (RIP - another disappointment!), I would have just bought it. So glad I didn't. One thing the world does not need is another tinny ABBA-influenced electro-pop record, even one featuring the gleaming soprano of Alison Goldfrapp. There was none of the roof-rattling power or hypnotic rhythms of their previous work. And now they've been nominated for two Grammy awards, which may only make it harder for them to find their artistic compass again.  

2. Efterklang - Magic Chairs. Their album Parades was a fascinating and precious discovery of 2007. It was modern chamber music married to a quirky pop aesthetic that seemed both completely Danish and completely otherworldly. Tripper, their debut, included some glitchy electro in the mix and was also beautiful if slightly unformed. Magic Chairs seems to be a bid for wider acceptance, with solo vocals pushed forward in place of the choral approach of their previous albums. The songs are more linear and spacious and, ultimately, more ordinary. Next!


3. The Album Leaf - A Chorus of Storytellers. While I might be somewhat lonely in my devotion to In A Safe Place, I am devoted. Like a stainless steel chair with warm wood accents, the music gleams with a high-tech surface surrounding an organic center, creating an experience that overlaps with both the best of Eno's ambient records and the enveloping folk of a Nick Drake. On the new album, Jimmy LaValle has put that chair in the closet and replaced it with one made entirely of plastic. Every beat of the bass drum intrudes like a Twinkie at Per Se and the songs are flat and lifeless.


4. LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening. Swimming against the tide here. Sound Of Silver was simply fantastic - all of the best of James Murphy's many talents in one place - warmth, wit, barbed affection for, well, everything, and music that backed up all the attitude with melody and funk. This new one strikes me as simply a tired re-hash. I mean really - Drunk Girls? You Wanted A Hit? This is taking self-parody to a new low. And All I Want was a Bowie rip that showed how far Murphy needs to go in the studio to approach the mastery of a Tony Visconti or a Brian Eno. If this is indeed the last LCD album, it's a sorry way to go out.


Good to get that off my chest before discussing the best music of the year! 


Note: my best of the year lists will be coming between Christmas and New Year's. I realize that many lists are already out there but I would rather not make a final decision on what the best of the 2010 is while there are still weeks to go in the year. Cheers.