David Bowie - The Next Day

Yep on both counts

Listened to this for the first time today. First reaction: 14 songs in 54 minutes is too much. Should have been nine songs in 40. Also...it's been seven and a half hours since I heard the record, and I can't remember what a single song on it sounded like.

Yeah I agree with this. I listened to it last night and did enjoy some moments but can't really remember anything about it today. So baffled at all the amazing reviews it's been getting. It's probably better than Reality and about as good as Heathen.

still prefer Reality to Heathen, which had one too many ponderosities for me.

Meanwhile speaking of Alfred and Bowie opinions

http://www.spin.com/reviews/david-bowie-the-next-day-columbia-iso

Bowie's retirement is somewhat overrated imo

more overrated than Scary Monsters?

You rated it as highly as Station to Station!
Scary Monsters is overrated. But it has Bowie's 2nd-best ever A-side. And his best ever song "Ashes to Ashes" fuiud. Do people rate it any other way in saying it's the end of his classic period?
I like that Bowie, 66, is making records this late in life. I like that there's a photo in RS of Tony and David the nice young engineer at Magic Shop, I hope it gets him some cool gigs. I don't think "The Next Day" has any place in my life, "Heat" is a nice bit of Scott Walker pastiche but I've banned "Scott Walker pastiche". I'm glad I don't have to rate records for a living

Sounds boring

i wonder how this record would have sound like if someone else, lets say Eno, produced it.
cause it is boring partly because of the production imo.

Visconti may be a legend but he and Bowie are both old now. So I guess you have to expect a boring record. btw I did mean sounds boring from what you guys say I haven't heard it.
p.s. find a lot of songs hunky dory and mwstw boring and that was these two lol

Not sure that Eno is any better at producing non-boring records in 2013!

eno is a pretty boring producer these days, listen to that bowie/byrne album from a few years ago, or the paul simon record.

eno byrne I mean

exactly

It's kind of a vicious cycle - Eno makes boring records because boring musicians are attracted to the idea of working with Eno.

Producers who could have done something interesting with David Bowie:

Kevin Martin
Kurt Ballou
Omar Rodriguez-Lopez

Pretty sure Eno is bored of producing, tbh.

Lots of people could have done something awesome with Bowie. Geoff Barrow!

he could've written some tunes with Shriekback and Max Martin tbh

DJ Rashad and Bowie ftw.

The results were often risible, but I miss the days when old ppl tried to be modern.

Tom Jones Reloaded

Drum'n'Bass Bowie!
Grace Slick "All the Machines"!

I'm not saying it's a good idea... just that I miss it. hahaha
More fun than getting T-Bone Rubin on board, anyway!

I particularly enjoyed the Tom Jones video where this dog was hanging from an overhead wire and moving at high speed and you could see it from directly above intercut with pictures of Tom's face

That was a cover of ... Rise Robots Rise?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRgj3hJr7cA

Is that a single from the lead and how to swing it? Doesn't feature on his wiki discography.

Oh the song is called if only I knew DOH!

Don't touch the sacred cows! Our man is getting tore up in the comments on that Spin review, something fierce.

Now go back to preening your sad little self in your cocaine mirror, you pot of toss.

It's not "the same old thing in brand new drag," it's a re-contextualization which allows us to see the old thing and the new thing in a different light. You tool.

That was a particular favorite.

oops. the first one i meant.

Did you know that for period between 1976 and 1987 none of Tom Jones' singles entered the UK charts WHATSOEVER! That's 25 bleeding singles

Last Eno record was not boring and was actually pretty good.

Which album do you consider his last album? "Another Day on Earth?" Or the most recent generative joint? Also, what was the last production job he did that you liked/felt made the album better? I admit I'm a fan of what he did for Coldplay on "Viva La Vida Locamotion"

He still seems to me more interested in generative music and installations and different sorts of creative endeavors than making music these days.

Has he produced Tom Jones yet?

I don't know how many of these recent Eno productions I'd rep for:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Eno_discography#Production

Just because they made great records together 30+ years ago (!) that doesn't mean they'd have any gas in the tank now. Why would it? That's a heckuva long time.

It's ike when Duran were making that Timbaland record (god, i'm not helping my argument here), Duranies were like "work with Nile instead if you want to be funky and mad successful!" - as great a guitar player (and gentleman) as Nile is, he hadn't produced anything worth a bean (or anything popular) in a dog's age.

last Eno album was great, yes (Lux, and small craft). last eno PRODUCTIONS that weren't his albums were all dull and have been for ages.

unfortunately rodgers also produced lets dance. After that he forlornly tried to help mick jagger on an album I am not prepared to discuss. He also produced something called Astronaut. Anyone heard that?

Back to the point, he needs to work with someone new and NOT a dance music producer. Its just a suggestion but what about bernard butler? Be even better if he played on it.

He did some prelim stuff on Duran's 'Astronaut' then was canned. So... the finished product was thought to be even better than what Nile did, I guess. Yikes!

Butler as Ronson manque? Brett would fume! haha

Are you suggesting the rodgers astronaut stuff must have been very, very bad?

Nile Rodgers' mid eighties credit are mindboggingly long.

Nope. Just that I guess DD thought so?
Heard the demos and they weren't appreciably lesser in qual than what made the album imo.

Rodgers' 80s credits... always thought it odd that he didn't get the call to produce the follow-up albums to his mid-80's hits: Madonna, Bowie, Duran, etc...

How good is that album?

Astro?
I'm a fan, so not entirely reliable... probably 6 out of 10 if I'm feeling generous.

Simon R on the new Bowie in the NYT

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/arts/music/the-singer-who-fell-to-earth.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

I'm a fan, so not entirely reliable... probably 6 out of 10 if I'm feeling generous.

― mr.raffles

The best songs on Astronaut were the ones that sounded like they could have been produced by Nile Rodgers, Nice and Taste The Summer. The other two good songs sounded like Mansun. That was a a strange album. Shame they released Sunrise as the first single, hate that song.

After the ’90s, a period dominated by the grit and authenticity of grunge and gangsta rap, the 2000s saw the return of artifice and glitter. The things that Mr. Bowie explored to the hilt, alongside his fellow glam rockers like Roxy Music and Alice Cooper, during the early ’70s — over-the-top theatricality and staging, extremist fashion and sexual androgyny — became defining principles of 21st-century pop. Lady Gaga is the most visible of his inheritors, with her freaky costumes and her gender games (the male alter ego Jo Calderone; the artfully concocted rumor that she’s a hermaphrodite). Adam Lambert, the “American Idol” graduate, called his first major tour Glam Nation. Beyoncé made a Ziggy Stardust-like gambit by creating the persona Sasha Fierce as a vehicle for her walk-on-the-wild-side impulses. Above all there’s Nicki Minaj, whose guises include the gay male Roman Zolanski and the ultrafeminine cartoon she calls Barbie. While it’s unlikely that Ms. Minaj is directly influenced by Mr. Bowie, the parallels between his serial personas and her constant image changes are clear. As a host on the music channel Fuse put it, “She says she’s just being herself, but who she is changes every day.”

simon r is fun and everything but this is rrridiculous, rrrreductive, over-rrreaching and rrrrrrrisible rrubbish

While it’s unlikely that Ms. Minaj is directly influenced by Mr. Bowie ... who she is ch-ch-changes every day

That's possibly the worse thing i've ever read