David Bowie - The Next Day

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

i couldn't read that paragraph after the first sentence.

Just realized that the older he gets, the more Duff is rocking this weird Bowie look:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/77/Duff_McKagan_2012.JPG/220px-Duff_McKagan_2012.JPG

Thin Blonde Duke.

Like a cross between Bowie and Bryan Adaams

Listened to this album a second time tonight, on headphones while walking through NYC and riding the train home. It's a lot better than it seemed the first time.

Did you notice that that Reynolds piece contained exactly three words - "overdriven guitar clangor" - that described the music on The Next Day? As far as most critics are concerned, this might as well be a book of poetry, or a dramatic reading of lyrics, it seems. I feel like taking the exact opposite approach, writing just about the music - you know, that stuff happening in the background while David Bowie confronts his mortality, or whatever.

I feel like taking the exact opposite approach, writing just about the music

Well, sonically, the album is not that interesting - it's a pretty straightforward rock album. That's why the lyrics are a focus

There's a lot of really interesting stuff going on. Assuming one finds rock music interesting. Which I don't think a lot of critics do anymore. But they keep filing copy anyway.

Yeah, after a close listen on headphones today, Phil's otm. There is quite a bit going on, musically. More than I noticed on first blush. I'm liking this quite a bit, I actually like the Whitman's Sampler approach to his overall career that it sort of takes.

The title track is a striking opener. I like David Torn's effects on most of the tracks, and Earl Slick can play lead without going wanky. The sax blats on "Dirty Boys" work too.

Reality had cool filigrees. EVery Bowie album since 1993 'cept ....hours has tbem.

I liked "Thursday's Child" and "Seven" from ...hours. Those are the ones I remember.

here's what the CD art/packaging looks like

http://virusfonts.com/news/2013/03/the-next-day-packaging-design/

i went to a bar last night and the DJ apparently was having a "listening party" for the new bowie so he played it all. sounded good in a bar

While drunk

That psychedelic lyric poster looks so cool it might be worth the price of the album.

More and more lyrics getting posted:

Nabokov is sun-licked now
Upon the beach at Grunewald
Brilliant and naked just
The way that authors look

Clare and Lady Manners drink
Until the other cows go home
Gossip till their lips are bleeding
Politics and all

I’d rather be high
I’d rather be flying
I’d rather be dead
Or out of my head
Than training these guns on those men in the sand
I’d rather be high

The Thames was black, the tower dark
I flew to Cairo, find my regiment
City’s full of generals
And generals full of shit

I stumble to the graveyard and I
Lay down by my parents, whisper
Just remember duckies
Everybody gets got

I’d rather be high
I’d rather be flying
I’d rather be dead
Or out of my head
Than training these guns on those men in the sand
I’d rather be high

I’m seventeen my looks can prove it
I’m so afraid that I will lose it
I’d rather smoke and phone my ex
Be pleading for some teenage sex,
Yeah

I’d rather be high
I’d rather be flying
I’d rather be dead
Or out of my head
Than training these guns on the men in the sand
I’d rather be high

I have really liked both singles, just like I also liked his two 00s albums.

Sure he doesn't innovate pop music anymore like he used to, but who would expect a 66 year-old to do that? If this finds him sitting roughly around his "Scary Monsters" style like the two early 00s albums, then that is fine with me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_66_year_old_artistic_innovators_throughout_history