David Bowie R.I.P

roxy's first album is much more a style mashup than ziggy stardust, released in the same month.

The interviews with Eno and Alomar in Five Years shed interesting light on the "musician"/"hey, I'm not a musician" divide. Alomar talked about Eno during Low randomly pointing to chords on a blackboard, with Alomar getting more and more annoyed; Eno spoke of feeling intimidated somewhat by the abilities of Alomar and Dennis Davis. All came out of it with new ideas about music-making that stuck with them ever since.

Tin Machine covered "If There Is Something."

Both Roxy and Bowie following the idea of art-pop (from the Beatles? But more consistently than the Beatles, who had so much overhead and internal strife, went back to striving for hits of universal appeal; still, they showed that weird tracks could be popular, without being taken solely as traditional novelty hits). Come to think of it, at the time of obvious cash-in, when so influential (the MTV Wave 80s), they both went away, never really came back except Roxy basically as oldies.

maybe i have it all backwards. maybe the first roxy album invented bowie. he really did love roxy. i just read somewhere that as ziggy was coming out he raved to all the papers about the 1st roxy album.

but the first Roxy Music came out in 1971, same year as Ziggy.

anyways, T-Rex is being left out of this equation

both 1972

yeah, they come out the same month (week?) iirc.

nice piece from Geeta (if this hasn't been posted already)

https://medium.com/@geetadayal/on-david-bowie-part-1-47066adc0640#.q5375pdjl

so did he have an advance copy? or i guess Roxy was playing around a bunch then?

ferry in the quietus:

“I was shy of collaboration in the past. When you start off your career, it’s always me me me. 'Oh no, I’ve got plenty of ideas, I don’t need anybody else to interfere.' If, say, David Bowie had said in ’73, 'Oh can we write together?' I’d have said no, I’m not interested.”

I got the sense/assumed in the mid-70s that he was especially impressed by the way Roxy developed, and maybe retained the lessons of Eno after he left, surging into the Stranded and Country Life era.

Yeah, he would have known them from the London music scene - & just checked wiki - there's press coverage and a BBC session in 71 too.

I do think he takes a lot from them - that insane eclectic/synthy/proggy retro-futurist Roxy thing that's there from the start doesn't line up quite with the Ziggy era - it maps better to later 70s Bowie

xpost And that those albums were hits! In the UK, anyway---and if he took it towards something a bit more American---big beats, bring back the guitars, only cooler....

And then Roxy sez, "Okay---Love is the drug, and I need to score," and they do, in America too.

Well, Ferry was around. Ferry was as influential as Bowie without being a generalist.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 15 January 2016 15:47 (52 minutes ago) Permalink

really? Ferry as influential as Bowie?

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Friday, 15 January 2016 15:49 (50 minutes ago) Permalink

On British artists? Incalculable. Bowie and Ferry created the '80s. In America he's a nothing though.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 15 January 2016 15:51 (47 minutes ago) Permalink

Soto OTM. Include Kraftwerk in there, and you essentially have some kind of holy '70s trinity that were a huge influence on the following decade.

Ferry had the weirdest careers of anyone up until about 76...the madness of Roxy meets the white dinner jackets and the albums of standards, its totally unprecedented.

Alfred def correct there

fwiw Space Oddity did have a stylophone and was recorded in 1969. maybe Roxy and Eno got the idea for synth rock from Bowie

Would love to have had a Bowie/Ferry Avalon-like "Dancin' in the Streets."

Sorry if I've been dogmatic. Ferry actually means more to me than Bowie. I'm fully aware that when Ferry chokes on a martini olive the extent of his American coverage will mention he wrote "More Than This" and that Bill Murray sang it.

xxpost Ugh, one of the crappiest moldy oldies, even the original. Martha and the Vandellas just getting through it, understandably so. Main thing was the Days of Rage rabble-rousers (Weather Underground etc.) seized on it.

Bowie's singing in "Loving The Alien" and "As the World Falls Down" are full of Ferryisms

even the original. Martha and the Vandellas just getting through it, understandably so

loony

Weird timing! I'm listening to Tonight for the first time ever, and 'Loving The Alien' specifically. It's a good song, but I wonder if there's a better arrangement/live version of it out there somewhere...?

I thought I was the only one who didn't like Dancin' in the Streets

But okay, ten seconds into 'Don't Look Down' and I think my iPod has accidentally skipped to a smooth jazz album that I didon't know was on here.

It was seized on immediately by activists in Detroit, years before the Weather Underground, and was, for all intents and purposes, the soundtrack to the 1967 Detroit urban rebellion.

Also has the best use of snow chains in a piece of music.

xxxp

(and Morbs otm; no idea how it is possible to dislike this song)

Dancing in the Streets rules yall crazy

It's good because it's Martha, not because it's anything as a song or concept--who but a drunk wants to dance in the street? And to such a stilted beat? Some listeners wanted to kick pig ass, grrr (worked out great, eh).

Although admittedly Bowie handles it pretty well, compared to Jagger, anyway.

Bowie's willingness to engage on stuff which is good fun with friends, and sometimes it's Under Pressure, and sometimes it's Dancing in the Street, is a key virtue.

Walker Bros. version is pretty good

I wasn't aware of The Astronettes. Just checking out the first song now; Bowie rewrote "I Am Divine" as "Scream Like a Baby!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Qz-X9f-IO4

Although admittedly Bowie handles it pretty well, compared to Jagger, anyway.

― dow, Friday, January 15, 2016

Bowie is horrible! Jagger's the only one who would've gotten the nuances in a better arrangement.

xpost Pretty sure one of the Roxy or Eno books I read noted Bowie handing around Roxy rehearsals or their rehearsal house, back in his neo-folkie mode. No doubt he was taking notes, and vice versa, but I don't hear much of a musical influence. Bowie and T.Rex get that glam boogie thing going, but Roxy is far more radical/chaotic/hermetic. I want to say Bowie helped inspire Roxy to get off their butt and start playing out. I know later Roxy opened several 1972 dates for Bowie, so he was more "established," but they were by and large on parallel tracks.

Parallel tracks yeah.
xpost Bowie's low-key, in good humor, just going along, Jagger's more AWWWWW YEAh, which works better w the Stones (even better w Masked Marauders). But take your pick, no biggie.

I feel like I should be live-blogging this first exposure to Tonight. It's increasingly horrifying. 'God Only Knows' is just as abysmal as y'all hinted above. What happened, David?!

ferry quote somewhere where he remembers playing some gigs with bowie in 73 and roxy felt like the new kids to bowie's more established thing and that bowie was very helpful/nice/encouraging.

they seem to be a catalyst or spur for him in that 72/3 moment

read this as some insane time signature for a split second

I'm fully aware that when Ferry chokes on a martini olive the extent of his American coverage will mention he wrote "More Than This" and that Bill Murray sang it.

I'm not convinced (though this could be bias pro my ignorance) that we'll get much more over here - certainly not the multiple days of features that Bowie's had.

There won't be anything like Bowie got, Roxy Music was a band, not a solo project.

Oh, no. Not 'Neighborhood Threat', too. I'm starting to think that Tonight was the result of a perverse bet between Iggy and Bowie to see if the latter could leech every ounce of vitality out of the former's songs.

Xpost to old lunch

I legit like loving the alien, grandiose arrangement and all, and Blue Jean, but I'm afraid to listen to the rest of that album anytime soon.

Unfortunately for me it was the first Bowie album to be a brand new Bowie album after I became a fan

Pretty sure it was partly an attempt by Bowie to make Iggy some money.

... that and the fact that his songwriting seemed to have dried up.

Speaking of Roxy, I've got a DVD of a BBC doc on Roxy (with good bonus concert etc), and Manzanera mentions that on a reunion tour, after s show in San Diego, I think, he just got on a plane, without saying goodbye, and never went back----what was the deal with that band? Just too much Ferry? And his solo career?

I don't think it was ever exactly a matey band.

I legit like loving the alien, grandiose arrangement and all, and Blue Jean, but I'm afraid to listen to the rest of that album anytime soon.

Yeah, you just named the only song I've liked thus far and the only song that I knew previously and already liked. If I'd heard this at the time, I might have the same perverse love for it that I have for Pool It!. But I didn't and so I don't.