Hypothetical mixtape: May 2015

We iz on a roll.

"Fade Into You", by J Mascis. I'll now say a thing I never imagined saying: J Mascis appears to be growing old gracefully. Here, he tackles the Mazzy Star standard, and just for now you can't imagine it being done any other way.

"Diamond Dogs", by Beck. I can't quite make up my mind about this version. Still. Bowie, y'know?

"TV Set", by Spoon. Being the third in our little trilogy of cover versions, this time Britt Daniel does a mighty fine Lux Interior impersonation. In fact, I would have a hard trouble identifying this as Spoon in a blind tasting test.

"What She's Done To Your Mind", by The Rain Parade. The first, self-released (or so it is said), single by Dave Roback's earlier band (see "Fade Into You", above). It still sounds as fresh as a daisy. Oh boy the world was ready for jangly guitars in 1982. (See also, in another part of the same continent, REM, and, on the other side of the world, The Smiths.)

"I Know You Rider", by White Eyes. And this is the type of music that those latter-day exponents of the jangle might have been listening to: except that this, though it was recorded in 1969, wasn't actually released until 2015. No, I can't believe it either. (Curiously, delayed release (not quite that delayed, though) also happened with The Byrds' version of this same song, which didn't appear until 1987.) Download (at time of writing, anyway) still available here.

"Super Cool Funky Lady", by Laid Back. Not doing a whole lot that's positive for the cause of feminism, admittedly, but you can't deny the groove.

"I Can't Kick This Feelin' When It Hits", by Moodymann. There is a song in here. It has been submerged by unseen forces. Every so often it channels all its strength and pushes its way to the surface, only to be knocked under again. On and on it goes. Will the song drown? Will it survive? Will it survive but be traumatised for life, spending large chunks of its disposable income thereafter on therapy sessions? It's a worry.

"Black Dot (The Horrors' Tom Furse Remix)", by Seeland. Seeland sits somewhere on the periphery of the Ghost Box alternate universe. One of its members used to be in Broadcast. Some of its record covers have been designed by Julian House, aka The Focus Group. You know how it is. 

"Aruarian Dance", by Nujabes. I probably wouldn't have given this piece of gossamer a second listen had I not fallen head over heels, some years ago, for a mashup of (what I now know to be) it with Amerie's "1 Thing". They were made for each other. (YouTube comment of the month: "Is this shit the wii console music?")

"Humpty Dumpty", by Placebo. Can you add what sounds like a wah-wah effect to a Fender Rhodes? The heck you can. You can also add a horn section for good measure. Go right ahead. Nobody's going to get hurt.

"Elevator Operator", by Courtney Barnett. If this was 25 years ago, I would be all over Courtney Barnett like some kind of unpleasant skin condition. So I'm happy for her success, because "kids these days" deserve the chance to be influenced by the kind of small-scale but big-hearted music that was such an influence on me all those years ago. (Sigh.) But I do worry about what her unexpected worldwide success means for what she does. (We all saw what happened when Peter Jackson tried to turn "The Hobbit" into something it was never meant to be.) Still, for now we can be thankful for small mercies like "Elevator Operator", a song about the elevators in the Nicholas Building. In the mid-1980s Russell, Roger and I rented some office space on (if memory serves) the fifth floor, and kitted it out as a studio/rehearsal space (but we were only allowed to use it on weekends). I fell by the wayside fairly early on, but the others went on to make some really pretty good music there. (My main memory, and perhaps a cause of my demise, was of standing around for hours on end as the other two tinkered with equipment.) The building, back then, was tenanted by small businesses in the nature of jewellery repairers, coin and stamp merchants, and, you wouldn't have been surprised to find, private investigators wearing trilby hats and chain smoking. The elevators were truly frightening: metal cages that rattled and clanked their interminable way between floors. You felt compelled to thank your lucky stars when you reached your destination in one piece. (There was also the equally frightening Pipe Records, and its clientele, in the corner of the arcade. We were still, at heart, innocent boys from the country.) Unlike the protagonist in this song, I don't think we ever went up to the roof.

"Mainline", by Black Ivory. The kind of string-sodden disco epic I can never get enough of.  If The Bee Gees hadn't taken out a monopoly, this could easily have found a place on the "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack.

"Home Is Where The Hatred Is", by Esther Phillips. Can a song as harrowing as this also be beautiful? It would appear so. Written by Gil Scott-Heron.

"Poupee De Cire Poupee De Son", by France Gall. Next stop Eurovision!

"The House", by Le Volume Courbe. I thought I could hear echoes of My Bloody Valentine's "Soon" within the veins of this song, so it should have been no surprise when further research revealed that Kevin Shields did indeed have some kind of a hand in it. Nevertheless, it is a song that can be appreciated on its own terms.

"Juggernaut", by Stan Hubbs. What sounds like an emergent transmission from the depths of some mid-seventies drugs haze turns out to have actually been made in 1982. It was released by way of what is now called the "private press", and disappeared without trace. (Understandably, though; who in their right (or wrong) mind would have wanted to hear this in 1982? (See Rain Parade entry, above.)) It goes to show that what goes around does indeed come around: this song fits the current, ahem, zeitgeist like a slightly dishevelled glove. Bonus: album cover of the month. Obviously.

"Everywhere", by Fleetwood Mac. It is easy to forget that Fleetwood Mac continued to release records after "Tusk". Here is a reminder. (Warning: contains high-eighties production values.)

"Imperfect", by Perez Prado. Moogs on the loose. (The YouTube gives you a bonus track, "Ciliegi Rosa", with which you may be familiar, and which is crazy crazy.)

This goes with this (sincerest form of flattery edition)

In the blue corner: "Ljoss", by Forest Swords, from 2013 (is it really that long ago?), and very specifically the sound he conjures up around the 53-second mark.

In the red corner: "The Catastrophist", title track from the new album by Tortoise, and very specifically the sound they conjure up around the 1:35 mark.

Of course, both sounds could have been arrived at independently. But it would also be kinda nice to think that, just maybe, the Titans of the thing that gets called "post-rock" (although it is in fact neither) have been listening to the music being made by the new generation, and absorbing its lessons (some of which lessons the new generation most likely absorbed from Tortoise in the first place).

Tortoise may never make another "Djed". (Talk about building a rod for your own back.) But their music since then has never been anything less than fascinating. And, of course, highly listenable. (The new album? There are vocals! Shock! Horror! Does that make it post-post-rock? Or maybe pre-post-rock? (Would that be "rock"?))

You be the judge:

Music writing the way it used to be

Ian Penman writes at a reasonable length about John Fahey.

You know you would want to read that.

Penman asks an important question, one that it is easy to get tied up in knots trying to answer, or at least to answer in a way that your average music obsessive can feel entirely comfortable with: 

"Is it better to endure bad art for the spotless ideology it promotes, or to continue to swoon before sublime art made by awful people?" 

A part of me suspects that if such people were less awful, the art they made would be less sublime. Is it worth it? I suppose I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't think it was, but heck, I also know it's not okay just to ignore the human damage that can be left in its wake. (Why couldn't I just have liked, I don't know, Perry Como? (Although for all we know, he may have had some skeletons of his own.))

Fahey might or might not have been one of the bad guys, and he would appear to have suffered a(n un)fair amount of damage of his own, but "sublime" is as good a word as I could have found to describe the sounds he was able to tease out of a guitar. Here is an example:

Or, if you want to go long, there is also this (a lot of life would appear to have been lived between 1969 and 1978):

Song of the day

"Four (Darkstar Remix)", by Olafur Arnalds and Nils Frahm.

The riff from "I Wanna Be Your Dog" has been put to good use many, many times, but perhaps never quite like this.

(Now is perhaps an opportune time to mention Darkstar's most recent album, "Foam Island", which might be described as social history with a musical accompaniment, but is actually much more engaging than that makes it sound. You should check it out.)

Song of the day

"Right Said Fred", by Bernard Cribbins.


This song is my childhood. There may be more credible / "worthy" ways to acknowledge George Martin's contribution, but, heck, how many songs would have travelled through more radios and television sets?

It was also the punk rock of its day: no frills, no nonsense, no solos; it got straight to the point, and then it got out of the way.



George Martin also produced "Rain", by The Beatles, three of the most perfect minutes human ingenuity has ever created. You probably won't find that on YouTube, but the chances are you have it at home somewhere.

Song of the day (the elasticity of time edition)

"So Jackson: Step In / Out (Jori Hulkkonen Edit)".

Being an "edit" of a song you might remember from the different world that was 1982. (Watch the clip. Joe comes across as a post-punk Peter Allen. Which I suppose he was, really.)


"Edit"? What it is is a simple pop song dissected, forensically analysed, and teased out for 43 minutes. Yes, you read that right. Is such a thing even possible? More to the point, is such a thing even listenable?

Well, yes, it is, actually. The mind can play tricks on the unsuspecting. By seven or eight minutes in, you find yourself starting to wonder if it might be time to move on to the next thing. But you don't, because somehow you can't, and all of a sudden you find yourself being dragged back into the light, only to discover that 30 more minutes have passed. Not only that, but by that point you can't even imagine wanting the damn thing to ever come to an end. But, of course, it does, by which point "Steppin' Out" will be stuck in your head for days. (There are worse things, believe me.)

It's not a thing you would probably -- if you are, ahem, "sane" -- want to come back to particularly often, but you will want to come back to it. Let's say once every couple of months or so. It's like colonic irrigation for the brain.

(Don't ignore the download button.)

Unexpected song of the day

"Girls On The Avenue", by Richard Clapton.

You have Adrienne to thank for this one.

I'm not sure whether this was always a good song but I was just too dull to notice; or whether it has taken the intervening 40 years for it to become a good song; or whether I am allowing the thick fog of nostalgia to cloud my judgment.

Actually, I think I might be about to shed a tear. Nurse!

Hypothetical mixtape: April 2015

This month's playlist starts and ends with Todd Terje, but otherwise contains no Todd Terje whatsoever.

"I Get Lifted (Todd Terje Tangoterje Edit)", by KC And The Sunshine Band. I never had a problem with KC and the Sunshine Band. (Well, except for misguidedly assuming, based on lack of information/knowledge/intelligence, that KC must have also been the host of "American Top 40".) But if I had ever had a problem with KC and the Sunshine Band? Problem solved!

 "Warm Leatherette", by Suzi Quatro. It's very difficult to accept that this even exists. If it were possible for Suzi Quatro to go up in my estimation (hint: it is not), this remarkable cover version would do it. Leather Tuscadero vs Grace Jones: be very afraid.

(Bonus: album cover of the month. Obviously.)

"Murmur Earth", by Stealing Sheep. I know you must get sick of me saying this, but here is another (excellent) song that springs from deep within Raincoats territory. Outstanding.

"Tund (Ricardo Villalobos Remix)", by Ambiq. The resident 16-year-old is presently learning about minimalism as part of Year 11 music. (At last, something he is studying that I am not completely rubbish at!) In a vain, and not necessarily welcome, attempt at helping, I have been throwing him records by Terry Riley, Philip Glass and Steve Reich, of course, but it strikes me that he should also be checking out the alchemical workings of Aphex Twin and Ricardo Villalobos, to the extent that minimalism aligns itself with music that makes incrementally small changes over a long period of time. This cryptic remix could be Exhibit A.

"Launch Ramp To Tha Sky", by Levon Vincent. Never has there been a better use of the word "tha". Respect. 

"Bird Matrix", by Actress. Actress has been playing a long game, at least insofar as his last album, "Ghettoville", from 2014, has taken until surprisingly recently to worm its way into my central nervous system. (I picked it up when it first came out and have listened to it quite a bit; it's as if thin layers of onion-skin have slowly been peeling themselves away, month after month, until, finally, the complete project has been revealed). Notwithstanding his somewhat ambiguous "retirement" announcement after "Ghettoville" came out, new fragments of music have continued to seep out; this one, all 13 glacial minutes of it, came out as part of a fascinating but difficult DJ-Kicks mix. It is not cheerful music. In fact, it might be the end of music.

"Dubwise Shower", by Ray I. If Actress's sparse inversions of dub reggae leave you wanting to listen to anything at all, it would probably be a blast of authentic seventies dub. Fortunately, we have some just here. (This YouTube clip appends a customarily insane "Instrumental Version". Lucky you.)

"Reunion Sicodelica", by Los Holy's. (With a big "sic" on that apostrophe. It physically hurt me to type it, yes, but Word hasn't even come up with an admonitory red line. Boo hiss.) This song is also known as "Cissy Strut". You know it. Observe closely how the drummer tries his darnedest to keep up, and almost succeeds. The winner, though, as always, is the organ. (The A side to this record would appear to be a version of "Hawaii Five-0". Be still my beating heart.)

"Boil The Kettle, Mother", by The Id. Almost, but not quite, as disturbing as the title-and-band-name combination would suggest. Actually, yes it is. Honestly, you couldn't make some of this stuff up.

"Storm Warning", by Mac Rebennack. More punky swampy shenanigans, this time from Mac Rebennack. You may know him as Dr John. This track pre-dates the previous two by eight years. And the eight years between 1959 and 1967, musically speaking (at least), might as well have been an eternity. Prescient.

"Leda", by Safe Home. From the complete opposite end of the music spectrum from Dr John's primal swamp-rock boogie, Safe Home conjure all the goodness that can come from a bit of well-placed introspection.

"Nature", by Valet. I suppose you could listen to this and say, with faint but discernible levels of snark (perhaps combined with the subtlest of eye rolls), "Ah, the inevitable return of shoegaze". You could also just sit back, relax, and enjoy the song. Yeah, do that.

"Oban (Todd Terje Remix)", by Jaga Jazzist. So here comes Uncle Todd again, this time lulling us all into a kind of semi-conscious reverie as the sun sinks behind the dunes. I'm getting hints of "La Ritournelle". Or something. I don't know anymore.

Song of the day

"Twenty One", by The Apartments.

"No Song No Spell No Madrigal" was launched into the world without fanfare in early 2015. Its absence from practically all year-end lists was striking. But for those who fell under the spell of Peter Milton Walsh at some point over the past, what is it now, 35 years, it will have been the only record of the year that really mattered.

"Twenty One" is a song born out of grief. The finely balanced melancholy of "Things You'll Keep" has been, of necessity, replaced by abject sadness. (The story behind it can be found here.) And yet it is also extraordinarily beautiful. There are days when I almost can't bear to listen to it, but at the same time I cannot look away. We should be grateful that Milton Walsh had the courage to write and record it, and to expose it to the public gaze.

I also can't help thinking how hard it would be, right now, for Nick Cave to listen to this song.

Song of the day

"Over It", by Junior Boys.

Five years later, Junior Boys return. It certainly doesn't feel like that long. The curious thing about Junior Boys has always been that they somehow never seem to raise expectations about their next record. Maybe that's because they are Canadian. Maybe it's because each record so far has been self-contained (and each, by the way, has also been pretty wonderful). The sense I get from all of them, including the brand-new one, "Big Black Coat", is that they don't put expectations on themselves: an album comes along when it's good and ready. Now's, as they say, the time.

What strikes me already about this new album is how much, and how successfully, it draws on the 1980s. A number of times over its duration I think to myself, if Human League made "Dare" in 2016 it would sound like this.  (I'm sure others will wax lyrical about how they have added elements of this or that up-to-the-second dance music micro-sub-genre to the mix. Glued to the past, me.)

What also strikes me is the inclusion, in a couple of crucial places (e.g. the 2:18 mark on "Over It"), of guitar (and even, I swear, a one-off appearance of an authentic electric-bass "doink", a la Kraftwerk's "Tour de France" single, and just as surprising). 

The other thing about this particular song? The boom-chuck-boom-chuck drum pattern. Two seconds of this song and you are transported straight into the black heart of "Dancing In The Dark", or "Flashdance" (or even the Oils' "Power And The Passion"), or any number of other hits from the early-to-mid-'80s. In some hands that would spell an early death. Junior Boys, as is their wont, get away with it. 

Hypothetical mixtape: March 2015

This month's playlist starts with Nicolas Jaar and ends with Nicolas Jaar, but otherwise contains no Nicolas Jaar whatsoever.

"What Kind Of Man (Nicolas Jaar Remix)", by Florence + The Machine. Everything I know about Florence + The Machine could be written on the head of a pin. I'm not not a fan, it's just one of my many blind spots. (I accept full responsibility.) So I come to this 12-minute epic entirely from the perspective of what Nicolas Jaar might bring to it. Dude is clearly some kind of maverick boffin: even in the three minutes it takes the song to really get going, he introduces and then discards more ideas than you might have thought possible. And then he just keeps on doing it. Headphones recommended.

"Boys Latin (Andy Stott Remix)", by Panda Bear. As with the previous track: Panda Bear? Got nothin'. Andy Stott? Lemme at it. You may even find some actual music in here if you listen closely enough.

"Falling Free (The Aphex Twin Remix)", by Curve. And the same thing again. (As an aside: Aphex Twin is clearly insane. I mean that in the nicest possible way.)

"Love Is Stronger Than Pride (Mad Professor Remix)", by Sade. Whereas Sade I do know something about. 1984 found me listening (with, I have to say, some degree of post-adolescent angst given its absolute smoothness) on repeat to "Diamond Life". A remix by Mad Professor makes more sense than you might think: remember "No Protection"? Don't expect any Black Ark-style shenanigans here, though: that would be disrespectful. And nobody disrespects Sade.

"Entropy", by Bleachers x Grimes. Pure pop for now people. I'm not even sure this was ever released. How thoroughly modern is that?

"Subcoiscient Lamentation (feat Tigerlight)", by Payfone. Released in 2014, this song either missed the boat first time around or is the vanguard for the next wave of acts that sound precisely like Studio and A Mountain Of One. I'm waiting.

"By The Time I Get To Venus", by The Juan Maclean. I have been, as you know, a huge Juan Maclean fan for many years, but this one, from the early days of DFA, seems to have passed me by. Happy to make amends. (The video is super cool, albeit it does get a bit weird.)

"Time Moves On", by Strutt. We haven't busted any classy disco moves around here for a while. Time to make amends.

(Bonus: album cover of the month.)

 

"Canto De Ossanha", by Dorothy Ashby. Reinventing the place of the harp in popular music. No, it's not Joanna Newsom, it's Dorothy Ashby circa 1969, bringing something special to the Brazilian groove of this song. Warning: contains flute.

"I Am Waiting", by Jennifer. Known to you (and me) as Jennifer Warnes. She appears to have gained the surname after she became popular, contrary to the usual nomenclatural trajectory. Possibly still available for download here.

"The North Wind Blew South", by Philamore Lincoln. Trivia note: according to Wikipedia Philamore Lincoln played drums with The Who for one gig in 1967 while Keith Moon was injured. Now you know as much as I do.

"Monticello", by Monty Alexander. In which Monty Alexander gets in touch with his inner (city) Marvin Gaye.

"Baby Batter", by Harvey Mandel. In some countries that is probably not even legal.

"Canon", by Michel Colombier. Close your eyes, and imagine a Serge Gainsbourg album (say, "Histoire de Melody Nelson") orchestrated by George Martin. And relax.

"Carrefour", by Luis Bacalov. What is Italian for "blacksploitation soundtrack"?

"Encore", by Nicolas Jaar. This was snuck out, digitally, as a free gift not long after the release of "Space Is Only Noise". And I'm sorry to say that I missed it. It is some distance removed from the opening track on this hypothetical mixtape, which only serves to demonstrate the wide fields in which Jaar is able to work his particular kind of magic.

Song of the day (2)

"World Away", by Tweedy.

From 2014's largely under-the-radar "Sukierae" double album: private music nevertheless released for public consumption. Meaning it was made for the sake of making it: always the best reason. (And we now know it didn't completely drain Jeff Tweedy's creative coffers.) 

But why are we here? Because Spencer Tweedy demonstrates otherworldly gifts by managing to make something done in 7/4 time sound funky as heck. I can't imagine that's an easy thing to do.

Bonus beats: he can also do it live.

Song of the day (1)

"It Means I Love You", by Jessy Lanza.


New Jessy Lanza. Assisted, as with her first album, by Jeremy Greenspan.

I can go for that.

Me and Apple Music, we got a thing goin' on

The first thing I would say about Apple Music is that it's a whole lot of fun. In fact, it might be the most fun you can have for twelve bucks a month, if you are a music nerd who has a decent broadband speed and an internet plan that gives you unlimited data. (At this moment in history 1000 gigabytes per month works for us.)

You feel a sudden urge to listen to some Laibach? There it is, more Laibach than you can poke a trident at. Old-skool Dunedin sounds? Where do I start? Donny McCaslin? (Because, y'know, "Blackstar".) Check. Electric Miles? How many weeks have you got to spare?

But, as Jeremy Clarkson so often said on "Top Gear", there was a problem.

A sensible person would do the research before leaping into the unknown. Me, not so much. Having dived into Apple Music with my ears pinned back, what I discovered, as many people (I now know) seem to have discovered before me, is that if, like me, you have eleventy million random songs sitting in your iTunes folder on your computer, then, when you sign up to Apple Music, the metadata (I have no idea if that's technically the right word) for all of those eleventy million random songs, even your 15-year-old's Garageband experiments, are sent into the cloud: problem number one. Apple then proceeds to upload all of the songs that don't match its own database into the cloud: problem number two. Those that do match songs in its own database it doesn't upload, but if you have given your own copies of those songs cover art, or tagged them in a particular way, all of that gets tossed out and replaced by Apple's defaults: problem number three. Then, when you turn on the Music app on your phone, all of that metadata from those eleventy million songs (remember those?) from your computer gets replicated on the device, clogging it up and making it impossible to find the music that you have manually synced to the device in order to be able to listen to it offline, which was the point of having a fancy phone in the first place: problem number four.

I reckon four is enough problems. But we can't quite leave it there. I spent an inordinate amount of last weekend (let's not mention here how not-impressed Adrienne had by then become) clearing most of those eleventy million songs from the computer, and switching off something called the "iCloud music library", in a vain attempt to start from scratch, naively thinking that by doing so I could at least get rid of the forest of useless "ghost" songs from the phone. But it was not to be. It seems that Apple remembers, even when you would prefer to forget.

But, or so they say, time heals all wounds. In the space of a week, Apple Music and I have come to an accommodation. There turns out to be a way to switch off the metadata from my phone while still being able to store on the phone, and listen offline to, stuff from Apple Music that I might (hypothetically) otherwise have been sent to the dark(ish) web to, uh, obtain by other means; e.g. new albums by Tindersticks and Tortoise. And I suppose giving the laptop a thorough clean-out has merit anyway. Also, I was fortunate (or anal) enough to have backups of everything, so all of my obsessive tagging and filing was not lost forever. So it's all, as they say, good.

But back to Apple Music itself. It isn't perfect, of course (although this is, in a way, surprising for an Apple product), and the integration issues between iTunes and Apple Music really ought to be addressed by the company. (I don't see why they can't do it by way of two separate programs/apps, but what do I know?) What is missing? The entire Tzadik catalogue, for one. That was actually the first thing I looked for, and initially I thought its absence might be a deal breaker. But I haven't found many other huge gaps like that (the Soul Jazz and ECM catalogues would be nice), and so much else is available that it probably doesn't really matter. Once you have played around with it for a while, it becomes almost embarrassingly easy to instantly listen to anything you choose from a surprisingly high percentage of all the recorded music currently available. The curated playlists and radio stations I am still finding my way around. I may not use the radio, given that there is so much else that is directly searchable and able to be listened to as and when; but some of the playlists have been smartly constructed, and have already sent me off in new directions. (Who knew that Panda Bear sounds like our old favourite The Reels?)

If I think of it, I'll let you know in three months' time whether I decide to pony up for the paid subscription. I probably will.

Hope that helps.

Wait, did somebody mention Laibach?



(Any excuse.)

2016: Let The Good Time Roll

If you can start the year off with a new song by Cornershop, it's going to be a good year.

(nb quite possibly the cheapest video ever)

David [Not] Live

I wasn't intending to add to the reams that have been written about Bowie in the past few days, but I suspect I'm not going to be able to move on until I have gathered my thoughts. So here goes.



The first time I knowingly, and with intent, heard a song by David Bowie would have been the Soul Train video of him doing "Golden Years". But I had been aware of Bowie as "Bowie" much longer ago than that, on account of my cousin was a major fan, and so I had come across a number of Bowie records while looking through the records at her house. (My aunt was appalled. Men wearing makeup and dresses?) I also remember a conversation with the sons (a few years older than me) of a sharefarmer who worked with us, this must have been around 1976, regarding my confusion about the recent chart success of "Space Oddity", which I understood to be a much older song. (I had no idea then that something in the charts might not be entirely "new".)

I think that my first Bowie album must have been 1979's "Lodger", which I bought as soon as it came out and for reasons that I no longer recall. This was the Australian pressing, without a gatefold (making the sleeve patently ridiculous as well as cheap) and with a complete lack of sleeve notes. The absence of credits, I suppose, added to its mystery, but I wanted desperately to know who was involved in this fascinating album and had no way of finding out. I was well into my Eno obsession by then, and I could see a few "Eno" writing credits on the label, but "produced by David Bowie and Tony Visconti" told me less than I would like to have known. I would probably have fallen under the spell of ""Heroes"" and "Low" much sooner otherwise. (It possibly says something about me that the most exciting thing about the "Bowie Is" exhibition was seeing the actual EMS synth used on "Low". I may have squealed.)


Bowie went quiet after "Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)" (an album I didn't rate as highly as Marcello has now convinced me I should have, although I did win a copy of the seven-inch of "Ashes To Ashes" at a Blue Light Disco held at the Fish Creek hall), and a year and a half later I went off to University, to new and exciting times. My access to music increased exponentially, and I quickly moved backwards to "Station To Station" and "Young Americans" (as well as ""Heroes"", "Low", and the two Iggy Pop albums produced by Bowie), and developed at least a passing acquaintance with his earlier work. Bowie reappeared in 1983 with "Let's Dance". I hated it. "Let's Dance" seemed to me, who was hungry for new and different sounds, to be the ultimate in selling out. (I am aware that I allowed particular youthful "attitudes" to cloud my vision in relation to certain records; this one, I remain convinced, I was right about, notwithstanding Richard Cook's glowing review in the NME.)

At that point, I crossed Bowie off my list, although I did allow myself to be talked into venturing out to the no-longer-existent VFL Park, Waverley, for the Melbourne leg of the Serious Moonlight tour. What do I remember about that show? How far away the stage was, and consequently how small Bowie looked. How the sound was like listening in a canyon; it was all around you and yet impossible to catch. How the car park was impossible to get out of afterwards. It is quite possible I was only there because of the lure of seeing The Models as support act; although of course by then they had started to turn their own gaze towards the possibilities of megastardom, making them the perfect match for Bowie, but for all the wrong reasons.

I thought then that that was it for Bowie and me.

And then he came back.

And then he was gone.

So, what was it all about? For me, at the end of the day(s), it was all about that incredible four-album run from "Station To Station" to "Lodger" (the latter being the one they always ignore in career run-throughs, but I am not (just) being contrarian when I say it is my favourite Bowie album; it really is), without which I would be nothing.

Try to imagine a world without Bowie. More than once he saw where music could go and dragged it, sometimes shockingly, in that direction. Beyond music, he forced people to question their own prejudices, broaden their own horizons. He watched. He listened. He adapted. There will always be someone. We were fortunate, I think, that that someone, in the late twentieth century, was Bowie.

David Bowie. Magpie and chameleon.

Bowie's In Space

What if your favourite David Bowie song wasn't even a David Bowie Song?

Kids these days.

As for myself, I'm not finding this to be as funny today as it was two days ago. But it is clever enough, and sympathetic enough to its subject, that I'm confident that with the passage of time I will one day be able to enjoy it as much as I once did.

(Click the link above to watch. Embedding, understandably enough, has been disabled.)

I can't go on, I'll go on.

#putoutyourmagneticwhiteboards

(From an original idea by Carl.)