Bowie and musical horizons

May 01, 2009 15:26




http://rusty-halo.com/wordpress/?p=2834

Suddenly I’m seeing Bowie references everywhere. Magazine covers, movie titles, on and on. It’s like when you learn a new word and suddenly you start noticing it at every turn.

The commentary on The Man Who Fell to Earth is awesome. I think this is the only time in my life I’ve wanted to listen to a DVD commentary again. It’s all really thoughtful-art as an attempt to connect with other human beings, the imperfect nature of it, the final product as a result of the interaction of the creative piece with the person interpreting it and bringing all of their opinions and experiences. Plus Bowie manages to predict Twitter… in 1992. It’s really quite nifty!

I’ve been thinking about how the music I’ve been listening to over the past few years has led to my ability to appreciate Bowie’s work, which I doubt I’d have gotten into at any earlier point in my life*. As my initial WTF reaction to Station to Station reveals, my musical horizons still have a lot of expanding to do, but at the same time I can directly trace my ability to appreciate various Bowie elements to the bands I’ve been into most recently.

* It’s also because Bowie is dark and complex but less outright angry than most of what I’ve been into in the past. I find I have increasingly less patience with white/masculine/teenage rage as time goes by. Oh, god, I’m getting old.
* I've fallen for the early Bowie folk song "Cygnet Committee." (The best version is on the Live at the Beeb CD; you can listen here.) I can trace my weakness for this kind of emotionally-performed narrative folk song directly to Common Rotation, particularly the Eric Kuffs acoustic songs like "Princess of Venice" and "Dancer."

"Cygnet Committee" is a wonderfully expressive vocal performance from Bowie (particularly the "I want to believe in the madness that calls now!" and "I want to live!" ending) and although the lyrics are convoluted (to say the least) it's a fascinating foreshadowing of his later work: his disillusionment with the hippie movement, his fear of utopia turning to dystopia, his incorporation of the generic tropes of science fiction, his ability to turn a musical performance into something approaching theatre.

(A similar, slightly later, example of those themes is "Saviour Machine" from The Man Who Sold the World, which reads like a cross between Metropolis and Terminator. [Obviously it was inspired by an earlier source than Terminator.] It's about the people choosing to be ruled by a "savior machine" which turns on them and tells them to destroy it before it kills them all. I think Bowie had an alternative life as a pulp sci-fi writer; it's less interesting musically than "Cygnet Committee," though.)

* And in a totally opposite musical direction, PIG. I see so many similarities to Bowie in PIG's career--the incorporation of genres not usually associated with rock (including via ironic nostalgic throwbacks to jazz, 50s rock, R&B), the creation of a fictional persona through which the music is performed (though Bowie had several whereas PIG just is the one--although Raymond Watts does do other things), very clever lyrics with lots of allusions and puns, mixing instrumentals into a rock album (the first time I heard Low it reminded me so much of Sinsation), spoken word (Bowie's "Future Legend" intro to Diamond Dogs reminds me of PIG's "Ojo Por Ojo"), living in Berlin before the wall fell and using it as musical inspiration (Bowie's Berlin trilogy, PIG's early work particularly "The Blood-Slicked Highway"), long rock songs that go through near-symphonic transitions (Bowie's "Station to Station," PIG's "Symphony for the Devil"). Watts has some direct shoutouts to Bowie as well--"Kundalini" is partly a play on "The Secret Life of Arabia," and Pigmata opens with Diamond Dogs inspired audience noise and onstage declaration (Bowie: "This ain't rock n roll--this is genocide!"; PIG: "This ain't masturbation--this is penetration!").

I think PIG is the thing that really opened me up to totally different genres that I'd never considered before--look at "¡Toxico!" or "Salambo," the various instrumentals, the incorporation of classical arrangements into rock songs, the cheesy Pig Orchestra songs and the jazz/swing "Head Like a Hole" cover which are reminiscent of a lot of Bowie's Aladdin Sane.

You know, sometimes I start babbling in here and get so lost that I can't figure out why I started or what I'm trying to say. There are fewer than five people on the planet who listen closely to both PIG and Bowie, and none who also listen to Common Rotation. Why am I bothering to write this? I feel like a crazy person standing on a street corner babbling to myself.
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pig, david bowie, common rotation, music

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