Thursday April 28, 2005

David Bowie

One of the most talented UK musicians and his never ending ability to come up with innovative material never ceases to amaze me. If you want a flavour of his music the singles collection cd's are the ones to go for but buy an album and listen carefully and each of these is like a mini opera. The best has to be "Ziggy Stardust" named after the character he created and then destroyed to make way for other ideas. The album is Bowie at its best. Looking at the track list there is not one that is bad. The starting mournful track "Five years", "Starman" that you cannot help but sing along to, the title track and "Suffragette city". My next favourite cd would be "Hunky Dory" , with the singles "Changes" and "Life on Mars". "Kooks" and "Andy Warhol" are memorable. The final track "The Bewley brothers" is very clever.

I would say the other CD's are not so consistant; I recently bought "Diamond Dogs" which has an excellent title track. "Aladdin Sane", again a good title track, also with "Watch that man" the first track and the unforgettable "The Jean Genie". Both these were anniversary editions with lots of interesting information from the time of the initial appearance of the album. "Space Oddity" has highlights such as the title track and the "Memory of a free festival".

His newer stuff is not so inspiring, I would like to see him live but only if I would know I was going to hear a lot of his older stuff. Collaborations with artists are numerous "Dancing in the street" with Jagger was good.