David Bowie A New Career In A New Town 1977 1982 Boxset 3

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Zach Johnson, Dec 28, 2016.

  1. TonyCzar

    TonyCzar Forum Resident

    Location:
    PhIladelphia, PA
    I'm looking forward to Tidal offering the Lodger remix and the Re:Calls for some time, even if it is limited. 'Cuz this time I'm going for the 192/24 download (no "Lodger '17", no "Re: Call") and a book off eBay from a broken-up box.
     
  2. TonyCzar

    TonyCzar Forum Resident

    Location:
    PhIladelphia, PA
    You say that like it's a bad thing.
     
    oldturkey likes this.
  3. oldturkey

    oldturkey Forum Resident

    Location:
    Gone away.
    I got fed up with waiting for a reasonably priced vinyl Gouster on EBay and just ended up buying the whole box. I haven't put an order in yet for ANIANT - I'm still thinking about it, but I do want the Lodger remix.
     
  4. footprintsinthesand

    footprintsinthesand Reasons to be cheerful part 1

    Location:
    Dutch mountains
    True, it's a bloody shame and spreading like wildfire on steroids. NME these days is more disgusting than some tabloids, and often incorrect.

    Hope the Lodger remix will be worth our while, not expecting anything spectacular though. The Vampire version of Scary Monsters is probably more interesting and maybe even better sounding.
     
    oldturkey likes this.
  5. TonyCzar

    TonyCzar Forum Resident

    Location:
    PhIladelphia, PA
    You mean the 'dead body' incident? Hey, Philly Loves Bowie, dead or alive.
     
  6. Dave Gilmour's Cat

    Dave Gilmour's Cat Forum Resident

    I have zero interest in his private life. Prefer to listen to an amazing catalogue of music. Art like this always outlasts gossip and rumour.
     
  7. oldturkey

    oldturkey Forum Resident

    Location:
    Gone away.
    Er...:tsk:!
    I'm expecting spectacular. It can't fail to be if TV is mixing in previously unheard bits and pieces.
    Who knows what other gems his interviewees are claiming they've witnessed? Whatever, it's not classy to put it out there because it will just become accepted as true even if it's not. Dylan Jones either has no judgement or no scruples in doing anything for money, and it just shows that successive attempts to rein in the sickeningly poor behaviour of the British newspapers obviously haven't worked.
     
  8. TonyCzar

    TonyCzar Forum Resident

    Location:
    PhIladelphia, PA
    Well, the above-referenced tale is the only one I've read so far (found at the NME site) and I don't think it reflects badly on DB at all, but from context, I gather there has been a mini-explosion of salacious tales which have escaped my attention.

    If anything, this specific story reflects a taste of the insanity surrounding his rise to stardom. I'm left thinking, "How does one get through that and how does one come out the other end?"
     
  9. johnnyyen

    johnnyyen Senior Member

    Location:
    Scotland
    I believe the author was paid in 50 pieces of silver.
     
    oldturkey likes this.
  10. BlueSpeedway

    BlueSpeedway Curated Iconic Half-Speed Picture Disc

    Location:
    England
    Wow, that sort of foresight from music "critics" was a rare occurrence. Thanks for posting, fascinating.
     
    oldturkey likes this.
  11. Vaughan

    Vaughan Forum Resident

    Location:
    Essex, UK
    Thought this might interest some. It's from around 2016 - but it's Visconti working with the Heroes master:

     
  12. Vaughan

    Vaughan Forum Resident

    Location:
    Essex, UK
    You know, there's some merit in not analyzing things too much. I can do that with Lodger now, especially as we have a context within the discography - but my memory of buying the album on release was that I was just looking forward to more Bowie. I wasn't thinking ab out a "Berlin Trilogy", I wasn't comparing and contrasting it with Low or Heroes. I wasn't even c0ncerned about the sonics. I was just open to a new David Bowie release, and looking forward to what it offered.

    From the opening descending tones of the percussion that unfolds into Fantastic Voyage, it just was. Lodger is considered part of a trilogy, but like the other two albums it stands alone as well. The experimental sounds were great, and added an avant garde touch, the melodies were strong, and the playing seemed natural, unrehearsed, and therefore exciting. Sure some tracks were a little strange at first - yes, Yassasin, I'm looking at you - but it was sprinkled with Eno's crickets and Bowie's fantastic vocals.

    The weakest track for me is Boys Keep Swinging, but the video saved that too. I wonder if some of those who dislike/have trouble with it might be better served by not thinking about too much. Put it in, crank it, and let Bowie wash over you. It's exotic, it sounds a little different, but it's still the man at the height of his creativity.
     
    Runicen and crozcat like this.
  13. mr.datsun

    mr.datsun Incompletist

    Location:
    London
    re. Dylan Jones's book.

    Bowie stories have been going around for ages. Of course, no one would mention it here around the time he died. It's not news and then whoever said Bowie was a saint? I'm sure we've heard the worst of it already. I don't think it's worth getting worked up over. Rock stars. The cadaver story just sounds like one of Bowie's jokes.
     
    Last edited: Aug 21, 2017
  14. oldturkey

    oldturkey Forum Resident

    Location:
    Gone away.
    It's probably my favourite Bowie track of all time - but we all see things differently!
    Here's another paragraph from the abovementioned Carr/Shaar Murray book about that track:

    "Numan made his debut on Top of the Pops performing Are Friends Electric the same night that the promotional video for Bowie's then current single Boys Keep Swinging was shown. The single - a mock-jolly ode to the pleasures and privileges available to those fortunate humans who happened to be of the male gender - had come across initially as a witty parody of the Village People, who were right in the middle of their fifteen minutes - but the video was an altogether grimmer and more shocking affair. Bowie performed much of the song in a deadly mock-macho manner (John Travolta meets Bryan Ferry) and the choruses in drag, using three different outfits and prancing out along a catwalk, each time removing his wig and smearing his make-up. The effect was ghastly: a calculated allusion to Roman Polanski's brilliant, scarifying movie The Tenant (an allusion that seemed strengthened by the title and cover of 'Lodger'), and it placed an entirely different interpretation on the song. After seeing the video, the song itself seemed altered: Bowie's 'impersonation' of women suggested that the rest of the song featured an 'impersonation' of a man, that all acting-out of gender stereotypes is an 'impersonation'. It was a far more convincing and far less 'glamorous' attack on sex-role stereotypes than all the flouncing and teasing of Ziggy Stardust.
    The single - which had been selling more than respectably up to that point - dropped like the veritable stone. Numan's single made number one."

    It was really a tribute to former partner Romy Haag. I guess even by 1979 the British public didn't want their pop stars to be impersonating transgender cross-dressing Berlin club cabaret acts at tea-time on a Thursday evening.
     
    Last edited: Aug 21, 2017
    Solace, NunoBento, Michael D and 2 others like this.
  15. oldturkey

    oldturkey Forum Resident

    Location:
    Gone away.
    Well, we'll see. Maybe I'll buy a second hand copy if it turns out to be exploitative. I've got Alias David Bowie and Angie's book, so I'm well aware of a lot of the gutter-raking, but when The Daily Mail and The S*n get involved in just turns my stomach. I'm not sure that serious biographers need to write about these sort of allegations in a sensationalist way even if at all. I mean - do we really want to read about this stuff? Bowie's not here to defend himself. The same thing happened with Lennon, and 40 years later we still don't know what is true and what was just made up to earn a few pieces of silver from the press.
    While we want to read about their lives, music and inspirations I don't think it's really necessary to publically trash their good name unless it's really in the public interest like with Saville.
     
  16. Mo0g

    Mo0g Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    Unless there are more damaging revelations than I am aware of, along the lines of paedophilia or other such highly illegal and immoral activities, I believe the only people to either care or think anything less of the man will be those who already hold him in the lowest regard over him being bisexual, and/or living off cocaine and milk, etc. In some quarters more "revelations" of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll might well raise him in their estimations!
     
  17. Vaughan

    Vaughan Forum Resident

    Location:
    Essex, UK
    Fortunately, the gutter-raking stuff can be easily ignored. My favorite author, JG Ballard (my username is a character from one of his novels) had an awful "biography" written about him, "conveniently" published after his death. It didn't take long for the word to get around that is was sensationalist nonsense, and the Amazon reviews to sink it came quickly.
     
  18. bob60

    bob60 Forum Resident

    Location:
    London UK
    Erm, the bits I read after googling it did suggest highly illegal and immoral activities.
    I certainly won't be buying this book, I just don't trust these books that come out after a person has died and not around to defend themselves.
     
  19. Justin Brooks

    Justin Brooks Forum Resident

    i hear you. i just threw my biography of Lincoln in the trash.
     
    Neonbeam likes this.
  20. TonyCzar

    TonyCzar Forum Resident

    Location:
    PhIladelphia, PA
    The Guardian offers their two cents:

    My friend David Bowie by Hanif Kureishi

    [snip]

    The collage or dialogical method chosen for this book by Jones, collecting the voices of those who knew or worked with Bowie and running them together chronologically, works very well. Most notably used by Jean Stein and George Plimpton in Edie, their 1982 biography of Edie Sedgwick, it ensures the reader is not pinned down by the biographer’s point of view or prejudices. It is a pleasure to hear from everyone: lovers, managers, journalists, Croydon girl Kate Moss, musical figures such as Carlos Alomar, Earl Slick, Mike Garson and Tony Visconti.

    A treat for enthusiasts, whose number seems to be increasing, Bowie bulges with essential and telling Spinal Tappish gossip. The time Jimmy Page spilled beer on Bowie’s silk cushion and blamed Ava Cherry; when a clearly envious Paul McCartney invited him over and then couldn’t bear to talk to him, but got Linda to instead. The time Bowie and John Lennon went on holiday to Hong Kong and were determined to try monkey brains. And when Bowie’s shows had intervals he’d sit in the dressing room watching Coronation Street on VHS.

    More importantly, as a more-or-less single parent, he brought up his son, the film-maker Duncan Jones, impeccably, and it is amusing to think of him and Lennon talking together about being good fathers. Bowie always said that Keith Richards was less out of it than he liked others to believe, being an ace at Trivial Pursuit for instance, but the same was true of Bowie.

    [snip]​
     
    hi_watt and oldturkey like this.
  21. oldturkey

    oldturkey Forum Resident

    Location:
    Gone away.
    I notice that lovers comes first in the list. This paragraph really makes it sound lowest common denominator.
     
  22. Colocally

    Colocally One Of The New Wave Boys

    Location:
    Surrey BC.
    Tony Visconti just wrote this on FB.
     
    Tsomi, Plan9, jsayers and 10 others like this.
  23. TonyCzar

    TonyCzar Forum Resident

    Location:
    PhIladelphia, PA
    YMMV. I feel the opposite. As an editor, if someone left "lovers" for last in his review, I'd be asking the author to put his pen back in his pants. (Took a year of rhetoric in high school translating Cicero. It's what you say last that you want to emphasize.)

    (And for heaven's sake, for HOW MANY years was DB asked about his sexuality by interviewers? Doesn't make it right, but he's probably had more scrutiny in that area than anybody except Jagger. To leave it out would just be weird.)
     
  24. Mo0g

    Mo0g Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    I must be using a different search phrase than you then, all I have found is the dead body story. Well, the aside from the stuff that's not in the Trynka bio, have you read that? It covers the nazi "obsession" for example.
     
  25. mr.datsun

    mr.datsun Incompletist

    Location:
    London
    I got the impression from the Penguin book-blurb that the author thinks highly of Bowie. The look behind the scenes is just a part of the Bowie's wild life. Yes, the tabloids are raking the muck, as it sells papers. I don't know what to say without spelling it out, but Bowie was a healthy, attractive and active young man who active men and women and of various ages were drawn to. Everything mutual, if not always technically above board. He was no monster in the sense you may be dreading hearing. Remember people liked him.
     

Share This Page

molar-endocrine