I know that's hyperbole, but Tonight isn't even Bowie's worst album. Ranking music is completely up to the individual, but for me, Tonight is better than NLMD, Reality, The Next Day; three Tin Machine albums (that includes Oy Vey), and better than the debut album (which is treated with kindness because it is twee, cute, and yes, a debut). It's as good as BTWN. It's also better than many records by major artists that are considered good. Have you ever looked at the charts in the past 60 years? There is a LOT of crap there. Just a quick google will reveal horrors. Tonight suffers because it came at the end of a peerless run of excellence so it sounds like Bowie falling off a cliff. Tonight is a crap Bowie record, but is a solidly mediocre 80s pop record; and it has two and a half excellent songs on it (Alien, Blue Jean, Neighbourhood Threat). And that's two and a half more than some "major" artists make in their life.
I love Bowie. He's my favourite artist of them all. Because of this I'm a completest and can honestly say that Tonight is just about the worst record, by anyone, in the whole of my modest collection.
I enjoyed reading your appreciation of the album. Since I'll be buying this box, I'll need every encouragement to reappraise. It's actually good to know there's someone who values it. But honestly, Bowie went bad at Let's Dance, and Tonight is a steaming pile of nondescript filler for the most part. I don't think I'll ever understand how the likes of Tin Machine can be criticized when it was, in a way, reacting to...... this. There may be worse albums by other artists - but if so, I'd have missed them. The only reason I know of Tonight at all is because it's Bowie. Released by anyone else and I'd of given it a wide berth and have totally erased it from memory. Never Let Me Down is streets better to my ears, and that's before it's been reworked, and despite Too Dizzy. IMO.
I actually LOVE Never Let Me Down (Zeroes is actually a really cool song) mainly because whenever i listen i am ENTERTAINED which i thought is the whole point of music? Tomight i also admit to liking and i think even Too Dizzy is ok even with questionable lyrics( he might be saying he's too mad to take her out for a drive,not let her out of sight could mean he feels he can not leave her anywhere, the guy he's gonna 'blow away' could be 'blow away' as in no longer friends which they may have been an pushing for a fight could be arguement and break could be break up as in end relationship. Sorry if the 'Too Dizzy' explanation is long winded lol but i think words can mean totally different things and the tunes are good so just be entertained. Tonight i like including the track 'God Only Knows' and think it's strange people say it lacks emotion? When i hear that track it always sounds like he uses a lot of emotion( listen to the chorus carefully he sounds as if he is about to cry!) I guess my point is not to be so harsh on these albums ,as if they were done by someone else opinion may be higher of them. I first came into Bowie when i heard 'hours......' which i also find entertaining, it's not all about lyrics,concept or meaning
I'd say that "Don't Look Down" is better than "Neighborhood Threat," the latter of which suffers from that big 80s sound. "Tumble & Twirl" is a solid 80s pop track though. So I'd have to say that there are four good tracks on the album. Except for "God Only Knows," I find the rest listenable.
Rather than a reaction to his previous three records, Tin Machine was Bowie jumping off one bandwagon (80s stadium rock) onto another (80s alternative rock). He was completely directionless at the time, and so I don't buy that Tin Machine was some sort of reaction or creative rebirth. Rather than reacting, Bowie was unreactive, aimless and looking for a new sound. But the cliche has become myth which has become legend and Tin Machine is somehow seen as something that it never was, nor could be. And don't forget, after Tin Machine, he went right back to Nile Rodgers and BTWN which out-Tonighted Tonight. Everybody knows what he was trying to do with Tin Machine. He had been listening to the Pixies, Sonic Youth, Husker Du, the Boston and the Seattle bands, SST label etc. Not an interview went past without him lauding these bands. It was genuinley excellent music, and a lot of it has rightly become classic. But he approached that particular sound and somehow made it utterly boring, missing the point entirely...a middle aged millionaiire playing alt college rock in a Saville row suit...Terrible preachy lyrics, horrible "tunes". Everything that was good in the music he was listening to and trying to recreate was fked up. The Pixies covers in the Tin Machine shows were just excrutiating. It was an utter failure and rightfully dropped like a stone. btw, I didn't attempt to write an "appreciation" of Tonight. I really do think it is a crap Bowie record and I never play it. But its still better than the worst he has done. Bowie made about 10 or so truly outstanding ten-out-of-ten albums, a handfull of excellent albums and another handful of dire ones.
depends what you mean by "classic". It tends to mean art that is widely recognised over a long period of time to be outstanding. hmmm.... Funnily enough, Oy Vey Baby contains (what I think) to be the best recording of the Tin Machine "project". This. One can really hear the nucleus of the Outside album there (Outside was played on the same tour)
Well, you're entitled to your opinion, of course. But both Bowie and Gabrels talked about Tin Machine being a reaction against the previous few albums, so you're contradicting the artists themselves. I personally don't consider Tin Machine part of "80's alternative rock". It was plain old rock, imo. Whatever it was/is, it was apparently precisely what Bowie needed at the time. He apparently felt he'd lost his core audience, and needed to clear the decks - that was Tin Machine's job.
If you acknowledge there's the building blocks of Outside there - doesn't that alone signify Tin Machine was more than just "Bowie jumping off one bandwagon (80s stadium rock) onto another (80s alternative rock)"? Sadly, Oh Vey is pretty terrible, imo. I wonder if we'll see the full show in the relevant box set?
Well, I meant it wasn't really a reaction because he was going from one bandwagon to anther rather than reacting to the staleness of his previous records with something new and intersting. Far from what was needed, it had the effect of pushing him further down into the depths of unoriginality and banality than he already was. And I agree, Tin Machine is not part of those excellent alt rock albums. It was supposed to be. It failed because it sounded less Pixies and Dinosaur Junior and more like a pub band. And if the project was supposed to be clearing the decks that doesn't explain why he went straight back to those same decks he was playing immediatley prior to TIn Machine and recorded BTWN....
Don't forget these shows were played well after both TM albums had been recorded (and no other Tin Machine albums would be made). What Bowie attempted in late 1988 with Reeves was what I was describing. The first Tin Machine record (Bowie's "reaction") was jumping on a bandwagon. I think it was obvious to him from the critical response it got, and even worse with the second album when he found himself without a label, that the sound needed to change. And that is what is heard on the fag-end of the second TM tour. It appears that much of that re-direction was due to Reeves.
Well as I say, you're contradicting the artists themselves on this one, which is fair enough. From what I've heard and read, Bowie was reacting against the new audience he'd picked up, feeling they weren't his core audience. Tin Machine was the result. That it's a straight rock album is really harking back to Ziggy/Aladdin Sane/Diamond Dog era, imo. The tours at the time were the same. No stadium rock, no light shows, no frills. I suppose you could say this was precisely what the alt. rock people were doing at the time, but then again all they were doing was playing rock in small venues, which was hardly groundbreaking. I'd say that Tin Machine was very effective in jettisoning fans who found him through Let's Dance and Tonight, wouldn't you?
Again, you're contradicting the man. He was not at all surprised by the lack of sales with Tin Machine. Pandering to sales - which he'd tried to do with with Tonight - was exactly what he wanted to move away from. Of course, everything evolves. Reeves finally stopped working with Bowie because ultimately Bowie went back to being... well Bowie, on Hours.
Your first post and it's about Bowie's least appreciated albums (tracks even). Welcome, there is so much more to explore.
Least appreciated on this forum at least. Which may well have been what prompted the post in the first place.
It’s Dinosaur Jr. Anyways, I think It took a lot of guts to do what he did with Tim Machine. Dropping the solo moniker of David Bowie, must have been put him through hell dealing with EMI at the time. If you think he was jumping bandwagons, he could have simply put out on an album with his name on it and brought in Steve Albini to produce it. He changed genres about 5 times or so in the 70’s to great effect. The main public would have bought a new David Bowie album and his ardent fans would not have judged a change of styles from the same guy who went from soul music to electronic minimalism in less than 2 years. Kraftwerk’s Autobahn came out in 74, was Low in 77 jumping on that band wagon?? Sure, one could say Tin Machine is rooted in 80’s alt rock, while others view the project as a precursor to grunge. As far as BTWN being the follow up to the project, I find that as more of an outlier than a shedding of the TM skin. BTWN is one of my least favorite albums of his, though there are some nice moments, and yes he brought in Nile Rodgers, but it was a stand-alone studio project, it wasn’t followed with a Serious Moonlight Part Two tour. When he took his break from Tin machine for the Sound and Vision tour and reissue campaign, he could have rode that wave of his past into the sunset, but instead went back and made TM2. Tin Machine WAS the beginning groundwork for what would eventually lead to Outside, one of the man’s greatest albums. Also, dismissing Tin Machine as only a David Bowie project does a great disservice to the rest of the band, especially Reeves Gabrels.
