David Bowie is Pissing Me Off
I just bought the David Bowie album Heroes which I had never listened to before. Of course, I'd heard the title song "Heroes." And I dug Bowie primarily from his glam-Ziggy days. And I dug Brian Eno who collaborated on all the tracks with Bowie; Robert Fripp is also in the band for this album.
Wait a minute. I might need to back up here for a moment. See, you should know that I 've recently become a bit obsessed with the song "Heroes" - I'd watched a performance video of Bowie doing this one night while browsing through YouTube movie videos (this pursuit can be rather addictive, especially once the boy is in bed and daddy has had a glass of wine or two - it's like having an iPod with a huge selection - for free! - and there's a video attached to each song). Bowie casually sing-speaks his way through the whole song. During one of the the "guitar" breaks (more on that later) he actually steps away from the mic and lights - taking his bloody damn time - a cigarette. Puff. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Singing: "I - I will be King. And you - you will be Queen, and nothing will drive us away. The emotion in his voice builds to almost uncomfortable intensity - like he's crossed some line and it's too real, not a performance.. "We can be heroes; just for one day." I'm not gay, but I'd follow him to the ends of the earth and do what ever it is he wants me to do. I am smitten and I like girls.
After watching Bowie's performance, I couldn't get that song out of my head. It's so hauntingly compelling yes, a bit over dramatic, but that somehow works balanced in the droney comfort of the Eno-Fripp backing, making it all sound somehow both intimate and aloof at the same time, emotional and machine-like. So, I bought the album.
And I don't know which I really feel. Either,
a) I'm pissed off at it. Or,
b) I embrace its genius.
The first track is this robotic synth-nu-wave wash. Its obviously the forebear of a whole new sub-genre that dominated early MTV. All jerky motion and synth-rhythm stabs that would make Eddy "Electric Avenue" Grant drool.
But I digress... the song also kinda sucks. It sounds like a synth-pop museum piece: as quaintly cutting edge as, say, DEVO. But I keep listening to it, thinking that it's growing on me - the robot rhythms are downright hypnotic (it is Eno after all) with little curlicues of virtuosity that bob up and down through the mix (it is Fripp after all). And the second song is kind of like that too. Abrasive in the mildly dissonant harmonies (is that even possible?), the kind of disc that I can't listen to as long as anyone else is in the room unless I have headphones on. This one is more annoying. But that elevates the third track "Heroes" to a whole new plane - it is sooo good to hear this after what my ears have just been through. The next two songs on this side (and though it's a CD, make no mistake - there are two distinct sides here) finish where we began, bringing it back down to where my feelings are once again ambivalent at worst or vacillating wildly between two widely separated emotions at best. And then the second side begins and it's not even a Bowie album anymore, but a Brian Eno album around the time of Taking Tiger Mountain and David Bowie is here to help out by adding some effects-laden vocals, melody, and saxophone scronks over the Eno with Frippertronics soundscapes. And now all is forgiven, whatever was up with the first side has brought me here and it's really fine after all, relaxing even as it is inducing claustrophobia. This stuff most have blown minds in 1977.
But it must have also pissed some people off, and I can see why folks grabbed for the gasp of fresh air that was the Sex Pistols because this Bowie seems as if it might cause cancer if I listen to it much longer.
I cant take it anymore. And I cant get it out of my head.
I just bought the David Bowie album Heroes which I had never listened to before. Of course, I'd heard the title song "Heroes." And I dug Bowie primarily from his glam-Ziggy days. And I dug Brian Eno who collaborated on all the tracks with Bowie; Robert Fripp is also in the band for this album.
Wait a minute. I might need to back up here for a moment. See, you should know that I 've recently become a bit obsessed with the song "Heroes" - I'd watched a performance video of Bowie doing this one night while browsing through YouTube movie videos (this pursuit can be rather addictive, especially once the boy is in bed and daddy has had a glass of wine or two - it's like having an iPod with a huge selection - for free! - and there's a video attached to each song). Bowie casually sing-speaks his way through the whole song. During one of the the "guitar" breaks (more on that later) he actually steps away from the mic and lights - taking his bloody damn time - a cigarette. Puff. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Singing: "I - I will be King. And you - you will be Queen, and nothing will drive us away. The emotion in his voice builds to almost uncomfortable intensity - like he's crossed some line and it's too real, not a performance.. "We can be heroes; just for one day." I'm not gay, but I'd follow him to the ends of the earth and do what ever it is he wants me to do. I am smitten and I like girls.
After watching Bowie's performance, I couldn't get that song out of my head. It's so hauntingly compelling yes, a bit over dramatic, but that somehow works balanced in the droney comfort of the Eno-Fripp backing, making it all sound somehow both intimate and aloof at the same time, emotional and machine-like. So, I bought the album.
And I don't know which I really feel. Either,
a) I'm pissed off at it. Or,
b) I embrace its genius.
The first track is this robotic synth-nu-wave wash. Its obviously the forebear of a whole new sub-genre that dominated early MTV. All jerky motion and synth-rhythm stabs that would make Eddy "Electric Avenue" Grant drool.
But I digress... the song also kinda sucks. It sounds like a synth-pop museum piece: as quaintly cutting edge as, say, DEVO. But I keep listening to it, thinking that it's growing on me - the robot rhythms are downright hypnotic (it is Eno after all) with little curlicues of virtuosity that bob up and down through the mix (it is Fripp after all). And the second song is kind of like that too. Abrasive in the mildly dissonant harmonies (is that even possible?), the kind of disc that I can't listen to as long as anyone else is in the room unless I have headphones on. This one is more annoying. But that elevates the third track "Heroes" to a whole new plane - it is sooo good to hear this after what my ears have just been through. The next two songs on this side (and though it's a CD, make no mistake - there are two distinct sides here) finish where we began, bringing it back down to where my feelings are once again ambivalent at worst or vacillating wildly between two widely separated emotions at best. And then the second side begins and it's not even a Bowie album anymore, but a Brian Eno album around the time of Taking Tiger Mountain and David Bowie is here to help out by adding some effects-laden vocals, melody, and saxophone scronks over the Eno with Frippertronics soundscapes. And now all is forgiven, whatever was up with the first side has brought me here and it's really fine after all, relaxing even as it is inducing claustrophobia. This stuff most have blown minds in 1977.
But it must have also pissed some people off, and I can see why folks grabbed for the gasp of fresh air that was the Sex Pistols because this Bowie seems as if it might cause cancer if I listen to it much longer.
I cant take it anymore. And I cant get it out of my head.