Day 0387 - The Idiot

Iggy Pop "the Idiot" (1977)

 
Have been wanting to dig into Iggy's solo stuff a bit more. I've really enjoyed the Stooges albums on this list, Iggy's album with Josh Homme, and the other bits and pieces I've heard from him over the years.

Iggy had checked into a mental institution to help himself clean up.  He just wanted a second chance, but nobody in the industry wanted to give it to him... until David Bowie (who had produced/remixed the Stooges' "Raw Power") came along and whisked him off to Berlin to record music and lived life to the full.

This is a great collection of songs; Bowie's influence can definitely be heard on the album, in fact it almost feels like he has overridden Iggy's own sound (though he later suggested that Iggy was a willing guinea pig for his experiments), with less of the punkish abrasiveness of Iggy's earlier work and more of a cerebral arty sound in a not dissimilar vein to what Bowie was doing at the time. The album includes the original version of the song "China Girl", which Bowie obviously also released later on the 'Let's dance' album.

The album was named after Dostoyevsky's novel of the same name.

Day 0384 - Heroes

David Bowie ""Heroes"" (1977)

A continuation of Bowie's 'Berlin Trilogy' (started with "Low") and another mix of avant-pop and atmospheric instrumentals.  While the songs on the first half are musically busy, vocally Bowie engages in some melodic minimalism.  I mean the title track vocal melody largely sits between two notes while the music gives it mood and context. "Sons of the silent age" is a bit more exploratory.

The instrumental tracks move even further into Eno/Krautrock territory and away from Bowie-the-popstar, with no obvious vocal tracks (lyrical or otherwise) featured.

Day 0378 - Low

David Bowie "Low" (1977) - got it

 

As I was listening to this album, I started to think about how this is the album where Bowie really became an artist in moving away from traditional song-forms (though that was also true of 'Station to station' to a certain extent).  As a famous singer, it was a reasonably daring move to produce largely instrumental music ("Speed of life"), or have his voice feature more as another instrument with equal billing in the mix ("Warszawa").

But of course that would be a fairly arbitrary and debatable notion; really you could just as easily say that Bowie became an artist when he started creating and inhabiting characters for his music to exist through, or when he started creating concept albums, or even when he started making music at all.

I think it would be more accurate to say that this was like when he saw Bolan doing glam and thought "I'll have a bit of that", or when he decided to investigate grunge, or techno/EDM in later years.  It was just a case of Bowie listening to krautrock and hearing people like Eno making avant, collage music and thinking "yeah, why not?!"

This album features a couple of favourites of mine, the bouncy "Sound and vision" with its compact harmonised vocals; and the majestic, beautiful 'Warszawa' that, with its chanting vocals and ambient textures, feels like it must have been an influence on my old favourite Mike Patton for some of his more atmospheric work.

A stylistic leap for Bowie and an absolute success (IMO).

Day 0351 - Station to Station

David Bowie "Station to Station" (1976) - got it

 
Originally planned to be titled "the White Duke" in a continuation of Bowie's character pieces such as Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane.  However, in the midst of Bowie's personal (relationship breakup, battle with drugs) and musical uncertainty, he cast aside all of that to just deliver a "soul record, devoid of soul".

I’m not really one for choosing favourites, but this would sit fairly high in my ranking of Bowie albums. In some ways it’s neither fish nor fowl, having touches of his glam pop sound, his recent dalliance with danceable soul, and even hints of future directions, all with its own internal musical logic. Bowie breaks further away from the 3 minute pop/rock song formula in places to explore longer-form songs.

The title track, starts musically with the glam swagger of some of Bowie’s Aladdin Sane or Ziggy Stardust tracks (or Marc Bolan, of whom he was a fan) but the vocal melody has a much looser ‘jazz’ feel, weaving in and out of the grinding riffs.

“Golden Years” picks up on the funk/soul flavour of his previous ‘Young Americans’ album. It’s a brilliant song, a successful single… and yet not (IMO) even the best thing on here.

“TVC15” hints a little at the coming Berlin trilogy while still sounding a bit brit-poppy... a foot each in the past and the future.

"Word on a wing" has lyricism to its melody and Bowie’s delivery that is hard to quantify. The whole thing rounds off with 'Wild is the Wind' a vulnerable sounding Bowie vocal over a song that almost sounds like it could be an old Nancy Sinatra pop track.