The Music Room

Overrated or legendary?

Nishankly wrote:

Overrated or legendary?

Both

Exclude Tik tok generation, same answer?

Classics are ruined by Tik Tok, the scourge of life.

Nishankly wrote:

Overrated or legendary?

L.V's chorus is what makes this truly legendary. Still a bop.

Myesyats wrote:

.

You just posted coolio on the same page man.

My bad, was listening to another song on a YT curated playlist and was very drunk. It's a decent song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tg-Q-Acv4qs

David Bowie. What an unrivaled, unparalleled... myth. Arguably... possibly... probably... the greatest, most iconic... most influential popular music artist of the 20th century. Might sound like cliche hyperbole... to the uninitiated.

Who was the "David Bowie" figure that existed before David Bowie in popular music? Who was analogous in dimension? Elvis? Maybe partly, but the wealth of cultural, musical, psychological, philosophical, anthropologic, sociological, aesthetic, (insert category) influence that could be derived from Elvis' legend did not run anywhere near as deep as Bowie's. Don't think anyone's does. Not Lennon's, not Jackson's, not Kanye's. Not even close. I may be significantly bias... but I do have a suspicion that I'm also right.

Stumbled my way back to Bowie's Station to Station album today, specifically to the last song,"Wild is the Wind", itself a cover of the Nina Simone cover.

For me, the song and that album have such a cold and haunted feel to it... The vocal delivery and treatments that Bowie uses on his vocals throughout the album make him sound like a ghoul, singing from the depths of a forgotten nightmare in a black and white 20's or 30's film. It sounds like it could be taking place inside the world of The Cabinet of Mr. Caligari.





As well read and as culturally literate as he was, Bowie probably knew and even intended this sort of feeling in his album. He certainly lived it as he was arrested during this time and was living a for all intents and purposes psychotic existence, reliant on a relentless diet of coke, milk, and peppers. His paranoia and delusions at that level hitting schizophrenic and manic heights, by his own admission subsequently in his later years.





If I have any gripes about Station to Station it is that I wish it had more of the electronic/atmospheric washes and/or avant-garde textural studio trickery that his master works that came directly after Station to Station had (i.e. The Idiot, Low, Heroes, Lodger, and Scary Monsters).

In a 2000 poll by NME, Bowie was ranked by several of his contemporaries as the most influential music artist of the 20th century. It was a no brainer really.



Before Station to Station, Bowie had already released The Man Who Sold The World, Hunky Dory, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, Young Americans, Diamond Dogs... he was already a highly influential figure musically, culturally, and aesthetically, but then he had the audacity and brilliance to make The Idiot (with Iggy Pop), Low, Lust For Life (with Iggy Pop), Heroes, Lodger, and Scary Monsters! By 1980 he had arguably broken more ground (on all fronts) than even The Beatles. Yes. He was the spiritual figurehead of both punk AND post punk, and the idiosyncratic nature of his works, which were themselves influenced by a myriad of sources, was what basically guaranteed his limitless musical influence for the future.

By 1980 it seemed like he had done everything. Like he had created everything.

Does have to be said that in America the nuance of his legend is not as well understood as it is in Europe. Takes a bit of an acquired taste to understand the immensity of this avant-garde pop figure. America only knows the pop, mostly, and even then it's a relatively shallow understanding.

Anyways...

His 2000 performance at Glastonbury (which has been ranked by some sources as the "greatest" performance in Glastonbury history because of the ethos involved) is extraordinary to me because it is symbolic of the androgynous, alien, precocious figure on the Hunky Dory album coming full circle.



If in Hunky Dory that beautiful, genius talent and pretender (indeed) that was "David Bowie" was announcing to the world that here was a figure that would emulate, invoke, and synthesize any number of avant-garde AND pop art artifacts with unmatched taste and an all consuming ambition, in Glastonbury 2000 was a different man, David Robert Jones (again donning the Hunky Dory locks after 30 years) confirming, like King Arthur returning as the messiah to save his people, that "David Bowie" was now indeed... David Bowie.

not familiar with his music, but the guy who made a Kurt Cobain biography film also made a Bowie one called Moonage Daydream... will watch it

El Gunner wrote:not familiar with his music, but the guy who made a Kurt Cobain biography film also made a Bowie one called Moonage Daydream... will watch it

You could start here.



In my estimation his greatest ever track. He plays everything on this piece (itself a demo), tis a lo-fi, idiosyncratic, avant-garde masterpiece. Lyrically, musically, and aesthetically impenetrable but accessible. A synthesis and the quintessence of what he represented. It has a ghastly yet glamorous feel to it.

Generally an open-ended yet fatalistic analogy of betrayal, emasculation, and death, all fully likely motivated by the cancer that was already eating away at him at the time of the track's production, a cancer probably caused by his years of drug use, primarily smoking.

The whole thing is incredible, everything about it imo, but my favorite feature is the effect created by Bowie's vocal. It sounds intimate, locked in, claustrophobic, like he's caught inside a cubist vortex of death and he's trying to communicate to us through plastic cup communication. He's still with us, but he's gone.



He was stuck in a place he wouldn't come back from.

The threshold of death.

^^that kinda sounds like the the musical chances Kanye would take... did Bowie produce his own beats too?

also have you heard of the Bowie, Kanye conspiracy theory... it's very iffy but still entertaining haha

usually not a fan of slowed or sped up mixes of songs, but this is dope

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNkMUw1-jYE