Nudeviking vs. David Bowie

This is just a placeholder comment for me so I get notifications, but meanwhile I find it interesting that of his first fifteen albums "Pin Ups" is the only one that doesn't jump out at me...but I still know that album cover.

Station to Station is one of my favorite albums of all time.

Be warned that after Let's Dance, things get pretty grim until Outside. You're in for a great finale, though, as The Next Day coupled with Blackstar makes for one of the best musical farewells ever.

From the two songs of Tin Machine that I've heard, with the exception of a song or two, the post-Let's Dance, pre-Outside chunk is not that good.

That one is his Pablo Honey.

"Space Oddity" (despite it not being on this album). It's his first hit and introduces some of the major themes of his discography, but it doesn't have the depth of something like "Station to Station" or "Teenage Wildlife." Still a good song though.

Space Oddity (aka David Bowie) (1969)

David Bowie's last album, which is to say his first album, was apparently a commercial failure which is something of a surprise given how good songs like "Please Mister Gravedigger (Version Two)" were and he was dropped by his record label. The music industry, however, saw something in young David and gave him another chance to prove himself. This is the result of that attempt. Originally release as another self-titled album it subsequently took the name of its big single to make things less confusing for people talking about Bowie's discography.

Pre-Existing Prejudices:
"Space Oddity," (the song, not the album). Heard it, loved it.

Songs:
"Space Oddity"
It dawns on me that this is not the "Earth below us, falling, floating..." song I thought it was. That one must be "Space Oddity II," or something so I guess I have that to look forward to on a later album. This one is still a pretty good song in its own right but never really reaches the heights of awesomeness "Space Oddity II," does. I do, however, have to give this one mad props for the sexophone (sex scene saxophone) that wails at various points in this song.

"Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed"
This song goes on way too long and has way too much harmonica for my liking. I don't know why, but I never really cared for harmonica as an instrument. I'm willing to cut Neil Young some slack when he gets all harmonica-y but that's because he had Crazy Horse and did that album with Pearl Jam and stuff, he's earned some random harmonica licks. The harmonica here doesn't feel earned. I might like it better if it was three (3) or four (4) minutes shorter and cut out the outro harmonica and high school marching band wailing.

"Don't Sit Down"
Hippie guitar noodling and "Ye ye baby ye!" lyrics that cut off before they even get going. Inessential and inconsequential.

"Letter to Hermione"
Acoustic slow jam. The guitars sound like music that would play on the Weather Channel while Your Local Forecast was displayed. The lyrics are rubbish about missing an ex-girlfriend.

"Cygnet Committee"
I don't know why these songs are so long. If you're writing a nearly ten minute song don't make it feel like a ten minute song. This is so boring and repetitive. That being said the lyrics about knowing "a man with powers and we let him use his powers and his powers were good powers," were laughable. The random MC5 lyric check made me stop listening to Bowie and listen to MC5 instead.

"Janine"
There's Credence Clearwater Revival style guitar wailing all over this song. It's not bad, but there's really nothing memorable about it. It's just late 60's Southern rock.

"An Occasional Dream"
The flutes and clarinets from the first album are back! I never thought I'd miss them, but adding weird instruments to an otherwise boring pop song really makes it into something special. A lot of these songs just felt like they were missing something and that thing was apparently flutophones.

"Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud"
Aw ye ye! Bowie's back to zany chamber pop with strings and trumpets wailing and timpani and lyrics about weird people and a weird mountain in a weird town doing weird things.

"God Knows I'm Good"
Another twee acoustic pop song about weird people. This time it's a shoplifting old lady that's the subject of the song. I kind of like the chorus and it's right in that perfect song length range where it's over before it wears out its welcome.

"Memory of a Free Festival"
Now here's a long song done right! It's kind of unfair to call it a long song since it's basically two songs for the price of one. There's the David Bowie/organ solo part which is pretty okay and then there's some random studio chatter before the superior "sunmachine" part begins. "Sunmachine" is goddamn fantastic! It's got handclaps and guys in the background screaming "AW YE YE!" "WOOOOO!" and other stupendous things of that ilk and late 60s drums and guitar noodling and rock and roll saxophones. It's a pretty decent way to end an album is you ask me.

Final Thoughts:
Time for an unpopular opinion! I preferred David Bowie I to David Bowie II. Let me temper it by saying, "Space Oddity" is at present the best David Bowie song I've heard since beginning this entire thing and the album featured a couple other songs I liked a lot ("Wild Eyed Boy from Freecloud" and "Memory of a Free Festival" if you're wondering) but a lot of the album was just kind of there and sounded too similar to other music of the time to be memorable at all. With David Bowie I even the most terrible songs...I'm looking at you "Please Mister Gravedigger (Version 2), were at least memorable due to weird lyrics or strange choices in instrumentation.  Here the weirdness is by and large scrubbed off leaving a bunch of boring, overlong, late '60s hippie pop-rock songs.

Nudeviking Maybe it’s a single version vs. album version thing? I only heard this album (and David Bowie I) for the first time a couple of years ago and, while I’ve given David Bowie II/Space Oddity a few more tries than the first I also find it mostly…not unlistenable, but not great. I kind of agree with you—I think David Bowie I has better songs but gets tiring as an entire album, whereas David Bowie II is, apart from “Space Oddity,” really only listenable in album form but still tiring.

The standard line I hear about early Bowie is that he’s simultaneously a couple of years behind the time and a couple of years ahead of the time, and that’s mostly right for these first these first two albums, though “Space Oddity” (the song) seems just perfect for 1969.

Regarding David Bowie (the one with "Space Oddity" in it), I think Lemur makes a good point wrt Bowie seeming to be simultaneously behind and ahead of the times.  As far as the album itself goes, I like it quite a bit better than Bowie's debut, primarily because this has a handful of decent songs, and one truly great song, whereas his first album is just half an hour of mildly amusing super-twee stuff.  I'm agreed with Viking re: "Space Oddity"; that song is fucking fantastic, and it's a song that I don't think I've given enough credit over the years owing to its ubiquity on classic rock radio, but it's really just great.  It's also arguably the first time we see Bowie take on a character, and it's certainly at this point in his career the first time we've seen him write a legitimately compelling story into one of his songs (he'll obviously do this on entire albums throughout much of the 70s).  I'd have to disagree on "Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed", the first few minutes of that one are pretty good, and imo better than anything off of his first album.  It could definitely stand to be shorter though.  If they'd maybe cut down the outro by a good minute or so, I think I'd have liked it quite a bit better.  I'm agreed on "Don't Sit Down", that one is pretty bad (and also comprises the end of "Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed" on the version that I listened to).  "Letter to Hermione" is pretty dull, so I won't argue with you there.  I liked "Cygnet Committee" though.  It's a bit slow to start, but once it gets going it's pretty good if you can ignore the admittedly dumb lyrics.  "Janine", admittedly, doesn't really stand out, like you said, but I like it well enough.  I didn't much care for "An Occasional Dream"; I'd agree that the different instrumentation makes for a nice change of pace in theory, but it ultimately doesn't save a dull pop song from being a dull pop song for me.  I wasn't quite as enthusiastic about "Wildeyed Boy from Freecloud"; I thought it was just OK.  I'm agreed on "God Knows I'm Good"; it's twee, but pleasant enough and not overlong.  And yeah, "Memory of a Free Festival" is also pretty great, especially once it gets into the "sun machine" part, and Bowie closes out the album almost as strong as he opened it.

Ah.... Bowie didn't write that song. That's Peter Schilling.

No, it is Peter Schilling.  Song called Major Tom.

You child of the 90s. This was easily my favorite Nirvana song from the radio. Then in college I first heard this awesome cover that was way better, which I didn't immediately recognize as the Bowie of classic rock radio because of the effect on verse vocals.

You didn't recognize the Nirvana song as a David Bowie song when Kurt quite clearly mumbles "That was a David Bowie song" to the audience at the end of Nirvana's version?

Coincidentally, Hunky Dory was just announced winner of the Anniversary Record Club. 

This is how I feel about virtually every acoustic version of a song which can elsewhere be heard being performed electric.