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Post by Prole Hole on Jan 23, 2017 5:03:20 GMT -5
Let's Dance is one of only three Bowie albums I don't basically know inside out. There's a reason for this - it's really not good. It starts with "Modern Love", which is one of my absolute least favourite Bowie songs... it just feels so grating and insincere and I just don't buy it for a second. And after that we get "China Girl". And things go downhill from there (and we were already at the bottom of the slope). This isn't Bowie's worst album of the 80s. Not when the decade holds Tonight and Never Let Me Down. But it's ordinary, and bland, and utterly unremarkable, and almost impossible to care about. And if there's one thing David Bowie should never be, it's unremarkable.
I do quite like the title track, though. It's stupid, and big, and insanely melodramatic, but at least it sounds like it's supposed to be stupid, and big, and insanely melodramatic. I have no problem understanding why that wouldn't be someone's cup of tea, but the problem with "Let's Dance" is it becomes the default mode of 80's Bowie, but without the sense of knowing and distance that makes this song at least bearable. Talk about coming to believe your own myth.
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Post by Nudeviking on Jan 24, 2017 20:12:17 GMT -5
Tonight (1984)Let's Dance was pretty bad, but apparently one of David Bowie's best selling albums of all times proving people are stupid and have bad taste. So how did David Bowie follow up on that massive hit and capitalize upon his new fanbase? By releasing another album of shitty 80s pop rock only this time one that was mostly cover songs! Pre-Existing Prejudices
I know a bunch of these songs from their original versions. "God Only Knows," is one of my all time favorite songs and I like the pair of Iggy Pop songs he's got on here. I don't think I know any of the Bowie originals. And in judging a book by it's cover, I kind of like the album cover even if Bowie does look like a Smurf. Songs
"Loving the Alien" Boring slow crap with xylophones and glockenspiels. Some random 80s Guitar Institute of Technology guitar solos show up a couple times. Synth basslines. Christ Jesus this song is long. I feel like a year has passed but still there's guitar noodling going on. Fuck, a string section...when will this all end? "Don't Look Down" White guy reggae. Fuck this shit. This would be bad enough if it was just David Bowie doing a fucking god awful white guy reggae song but it's an Iggy Pop song. A good, sleazy rock n' roll song with rock organ and carefully deployed rock n' roll saxophones transformed into fucking white guy reggae. "God Only Knows" Oh come on! What the fuck did The Beach Boys ever do to you, you fucking asshole?! Why would you do this to one of the greatest pop songs ever written? What possessed you to hear "God Only Knows" and think, "You know what that song needs? Half-assed crooning and a metric fuckton of saxophones." God only knows how much I fucking hate this shit. "Tonight" Oh this is an Iggy Pop song too. I mean there's a bajillion songs titled, "Tonight," so I didn't expect it to be a third Iggy Pop cover. This one is again re-imagined as a shitty white guy reggae song and it's fucking awful. It sounds like a goddamn Bony M song for fuck's sake. I hate this album so much. "Neighborhood Threat" The third Iggy Pop cover on this album. I know Iggy is great, but isn't this a little excessive? Maybe the third times a charm and Bowie will finally offer up a cover that isn't terrible. Nope. Dave, you egg sucking dog, what the fuck was that?! The original is a goddamn perfect song. Snarling and paranoid. Yours sounds like it belongs on the Top Gun Soundtrack. "Blue Jean" There's a lot wrong with this song. The verses have stupid Little Mermaid, "Under the Sea" marimbas and there's so much goose fart saxophone all over the place, but the chorus is honestly pretty decent. I like frantic, screaming David Bowie and that's what we've got going on during the chorus so I'll give this one a pass. "Tumble and Twirl" Oh what the fuck? Miami Sound Machine in the house. Trumpets and bongos and cowbells and shit all over the place. David Bowie is singing about the splendor of Borneo. You can dance in the sand. They have good t-shirts. Leon has nine daughters and a stereo. Leon hides in the trees and watches David Bowie fuck his nine daughters in Borneo. There are mud roads in Borneo. This is possibly the worst song I've ever heard in my life and it is just fucking endless. "I Keep Forgetting" Oh joy another mediocre cover! That's just what I needed. More shitty brass farting all over the place. Awful 80s guitar sound. At least this song is short. "Dancing With the Big Boys" So close Dave. You were so close to having an okay song Morphine-esque song here but then you had to have some stupid octave dropped vocals grunt "Big Boys," and ruin everything. Bonus Tracks!
I listened to some sort of version of this album with bonus tracks tacked on to the end. These are those tracks. "This is Not America" This is not a very good song. Things that are apparently un-American: snowmen melting, falcons falling out of the sky, crazy Casio beats, the phrase, "Sha la la la." "As the World Falls Down" 80s shit ballad. Garbage. Is there anyone on Earth who wants to listen to an 80s ballad? Seriously what the fuck is the point of a shitty synth ballad? I'm not adverse to slow jams or mellow tunes, but this shit is just lame as fuck and it just keeps going. There's a fade out so I can only assume that they are still playing it to this very day. "Absolute Beginners" Fuck why are these songs all so long and boring. If you've got a barebones song chunk that you want to put on an album keep that shit short. Don't stretch it out to seven minutes or whatever and pad it with random conga line interludes. To be honest I stopped paying attention about three minutes in each of the three times I listened to this track so maybe it gets good in the back half of the song. I don't know! Final Thoughts
David Bowie really outdid himself here. I thought that Pin Ups would be the worst of it, but it's not. Not by a long shot. This is a bajillion times worse. Part of that might have been because this time around the bulk of the covers he picked were songs I was more familiar and fond of than the ones on Pin Ups. Part might have been the fact that bad 80s Bowie is intrinsically worse than bad 70s Bowie. Or it could have been the fact that when I first heard Pins Ups I hadn't yet heard any truly great Bowie, but now I have so this shit just fucking sucks so much. I have one more horrible 80s album to go before David Bowie himself realizes he's terrible and starts a proto-grunge band. I can do it...I think.
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Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Jan 24, 2017 20:57:54 GMT -5
Do you plan on covering Bowie's albums with Tin Machine, Viking?
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Post by Nudeviking on Jan 24, 2017 21:55:29 GMT -5
Do you plan on covering Bowie's albums with Tin Machine, Viking? Yes, because his discography isn't large enough as it is and because I actually own the first one on compact disc.
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Post by Meth Lab Shenanigans on Jan 24, 2017 22:02:57 GMT -5
Modern Love is one of Bowie's absolute best songs. Wish the rest of Let's Dance was as good (though Ricochet and the title track are quality songs too).
You're in for some garbage, but push through it and you get to the batshit industrial experiment of Outside, which is great. And his final two albums are easily on par with the Station to Station->Scary Monsters period IMO.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Jan 24, 2017 23:22:07 GMT -5
Aww, I like Loving the Alien.
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Post by Meth Lab Shenanigans on Jan 24, 2017 23:25:44 GMT -5
Aww, I like Loving the Alien. Me too! It and Blue Jean are gems on an otherwise lackluster album.
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Trurl
Shoutbox Elitist
Posts: 7,471
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Post by Trurl on Jan 25, 2017 7:52:21 GMT -5
"Modern Love" is a monster of pop fluff and a great dance tune that didn't sound like the rest of the dance music at the time. Love that song.
"This Is Not America" is from the soundtrack to "The Falcon and the Snowman". I liked the movie at the time, and consider the song as one of his better 80s tunes.
I also like "Loving the Alien" and "Blue Jean". The extended video for Blue Jean is pretty good, Bowie's a funny guy.
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Jan 25, 2017 10:29:10 GMT -5
Aww, I like Loving the Alien. Yet another '80s song that sounds like it might be about mastubation.
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Post by Nudeviking on Jan 31, 2017 20:13:18 GMT -5
Never Let Me Down (1987)The third and final album from David Bowie's Shitty 80s Pop Star Trilogy. The last two were not great so I don't have high hopes for this one. Let's just get it over with. Pre-Existing Prejudices
I don't think I've ever heard any of these songs before in my life or at least do not recognize any of the titles on the track listing. David Bowie looks like he's 14 years old on the cover. Songs
"Day-In Day-Out" This does not bode well for the album to come. This is a mess of brass stings, synth bass, gravelly David Bowie caterwauling, bullshit lyrics, a fucking robot voice, and a chorus of ladies covering for Bowie's tunelessness. There's some bullshit guitar solo rubbish that pads the song out to nine thousand hours. "Time Will Crawl" Time falls wanking to the floor... This one I almost like. The synth line is pretty great and some of the lyrics are pretty good. That being said the Kenny G. saxophone garbage can fuck off. Seriously this song would be good if they just replaced the saxophone shit with a guitar. "Beat of Your Drum" The beginning of this is the 80s-est thing ever. I like the quasi industrial drum machine nonsense going on during the verses but they're otherwise rubbish. The choruses on the other hand are pretty solid save for, of course, the fucking saxophones farting all over the place. "Never Let Me Down" Harmonicas. Nope. Whistling? Nope. Seinfeld bass? Nope. This song is musically too busy and yet somehow boring as shit. "Zeroes" I thought for a second I was going to get a real rocker but then it's like, "Fuck you, here's a goddamn sitar and stupid lyrics about a corvette." I can't even listen to this. It's such a bad song. Cheesy guitar solos and bad singing and so much goddamn sitar. I don't know what I hate more in western pop music: saxophone, harmonica or sitar. They're all fucking awful. "Glass Spider" Oh fuck this nonsense. Bullshit-like spoken word-like garbage to start things off before Big Dave starts murmuring shit like, "mommy come back cuz it's dark out," and some guitar asshole plays 80s hard rock meedly meedly guitar solos. This song is a goddamn disaster. At some point Davy B. seems to get tired of singing actual words and just replaces the lyrics with either "John John John John John" or "jawn jawn jawn jawn jawn." I can't tell and don't care enough to check. "Shining Star (Making My Love)" I think the drum machines in this are pretty good but good god is that quasi-rapping part terrible. "New York's in Love" Why are all the songs on this album so busy? There are too many things going on and as a result the songs end up becoming sonic sludge. Buried in this aural slagheap there are a couple decent sounding hooks that would have been better if they'd been given room to breathe. "'87 and Cry" I greatly dislike this song. It saps my will to live. More bullshit saxophones, shitty lyrics, and overly busy musical arrangements. It sure is a song on this album. "Too Dizzy" This song was apparently so terrible that David Bowie excised it from later pressings of this album. I honestly can't see why. It's no worse than any of the other bullshit songs on this fucking dumpster fire of an album. Yes, there are G.E. Smith and the Saturday Night Live Band saxophones everywhere, but that's par for the course with D.B. "Bang Bang" Another Iggy Pop cover? Christ alive Dave, I know Iggy's great, but you don't have to cover his entire discography. This cover's not a terrible song, but again the original version is a majillion times better. It would have made for a pretty decent b-side, but as an album closing track? Meh. Bonus Tracks!
"Julie" The music sounds like Dire Straits. The vocals sound like David Bowie half-assing it. It's an okay previously unreleased b-side but nothing a casual fan of David Bowie ever need hear. "Girls" Why couldn't this have been a cover of the Beastie Boys song of the same name? Instead it's an overlong ballad with more diarrhea fart saxophones. Garbage. "When The Wind Blows" The first 20 or seconds: "Holy shit this song is awesome! This riff is so badass!" The rest of the song: "Yawn..." Final Thoughts
This was a bad album and probably the saddest thing about it is the fact that a lot of the songs on this album actually had some cool parts to them that just got covered in nonsense. Instead of keeping shit simple, David Bowie went balls to the wall and threw saxophones and drum machines and endless guitar solos and choirs of ladies and superfluous Seinfeld bass slaps all over everything burying the decent song components under a heap of bullshit. I think even Bowie realized how far afield he had gotten with this album since he basically gave up being David Bowie and formed a rock band prior to his next musical venture. Best Song(s): "Time Will Crawl" and "Bang on Your Drum" Worst Song(s): Pretty much everything else save for "Bang Bang" which was just okay, but otherwise unessential.
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Dellarigg
AV Clubber
This is a public service announcement - with guitars
Posts: 7,499
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Post by Dellarigg on Jan 31, 2017 20:23:27 GMT -5
I think all the Iggy Pop covers were to give him some much-needed royalties. The 80s weren't kind to Iggy, and Iggy wasn't kind to the 80s.
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Post by songstarliner on Jan 31, 2017 20:41:33 GMT -5
"Modern Love" is a monster of pop fluff and a great dance tune that didn't sound like the rest of the dance music at the time. Love that song. "This Is Not America" is from the soundtrack to "The Falcon and the Snowman". I liked the movie at the time, and consider the song as one of his better 80s tunes. I also like "Loving the Alien" and "Blue Jean". The extended video for Blue Jean is pretty good, Bowie's a funny guy. 'Are you calling me clever, clever??'
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Post by ganews on Jan 31, 2017 20:42:39 GMT -5
Never Let Me Down (1987)"Never Let Me Down" Harmonicas. Nope. Whistling? Nope. Seinfeld bass? Nope. This song is musically too busy and yet somehow boring as shit. These are all things I like, so I had to listen to this one. But I see that by whistling you meant coach's gym whistle, which really is terrible. This isn't a completely terrible pop song, but oh man the child spoken-word is the worst.
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Post by Nudeviking on Jan 31, 2017 21:26:00 GMT -5
I think all the Iggy Pop covers were to give him some much-needed royalties. The 80s weren't kind to Iggy, and Iggy wasn't kind to the 80s. If that is indeed the case, David Bowie seems like a decent guy. The covers were still mediocre though.
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Post by Nudeviking on Feb 3, 2017 21:46:32 GMT -5
Tin Machine (1989) By the late 80s David Bowie had lost sight of what had made him a great music guy in the first place. He had released a heap of shitty albums filled with terrible songs and retired his entire back catalogue in "one last tour." But David Bowie wasn't done with music. He soon formed a band named Tin Machine. David Bowie was the front man of course but the songwriting process was apparently more democratic than it had been on David Bowie solo albums. Today we're listening to the first Tin Machine record. Pre-Existing Prejudices
I have heard all these songs and liked them all well enough. This album is one of the three (four if you count that album that's an orchestra playing Peter & The Wolf with Bowie serving as narrator I had as a small child) David Bowie albums I owned prior to beginning this project. Why do I own Tin Machine? That's a good question. If I had to guess some alterna-rock person probably mentioned it in an interview in Spin or Alternative Press and I, flush with part-time job disposable income, purchased it because Kurt Cobain or Billy Corgan had talked it up. That being said, I haven't really listened to this in probably more than a decade so I wonder if it will be as okay as I recall it being. Songs
"Heaven's In Here" A blusey guitar rock song. It's a little long and features a tad too much harmonica for my tastes but it's not an awful album opener. I dig the wild guitar stuff going on during the outro. Already Bowie sounds a lot more into what he's doing here than he had on the last two albums. "Tin Machine" "Tin Machine" by Tin Machine on the album Tin Machine! Woo! The guitar riff during the verses is pretty solid. Overall it sounds like a lot of the alterna-rock bands that would be on the radio five or six years after this was released. "Prisoner of Love" This song kind of reminds me of Echo and the Bunnymen which is not a bad thing in my opinion. "Crack City" Quasi Black Sabbath "Iron Man" guitar part going on in the intro before the song proper begins and David Bowie sings about crackheads being "a bunch of assholes with buttholes for their brains," and calls crack dealers "fuckheads." I think I like raging straight edge David Bowie. "I Can't Read" This is great 90s style alternarock with quiet verses and loud choruses. David Bowie yells that he "can't read shit anymore." The ending has guitar noise similar to "Radio Friendly Unit Shifter." "Under the God" This should be the theme song to Donald Trump's America™. David Bowie screams about Nazi fucks and fascist politicians while driving rock with out of control whammy bar guitar antics pummel the listener. "Amazing" Requisite slow song. It was kind of needed after "Under the God," but not really the sort of thing I'm into. "Working Class Hero" I was kind of dreading this. In my opinion Bowie has, up to this point, a pretty terrible track record with cover songs. 'Sup Pin Ups...how you doin'? Moreover I really don't like post-Beatles John Lennon but this cover was surprisingly decent. It's not the best song on the album, but it's not something I would feel compelled to skip if it came up on shuffle. "Bus Stop" This song is pretty short. The guitar stuff and the end is good, but otherwise it seems kind of like filler. "Pretty Thing" Pixiesesque. I'm talking about the band of course and not the faefolk This is another loud-soft song with a driving beat. This one was one of my favorites back in the day. It's still pretty solid. "Video Crimes" Great chorus. Fantastic guitar heroics. Five thumbs up out of seven. "Run" More killer riffs. "Sacrifice Yourself" Remember those late 80s early 90s funk-rock bands? This sounds like one of them. It's all wild guitar solos and frantic bass. It's like an early 90s Red Hot Chili Peppers song but slightly less disgusting. There's a callback to "Suffragette City," with Bowie bellowing, "Wham bam thank you child," which is even grosser than the original (which is pretty gross). "Baby Can Dance" Out of everything on this album the first part of this sounds the most like a David Bowie song. The second half Tin Machines it up. Another pretty solid jam and a decent song to close out the album. Final Thoughts
This was so much better than the last three Bowie albums and honestly better even than I recalled it being. Bowie seems more focused here and the songs are by and large better than they were post-Scary Monsters. I suppose cutting one or two songs from the back half of the album would tighten the flow of it up a little but other than that I don't have any complaints about Tin Machine. Bring on Tin Machine II!
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Post by Meth Lab Shenanigans on Feb 3, 2017 21:59:06 GMT -5
I think all the Iggy Pop covers were to give him some much-needed royalties. The 80s weren't kind to Iggy, and Iggy wasn't kind to the 80s. If that is indeed the case, David Bowie seems like a decent guy. The covers were still mediocre though. by most accounts he was a really good dude once he got off the cocaine. Took him a while to figure out how to make good non-coke-fueled music though
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Post by Prole Hole on Feb 4, 2017 6:31:00 GMT -5
That most unique of things, a positive Tin Machine review! I remember this coming out when I was a student in the early 90's, because it was released when I was really, really getting into David Bowie and I was very roundly mocked for daring to defend it. In retrospect I probably oversold my defence of it at the time but it's honestly not nearly as bad as its reputation, especially if you're in the mood for a bit of guitar thrashing and little thought. I unashamedly adore Crack City, even though the lyrics desperately need a bit of a polish (that "buttholes for their brains" line make my butthole tighten in embarrassment every time I hear it), but it's a killer guitar riff and Bowie's voice on it is amazing - his best vocal performance in a decade, I'd go so far as to say. The cover of Working Class Hero doesn't quite work for me - I think it's played too literally whereas I think Lennon's original is profoundly ambiguous, and better for it - but overall there's lots to enjoy here. It's of its time - maybe even slightly ahead of it - but that's no bad thing.
This will not be the conciliatory tone I strike when we hit the inventively-named Tin Machine II...
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Post by Nudeviking on Feb 4, 2017 9:53:00 GMT -5
That most unique of things, a positive Tin Machine review! I remember this coming out when I was a student in the early 90's, because it was released when I was really, really getting into David Bowie and I was very roundly mocked for daring to defend it. In retrospect I probably oversold my defence of it at the time but it's honestly not nearly as bad as its reputation, especially if you're in the mood for a bit of guitar thrashing and little thought. I unashamedly adore Crack City, even though the lyrics desperately need a bit of a polish (that "buttholes for their brains" line make my butthole tighten in embarrassment every time I hear it), but it's a killer guitar riff and Bowie's voice on it is amazing - his best vocal performance in a decade, I'd go so far as to say. The cover of Working Class Hero doesn't quite work for me - I think it's played too literally whereas I think Lennon's original is profoundly ambiguous, and better for it - but overall there's lots to enjoy here. It's of its time - maybe even slightly ahead of it - but that's no bad thing. This will not be the conciliatory tone I strike when we hit the inventively-named Tin Machine II... I don't know why people would have heaped scorn on this when it first came out and wasn't really paying attention to Bowie when it was released (I picked this up in '96 or '97 if memory serves correctly). It's not as artistically innovative as something like Low but it's an album of good guitar rock and is as much a reinvention of Bowie's persona as..well maybe not Ziggy Stardust, but at least the Thin White Duke, or Cool British Guy in a Leather Jacket in Germany. And it's a metric shit ton better than bullshit like Tonight or Never Let Me Down.
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Post by Prole Hole on Feb 4, 2017 10:05:13 GMT -5
That most unique of things, a positive Tin Machine review! I remember this coming out when I was a student in the early 90's, because it was released when I was really, really getting into David Bowie and I was very roundly mocked for daring to defend it. In retrospect I probably oversold my defence of it at the time but it's honestly not nearly as bad as its reputation, especially if you're in the mood for a bit of guitar thrashing and little thought. I unashamedly adore Crack City, even though the lyrics desperately need a bit of a polish (that "buttholes for their brains" line make my butthole tighten in embarrassment every time I hear it), but it's a killer guitar riff and Bowie's voice on it is amazing - his best vocal performance in a decade, I'd go so far as to say. The cover of Working Class Hero doesn't quite work for me - I think it's played too literally whereas I think Lennon's original is profoundly ambiguous, and better for it - but overall there's lots to enjoy here. It's of its time - maybe even slightly ahead of it - but that's no bad thing. This will not be the conciliatory tone I strike when we hit the inventively-named Tin Machine II... I don't know why people would have heaped scorn on this when it first came out and wasn't really paying attention to Bowie when it was released (I picked this up in '96 or '97 if memory serves correctly). It's not as artistically innovative as something like Low but it's an album of good guitar rock and is as much a reinvention of Bowie's persona as..well maybe not Ziggy Stardust, but at least the Thin White Duke, or Cool British Guy in a Leather Jacket in Germany. And it's a metric shit ton better than bullshit like Tonight or Never Let Me Down. I think it was because he had been on a decade long career slide that people had a hard time taking Tin Machine seriously. The attitude was very much "oh here's this guy that used to be good, then went to shit, and now he's pretending to be in a band because he can't hack it on his own". I don't think its hard to understand why people would think that, but it's fairly unjustified, and this was released when "hard rock" meant Spandex and long hair rather than, say, grunge. This was released in 1989, remember, so we're still two years away from Nevermind, and this kind of rock was deeply unfashionable then. There were also some unfavourable comparisons with Wings (once-gifted artist pissing about in a band that was beneath him for no real reason) that I remember at the time. But you're right, this is better than anything on the last two or three albums). No gasooolllleeeeeene required!
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Post by Nudeviking on Feb 8, 2017 19:20:18 GMT -5
Tin Machine II (1991)It's time for another album of Tin Machine rock jams! Aw ye ye! I really liked the first one, so I'm hoping that this one is similarly rockin'. Pre-Existing Prejudices
I don't think I've ever heard any of these songs before, so none. The album cover above is the censored US version, because I don't want to get in trouble for posting a picture of statue cocks. Songs
"Baby Universal" Bowie's an alien again maybe. This time around though he's got a driving rock beat and grunge guitar riffs. This is a pretty decent way to kick off an album. "One Shot" Lots of hard rock guitar solos in this one. I thought the intro industrial guitar noise was good. The rest of the song is just kind of mediocre. "You Belong in Rock n' Roll" I like the menacing fart bass during the verses. There's some saxophone during the choruses but it's pretty well implemented since for the majority of the time it's low and droney and just playing whole notes. "If There Is Something" Oh this is a cover of a Roxy Music song. Tin Machine do it as a hard rock song here with a too many effects pedal guitar noise solo. I never really liked the honky tonk Roxy Music version but this isn't really much better. Bowie's vocal delivery works a little bit better for me than Ferry's so it's got that going for it. "Amlapura" The requisite 90s rock album semi-acoustic song. It kind of reminds me of How It Feels To Be Something On era Sunny Day Real Estate. It's not a bad slow jam and does go on too long. "Betty Wrong" Here come the saxophones! There's some quasi-spy riff stuff going on that's pretty cool, but this one feels kind of inessential. "You Can't Talk" Rubbish. It's overly busy and unstructured. Dave does semi-rapping. This is not good. "Stateside" Bloooooooooooooooooooze! I don't think David Bowie is even singing here. This is slow and boring and contains every blooze cliche known to man. This is also not good. "Shopping for Girls" I like the music here. Good riffs. That being said, this is a song about a "important issue," and those usually turn on pretty badly when dealt with by Bowie. At best you get him calling drug addicts "assholes with buttholes for their brains," at worst you get him using ethnic slurs and getting me yelled at for listening to racist bullshit. This time around the issue being tackled is the sex trade in Southeast Asia. More specifically child prostitution. The lyrics are a sledgehammer to the skull declaring child prostitution to be bad. To me though, they seem a little disingenuous since they are being sung by a guy who sexed a 13 year old. "A Big Hurt" Dive bombing guitar noise. This kind of sounds like Mudhoney to me. I probably would have put this on a mixtape in 1995 between Alice In Chains and Candlebox. "Sorry" Not Bowie on vocals since he's super occupied with blowing saxophone bullshit all over everything. This is not good, but at least it's short. "Goodbye Mr. Ed" This is a pretty solid jam. I like the guitar tone a lot and would probably say this is one of the better songs on this album. "(Secret Song)" Because it's the 90s we get an unlisted secret song. It's hard rock riffs and more saxophone shit. There are no lyrics. It's a minute long. It's a waste of time. Final ThoughtsThis was kind of a let down. I thought the first Tin Machine album was pretty good. It wasn't a capital C Classic or anything but it was a solidly consistent rock album. This time around the highs aren't as high while the lows are lower. It's still not completely terrible. I think it's better than the bulk of Pop Star David Bowie's output and 1960s Whimsy David Bowie but it's pretty inessential. That being said, I still want to purchase this t-shirt. Best Song: "You Belong in Rock n' Roll" Worst Song: "Stateside"
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Post by Prole Hole on Feb 9, 2017 5:24:06 GMT -5
To me, Tim Machine II is a huge step down from the first album, and basically crap. "You Belong In Rock And Roll" is just so disappointing as the lead single here, and while the first TM album at least feels like they throw themselves at the music with ferocity and sincerity, here everything just feels calculated and weaker. My description of this album as against the first one is this: the first album is like when you play through an overdrive pedal and its loud and awesome, and the second album is when you turn the overdrive up so far it stops being loud and awesome and instead sounds like an angry bee trapped in an envelope - completely ineffective. The album actually doesn't start bad (the first couple of tracks are fine and I have a weird affection for "Baby Universal"), but it all just drains away to nothing - "Stateside" is rubbish, "You Cant Talk" is rubbish, "Shopping For Girls" is rubbish, "A Big Hurt" just sounds derivative... you get the idea. I can't even mount a "at least it let Bowie work through things" defense of this one - he's clearly really engaged on the first Tin Machine album, and its great. Here? More 80s bullshit not-caring, but in hard rock rather than slick pop. Piss poor.
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Post by Nudeviking on Feb 10, 2017 7:16:26 GMT -5
Black Tie White Noise (1993)It's the early 90s and David Bowie has decided he's done with Tin Machine? Why? Who knows? Maybe he wanted all the money for himself. Maybe the guy who sang on "Stateside" wanted to sing more and Dave was like, "Aw hell no." Maybe the other Tin Machine guys were like, "Yo Dave, you're a cool dude and you wrote 'The Man Who Sold the World,' and a bunch of other boss songs, but you're kind of a shit saxophonist. Maybe stick to the guitar?" and Dave was all like, "Yo fuck you dudes. I'm the best saxophonist! I don't need you fuckers holding me back!" Pre-Existing PrejudicesI do not know any of these songs except "I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday," as is usually the case with these things, this is a cover and I am only familiar with the original version and have never heard the David Bowie version. Songs
"The Wedding" Church bells. Catholic organ shit. 90s "Y'all ready for this?" synths. Saxophone fuckery. This is going to be so bad. "You've Been Around" Synth menace! Pretty Hate Machine era Nine Inch Nails drum machines. David Bowie and a chorus of robots. Here come the trumpets! Saxophone droning. God this is endless. I hate this song. "I Feel Free" O joy another cover fucked over by David Bowie. This is awful. More Jock Jam drum beats and fucking awful saxophoning. I hate this fucking album so much. "Black Tie White Noise" What the shit is this nonsense? Bad New Jack Swing that's what the shit it is. It's another heavy handed song about a "serious issue" that David Bowie bungles artlessly. This album is so awful. I miss Tin Machine. "Jump They Say" "Jock Jam Mega Mix" featuring David Bowie crooning and shitastic saxophone fuckery. Awful! I might hate this more than Pin Ups. "Nite Flights" Early 90s drum machine bullshit. Boring crooning vocals. At least there's no saxophone. "Pallas Athena" The fuck is this spoken word shit? Ug more C + C Music Factory drum machines. Saxophones shitting all over everything. This is so fucking annoying. "Miracle Goodnight" Oh come on with this spoken word shit man! This was almost okay and then you have to be like "I had a dream one time about a sailor. I don't wanna know the past. I wanna know the real deal." At least there's no saxophone. "Don't Let Me Down & Down" Oh fuck this. Yeah smooth 90s R&B by David Motherfucking Alien Bowie. Bad saxophone? You know it dude! This is goddamn awful. Fuck were the early 90s awful. This is the most early 90s shit ever. "Looking for Lester" Why is this like six minutes long? It's more Eurodisco drum machines and saxophone squawking. Actual that's not entirely true. There's some saxophone that is kind of competently played that is obviously some session guy and then here comes Big Dave blowing diarrhea shit all over the place. It is fucking awful. "I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday" Oh come on you motherfucker! Morrissey too? It wasn't enough for you to fuck up The Who and The Beach Boys and Iggy Pop? Jesus Titty Fucking Christ man...I can't even deal with this anymore. I'm done. "The Wedding Song" Don't know. Don't care. Bonus Tracks!
"Jump They Say (Alternate Mix)" Shrug "Lucy Can't Dance" Whatever. Final ThoughtsThis was seriously the worst David Bowie album of all. Pin Ups at least had "Sorrow" and whatever the first track was called ( Ed. It was called "Rosalyn"). Bad 80s Pop Star Bowie too would have one or two good songs per album. This was just a heap of Club MTV with Downtown Julie Brown drum machines and terrible, terrible saxophone bleating. There is not a single song on here I ever want to hear again in my life and to be honest this is the first album since I began this entire thing with Queen like half a year ago that I couldn't make it through. The songs were all shit and super long. I think I need a David Bowie hiatus. Peace out until further notice. Best Song: None of Them Worst Song: All of Them
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Post by Meth Lab Shenanigans on Feb 13, 2017 0:27:35 GMT -5
You're in luck: next is Outside, and it owns.
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Post by Prole Hole on Feb 13, 2017 3:46:49 GMT -5
You know, I was ready to defend Black Tie White Noise, I really was. I hadn't heard it probably since about its release but I remember it being OK, and a step up from Tin Machine II (not, admittedly, a difficult bar to clear). And then, at Nudie's prompting, I went back and listened to it. What an absolute insufferable pile of shit. How did this ever get good reviews at the time. Bleary, tedious and astonishingly derivative, there's just nothing to recommend here. At least Pin-Ups had a striking cover...
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Trurl
Shoutbox Elitist
Posts: 7,471
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Post by Trurl on Feb 13, 2017 11:11:33 GMT -5
You're in luck: next is Outside, and it owns. I agree Outside owns, but I think it might depend on your tolerance to insufferable spoken-word shit. I know I skip those tracks whenever they come up these days.
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Post by Meth Lab Shenanigans on Feb 13, 2017 12:55:03 GMT -5
You're in luck: next is Outside, and it owns. I agree Outside owns, but I think it might depend on your tolerance to insufferable spoken-word shit. I know I skip those tracks whenever they come up these days. I skip them too. The actual songs are really good, though.
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Post by Prole Hole on Feb 14, 2017 3:00:40 GMT -5
Yea I have to agree - music great, "concept" more than a little overbearing...
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Post by Nudeviking on Feb 14, 2017 19:18:59 GMT -5
1. Outside (1995)Here we go again! More David "Registered Sax Offender" Bowie. At this point I just want to be done with this guy. Black Tie White Noise was a diarrhea firestorm of an album and I do not have high hopes for this. It's like 900 songs and I seriously doubt David Bowie decided to record an album of 45 second hardcore punk songs. It's going to be long. It's going to be painful. Pre-Existing PrejudicesI know of "I'm Deranged" via the Lost Highway Soundtrack. There are two versions of that song on the album: "I'm Deranged (Edit)" and "I'm Deranged (Reprise)." I liked both of them well enough but less than the Smashing Pumpkins, Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson songs that caused me to buy the album in the first place when I was 16 or 17 years old. Songs
"Leon Takes Is Outside" "Mumble mumble 1999 mumble mumble Martin Luther King Day mumble October..." This is going to be fucking awful isn't it? "Outside" Mid-90s alternarock. If you like that kind of stuff this is pretty good. If you dislike mainstream mid-90s alternarock though you will probably hate this. "The Hearts Filthy Lesson" Someone listened to The Downward Spiral. 90s industrial guitars. Marilyn Manson vocal deliveries. "A Small Plot of Land" Wild jazzbo pianos. Repetitive vocals. Wailing, discordant guitar meedling. Seven minutes long. I checked out a couple minutes in. "(Segue) - Baby Grace (A Horrid Cassette)" Oh fuck this. Pitch shifted spoken word bullshit. "Hallo Spaceboy" Fuck yes! This song owns so hard! This is the only kind of music I have any use for. Can I drive a stolen car a million miles an hour to this song? Yes. Could I get in a choreographed barroom brawl with ninjas to this? Yes. It's perfect. "The Motel" I understand needing to cool it out after an asskicking powerjam like "Hallo Spaceboy." Honestly even the mightiest of powerjams would seem like a cool out after that, but this is too cooled out. It's Weather Channel Five Day local forecast slowbro jazz with crooning Dave Bowie. Dud. "I Have Not Been to Oxford Town" Me either. Musically this reminds me kind of that Primitive Radio Gods song. This is really boring and repetitive. "No Control" Yay! 90s industrial synth menacing. This is pretty good, but I don't like when Bowie does torch song singing during the choruses. He sings the same way that he sang "Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy," and it doesn't suit the music at all. If he yelled or sang a little bit differently I think it would improve the overall quality of the song. "(Segue) - Algeria Touchshriek" Ug more spoken word bullshit. Some guy is a reject from the "world wide internet." This is so terrible. "The Voyeur of Utter Destruction (As Beauty)" Jesus Christ this song title! This looks like the sort of pretentious bullshit title a bad high school metal band would come up with. This song is not bad high school metal though. It's all over the place with drum machines and jazzbo piano and guitar/synth noise and laser bass. It's all a little too much for me. It made me anxious. "(Segue) - Ramona A. Stone/I With Name" David Bowie is a lady robot sing-talking some shit. There's kind of a song here with Nine Inch Nails industrial pounding and discord while Dave and some ladies chant "I am with name. I am Ramona A. Stone," for four minutes. "Wishful Beginnings" Ah ah ah. Ah ah ah. Ah ah ah. Ah ah ah. Ah ah ah. This sounds like the second half of "Heroes," only this time around David Bowie didn't have the sense to not sing. He moans some lyrics while minimalistic synth creepiness happens for five long, long minutes. "We Prick You" AW YE YE! This song kicks six kinds of ass. It's all rave drums and bass as thick as Delta Burke and synth awesomeness. With one listen this has entered the upper echelons of my favorite Bowie songs. "(Segue) - Nathan Adler" Ug...spoken word shit. Shaft guitar funk and David Bowie doing a "black guy" voice. "I'm Deranged" This was a pretty solid song when I heard it on the Lost Highway Soundtrack. This version's not bad, but I honestly prefer the edited version on the Lost Highway Soundtrack to this one which I feel goes on a little too long. "Thru' These Architects Eyes" The beginning of this sounds vaguely familiar. It's okay I guess but it dawns on me that a lot of David Bowie's lyrics are complete nonsense. It's just a string of random words. "(Segue) - Nathan Adler" Oh joy! More of this shit. "Strangers When We Meet" This seems like a Berlin Trilogy outtake. Its a pretty decent song; a lot less manic than the vast majority of the songs here, but I think it works pretty well as an album closer. Final Thoughts
I realize that this is a pretty low bar to clear, but this was a huge step up from Black Tie White Noise. That's not to say this album is without its faults. For starters it is way too long. Much like Metallica's Load and Soundgarden's Down On The Upside this seems like it's intentionally overlong as a marketing thing ("The longest CD humanly possible!") I probably would have liked it more if it was 20 minutes shorter. I don't think it'd even really be that hard to get it down to like 45 or 50 minutes. They could start by cutting the stupid spoken word shit which adds nothing vital other than minutes on an already overlong album and then maybe tighten up a couple of the seven minute dirges from the middle of the album. It'd be great. So where does this rank in the grand scheme of things? I'd say it's nearly as good as Scary Monsters but the length of this was a problem for me so advantage Scary Monsters. Best Song: "Hallo Spaceboy" or "We Prick You" Worst "Song": "(Segue) - All of Them"
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Post by Meth Lab Shenanigans on Feb 14, 2017 22:15:16 GMT -5
It's a flawed album, but I like it a lot overall. I removed all the segues from my copy, which makes it a lot more enjoyable.
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Post by Nudeviking on Feb 14, 2017 22:31:38 GMT -5
It's a flawed album, but I like it a lot overall. I removed all the segues from my copy, which makes it a lot more enjoyable. I check the Wikipedia pages for these albums post writing about them and apparently there was a Version 2 of this album (it was originally the LP version) that excises most of the Segues and edits some track lengths which is more or less what I think the album needed. Maybe I'll seek that one out and see how it works.
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