I
“You’re such a wonderful person,
but you got problems.”
The second tune on Low,
all one minute and 52 seconds
of it, contains this gem of a
lyric. It’s 1977 and records
are beginning to sound really
good, although people at the
time didn’t think so.
Tony Visconti has a new
toy called a Harmonizer and
it makes the drums sound
like they come from the future,
trashy and giant.
David calls him on the phone
from “his home in Switzerland”
and says he’d been working
with Brian Eno and they want to make
a new experimental album,
more than half the songs of which
would be weird instrumentals,
and he probably didn’t say this,
but I imagine he did, “and the songs
won’t have verses or choruses, really,
and most of them will be really short,
except the long instrumental ones.
I want to chant and sing in a made-up
language. No one will like it.
Wanna make this record with me?”
And of course Visconti says yes.
It’s absolutely the weirdest thing,
but beautiful and powerful.
This is the moment, I think, when
David Bowie invented new wave.
II
Heroes is a mess, sonically,
cacophonous and noisy, but
in the very best of ways.
Lyrically as impressionistic as
Bowie gets: “nail me to my car
and I’ll tell you who you are,”
says Joe the Lion. And yet,
“Heroes,” the song, stands as
a kind of clarion-call identity
anthem, –“we can be us,” even
if it’s “just for one day”–
vulnerable, kind of bleak,
that desperate delivery of the
third verse. Side two, more spooky
instrumentals, mood music, you’d
imagine, for some film in the works.
Eno, you realize, if you know Eno,
is all over this stuff, and the great
Robert Fripp joins Bowie on this
album, I think for the first time.
As weird as Low was, it’s unexpected
success made another crazy experiment
a forgone conclusion. While they
recorded the Heroes album, they could
see the Berlin Wall through the windows
of the studio control room.
III
My son flew in from Southern CA
this morning and his flight was
early, so I missed my morning
meditation. It’s almost 8 pm,
and loath to throw off my streak,
after listening to Low and Heroes
back to back, I decide I will
meditate this evening, not in
silence, but in the dark, playing
the first side of Lodger—
with a bourbon. I’ve never done
this before. I push start on my
Insight Timer app, put the stylus
down, sit in my desk chair in an
upright, meditative stance,
and close my eyes. Here’s what’s
similar between my normal
practice and this one: my eyes
are closed, I am breathing,
focusing on the breath when
I can, paying attention to the
movements of the mind,
occasionally sipping.
Here’s what’s different:
Lodger rocks pretty hard, I cannot
help but bob my head, I feel
my face making rock and roll
grimaces; I am, in a sense,
dancing in a sitting position,
and sipping, not coffee or
water, but whiskey.
But I keep my eyes closed
all the way through side one,
and having felt at one with
the music, I open my eyes
long enough to turn the record
over, and I sit back down
and close my eyes for side two,
for “I am the D.J., I am what I play,”
and “you know who I am, he said.
The speaker was an angel,” and
“Boys keep swinging. Boys will
always work it out.”
The evening’s meditation, in
a word, was bombastic.
And in another word, glorious.
IV
I think the first time
I felt like I had fallen
in love was the Saturday Night
Live appearance Bowie
made with Klaus Nomi,
and then, shortly after,
the videos came out
for “Fashion” and “Ashes
to Ashes.” The Scary Monsters
Bowie felt to me like my Bowie,
of my time, and even though
he was seventeen years
older, he seemed of my generation.
Let’s Dance would be the
first Bowie album to find
its way into the collecton,
but this 1980 gem would revisit
me over the years, this
whole “Berlin Trilogy”
era still later, like long
lost siblings, soul mates,
weird sisters to my budding
musical imagination.
Notes on the vinyl editions: A New Career in a New Town, 1977-1982, Parlaphone Records, 2017, box set, 180 gram black vinyl, including an opaque yellow double album version of Stage. Albums from the box I listened to in their entirety: Low, Heroes, Lodger(2017 mix), and Scary Monsters. Just a hint about how obsessive (or committed) I am to this project, I listened to the first three of these albums in a single sitting last night. Spun Scary Monsters today.
If you’re late to the party, I’m attempting to listen to (almost) every record in my collection from A to Z, writing a little poem-like-thing about each artist, but finding, especially with an artist like Bowie, that there’s too much listening to be covered by one poem-like-thing. This is the third in a series of what will probably be FIVE poem-like-things covering most of the Bowie catalog.
michael jarmer 