I
I could read more, I suppose,
to be more learned (“LUR-ned”)
on the subject, but sometimes
it’s just fun to imagine. Five years
passed between albums, a total
mystery for a guy who had been
so prolific now for two full decades.
He may have just been resting
(entirely unlikely, I think).
Or doing other stuff. Didn’t the
first Tin Machine album finish off
the 80’s? Yes, it did. Or maybe
he got a little burned-out:
hence–Tin Machine.
And my interest flagged as well.
After the first Tin Machine album,
I stopped following his output
until about half way through
the decade. I don’t know why.
The 90’s were a strange time
for Bowie’s music, in my humble
estimation, as it would produce
the most humdrum records ever
and, on the flip side,
his most radically divergent music.
By my count, in a single decade,
in about eight years, actually:
six studio albums (one unreleased
until now), and two albums
with his band Tin Machine.
This bad-ass boxset contains
all six of those studio albums,
a triple record live set, and
a four record set of single mixes,
rarities, and outtakes. This
box has the distinction of being
the less redundant collection
in the entire series. As much as
I like to gripe about the excess
of these things, not to mention
their price tags, I have taken
enormous pleasure in perusing
the entire catalog, immersing
myself for a full week in this
most iconic Bowie oeuvre.
Kind of like drugs, or sex: they
say the more you have,
the more you want. I can’t tell
you how many times in the last
week I have fantasized about
that last box in the series, the
only one I don’t have, the one
that is least justifiable, in that
all of the studio albums in it
I already own on compact disc,
except Blackstar, which I have on vinyl.
II
The idea of listening to everything
began a few months ago with
a feeling that I should listen more
widely in my collection, rather than
always favoring the new stuff.
Otherwise, I thought, why have a
collection at all? So before I knew
I would embark on listening through
the entire collection in alphabetical
order, I pulled out Brilliant Adventure,
1992-2001, thinking, why not start
with Bowie, and I listened to all six
of those studio albums. Since they
are fresh on the mind, I’ll allow myself
a little leeway in the re-listening, to
be more selective. Let’s begin with
the one I liked almost the least,
Black Tie, White Noise. Bowie, at his
worst, is still pretty good, but why
he’d want to open an album
with an instrumental, essentially
a few chords over a slow groove,
a repetitive bass line, with bad
saxophone over the top, I don’t know.
It’s a funky, danceable record,
groove oriented, showcasing
excellent musicianship,
but with few memorable melodies
or hooks, and I think
that’s my problem with it.
For Bowie, it’s just too pedestrian.
Maybe the most memorable
moment is Bowie’s surprising
cover of Morrissey’s “I Know It’s
Gonna Happen Someday.”
And I guess, it’s not great
when the most memorable
song on an album is a cover.
III
Who could resist a concept album
about a serial killer? Creepy,
grimy, atmospheric, maybe
1. Outside is the strangest,
wildest thing Bowie ever recorded,
at least up to that point.
It’s not a fun record, but it’s
undeniably a wild trip, one which
improves with repeated listenings,
a record that requires some
commitment to fully grasp or
appreciate. I didn’t have that
discipline when I bought this
on CD in 1995, so it never made
the repeat over and over rotation.
This revisitation, twice within
a couple of months, has been rewarding.
On the other hand, Earthling
became, and might be still,
my favorite Bowie album.
The thing is scintillating and
powerful, a perfect marriage
of electronics and great musicianship,
a hyperkinetic thing, rhythmically,
an industrial smorgasbord
that’s super heavy but also
intensely catchy and groovy.
His collaboration with Trent
Reznor from Nine Inch Nails
was fortuitous and wonderful,
as it gave Bowie maybe his only
hit of the decade: “I’m Afraid of
Americans.” That’s a certain text.
Seems prescient especially
looking back from this vantage
point, in 2025. I, too, am afraid
of Americans–a good number
of them, anyway.
IV
I have more Bowie on vinyl
than any other artist. Almost
everything. Is he my favorite
musician of all time? I don’t
think so, but he’s pretty damn
close. Stephen Colbert’s Questionaire
includes the infamous desert island
question, but he limits the response
to a single song. If you could choose
only one song to listen to for
rest of your life, what would it be?
I think that would be hellish,
even if you didn’t have to listen
to it non-stop. A better question,
for me, would be, if you could only
listen to one artist’s catalog
for the rest of your life, whose
would you choose? The album
‘hours . . .’ begins with the smooth,
mellow, chill vibes of “Thursday’s
Child” and “Something in the Air.”
A 180 degree turn from the weirdness of
the last two albums. And this kind
of versatility, this kind of variety,
I think, would have me choosing
Bowie even over other artists
I think I love more: the depth and
breadth of his work, if it was the
only thing you could listen to for
the rest of your days: sufficient
perhaps for a lifetime of listening.
V
Giving new meaning to the phrase
“ugly baby pictures,” this box contains
a record called Toy, released in this
collection before its official release
date in January of 2022 in a six 10″
record box set. All 6 ep’s are on two
records in this collection, 12 songs
in all, reinterpretations and new
recordings of David Bowie’s earliest
songs, songs written BEFORE Space
Oddity and perhaps earlier or
somewhere in between that “first”
record and the 1967 debut album
that is all but lost to obscurity.
To make the ugly baby picture
analogy even more literal, the cover
of this album places Bowie’s 53
year-old head on the body of a baby.
Full of surprises, Bowie sat on these
recordings for sixteen years, until
he died, and must have given the
directive to release this music
to the world some time after
his death. I don’t know how early
he knew he was sick, but the man
was a planner if he was anything.
If you’re thinking this might be
a collection of amateurish first
efforts at songwriting, you’d be wrong.
Recorded with his band in 2000,
the record is brilliant and fresh,
energetic, rocking, and joyful.
It’s like a heavy Beatles record. Or
something straight out of the Seattle
90’s power pop movement, decidedly
un-grunge, and absolutely, considering
it’s source material, as good of a
Bowie album as anything else
in this era at the turn of the century.
If these tunes were all truly as early
as the liner notes say they are,
as if we needed any more evidence,
Bowie’s genius seemed to have been
fully formed, even as a baby,
an ugly baby, an ugly baby with
a brand new toy.
Notes on the vinyl editions: Brilliant Adventure, 1989-2001, Parlaphone Records, 2021, box set, 180 gram black vinyl. Albums from the box I listened to in their entirety: Black Tie White Noise, 1. Outside, Earthling, ‘hours. . .’, and Toy. Turns out I was not as selective as I planned to be. I couldn’t help myself. Had to hear them all. Well, almost. I skipped the unremarkable Buddha in Suburbia.
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 fifth in a series. I thought it would be the last, as it is in response to the fifth and last box set I have of Bowie’s catalog. I have one more album on vinyl in my collection: I think Blackstar deserves its own poem-like-thing. One more entry, then, on Bowie.
michael jarmer 