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  1. 2023 Albums Thing #029 - David Bowie “Young Americans”

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    Bowie was a Mod back in the 60’s and Mods have a love of Soul and rhythm & blues. The Philly Sound of Philadelphia International Records and producers (Kenny) Gamble and (Leon) Huff was THE predominant style in soul and R&B in the mid 70’s and, as an old Mod, Bowie would have been tuned in to that. Gamble and Huff were creating this sound for the likes of The O’Jays, Harold Melvin & The Bluenotes and the Three Degrees at the famed Sigma Sound studio in Philadelphia.

    Almost as important as the shift in sound “Young Americans” is about to reveal was one of its musicians, Carlos Alomar. Bowie had first met Alomar when he was a member of the Main Ingredient and Bowie was recording Lulu’s cover of “The Man Who Sold The World”. He wanted him to play on “Diamond Dogs”, but that never happened. Between legs of The Diamond/Philly Dogs tour in 1974 Bowie started recording at Sigma Sound and Alomar was along for the ride this time, bringing with him drummer Dennis Davies. These sessions made up the bulk of what was to become “Young Americans” and at their conclusion Alomar joined Bowie’s band for the resumption of the now Philly Dogs tour. Carlos Alomar stayed with Bowie for almost 30 years, up until the album “Reality” in 2003. We’ll be hearing more about Carlos Alomar.

    The assembled band featured some fine musicians from the Soul world. Alomar, drummer Dennis Davies (another who would stick around for some years), bassman Emir Ksasan, percussionist Larry Washington of MFSB and backing vocalists Robin Clark and a then unknown Luther Vandross. Bowie also bought in the guitarist from his Diamond Dogs tour, a young New Yorker, name of Frank Madeloni a.k.a Earl Slick, we’ll be hearing more about him later too. Oh, and after assisting with the final mix of “Diamond Dogs” Tony Visconti was back to engineer and mix this album.

    I have a love/hate relationship with “Young Americans”. There is some of Bowie’s best in here (the title song, “Right”, “Fascination”) and equally, one very questionable choice (“Across The Universe” may rank as the very worst of his covers) but you can’t argue that as the follow up to “Diamond Dogs” this was a bloody brave move. 

    After the drum intro to “Young Americans” (an intro so good that Paul Weller copied it exactly for the song “These City Streets” on his album “Saturns Pattern” !) there is absolutely no doubt that Bowie has engineered a huge change in style. The title track is smooth, funky and a flat out superb song. It was the first song recorded for the album and according to Tony Visconti is a live take apart from David Sanborn’s Sax which was overdubbed later.

    “Win” is a soulful ballad. “Fascination” is Bowie’s re-write of backing vocalist Luther Vandross’s song “Funky Music (Is A Part Of Me)”. Bowie heard the song and asked Vandross if it was OK for him to re-work and record it. Vandross responded “You’re David Bowie, I live at home with my mother, you can do what you like.”. Have a listen to both, “Fascination” is really a cover.

    “Right” closes out side 1. A  groove that the band lock into and Bowie riffs on. Side one is wonderful, faultless even. 

    Side 2 starts with “Somebody Up There Likes Me” and later “Can You Hear Me” which both continue the theme from Side 1. Then we reach a real boo-boo. After the original sessions were finished Bowie and the bend went off to LA to finish off the Diamond Dogs tour. They returned to Sigma Sound in November 1974 and with the band now having been road tested some tracks were re-recorded. Tony Visconti took these “finished” tracks back to London to mix the final album. In the meantime Bowie went off to New York where he eventually met up with Visconti for some final mixing at the Record Plant. Also recording at the Record Plant was John Lennon who was at the tail end of his “Lost Weekend” and finalising his album “Rock ’n’ Roll”.

    Long and short of it is Bowie and Lennon record together and one of the results was the godawful version of The Beatles “Across The Universe” which appears on Side 2. It’s playing right now as I type this and if I never hear it again it will be a day too soon !

    Fortunately they also wrote and recorded “Fame” based around a riff Carlos Alomar had worked up when Bowie performed The Flares’ 1961 single ‘Foot Stompin” on the Dick Cavett Show in November 1974. “Fame” closes out the album.

    In interviews a couple of years later Bowie described “Young Americans” as his “plastic soul” album. Carlos Alomar disagrees with this as given the musicians involved he sees it is a genuine Soul record. 7 of the 8 tracks are among Bowie’s best, if they’d just included “John I’m Only Dancing (Again)” instead of The Beatles cover I’d be holding it up there with “Diamond Dogs” as a masterpiece.

    Fascination - https://youtu.be/K-N_xAOOn2w

    Funky Music (Is A Part Of Me) - https://youtu.be/k4NVNGnhCRg

  2. 2023 Albums Thing #028 - David Bowie “David Live"

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    The first of Bowie’s live albums. Recorded at the Tower Theatre Philadelphia at shows on 14th and 15th July 1974 on the first leg of the Diamond Dogs tour. By the 2nd leg much of the band had changed, the tour had been renamed the Philly Dogs tour and Bowie was heading toward his next incarnation.

    The Diamond Dogs tour stage set featured a city-scape complete with walkways, bridges and platforms from which Bowie would perform and a cherry picker which extended him out over the audiences heads for some songs. The band were meant to be hidden away behind the scenes, unseen, but at times they took great delight in popping into the limelight occasionally.

    It has been said many times about “David Live” that, compared to other shows on the tour, the performance was lacklustre. This may, or may not, be explained by a story that tour bass player Herbie Flowers, a very experienced session man, was wandering across the stage at the Tower before soundcheck when he noticed extra microphones around the stage. He immediately went to Bowie/management to enquire if the show was being recorded and if so an extra fee for the musicians in the band would need to be negotiated. A bit of a stand off is said to have occurred before extra payment was agreed, but it had somewhat upset the musicians which may explain the less than spirited performance.

    The cover gives us a sight of Bowie’s first great image change since Ziggy Stardust. The hair is still flame red but in a very different style. He’s clad in a powder blue suit with baggy trousers and a short, bolero jacket. He is also very pale and thin, almost skeletally thin, the result of a developing Cocaine habit and living on not much more than peppers and milk ! As Bowie himself later said of the sleeve “And that photo. On the cover. My God, it looks as if I’ve just stepped out of that grave. That’s actually how I felt. That record should have been called ‘David Bowie is alive and well and living only in theory”.

    The set itself is made up of songs from all Bowie’s previous 5 albums plus a take on “All The Young Dudes” and a cover of Eddie Floyd’s Southern Soul classic “Knock On Wood”. But the sound is markedly different from previous tours, much more laid back, less of a rock show, funkier, already pointing toward the changes to come on the 2nd leg of the tour and what was beyond that. A 2005 re-issue restored some tracks from the show that had not made it on to the original release, “Here Today, Gone Tomorrow”, “Space Oddity”, “Panic In Detroit” (which had been previously issued as the B-side to the single “Knock On Wood”) and “Time”.

    As a document of the tour it serves its purpose and as the Diamond/Philly Dogs tour never made it out of the US, for the rest of us this was the only way to hear where Bowie was at during ’74 and moving toward ’75. The music journalist Robert Christgau once described it as “quite possibly the best live rock album I’ve ever heard“, high praise but definitely over the top. It’s a nice document of a time and place.

    All The Young Dudes - https://youtu.be/A01T8GzcGrs

  3. 2023 Albums Thing #027 - Bowie “Diamond Dogs“

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    “Beware the savage jaw, Of 1984”…

    Bowie had in the past studied mime and performed a one man mime show based on China’s invasion of Tibet! We’ve already met his Anthony Newly/show tunes incarnation and his gigs were getting more and more theatrical. He’d also appeared in a short film, an ice cream advert and made a fleeting appearance (blink and you’ll miss him) in the movie “The Virgin Soldiers”. There was very obviously a theatrical itch that needed scratching. His big idea now was to produce a stage musical based on George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984”. His big problem was that although he’d started writing it, and the songs for it, Orwell’s widow refused to grant him the rights to produce the show. So what had already been written morphed into “Diamond Dogs”.

    “Awoooo” the societal breakdown foretold in “Five Years” appears to have happened in “Future Legend” which lists the horrors occurring in Hunger City (the substitute for Orwell’s London of Airstrip One ?) including rats the size of cats and corpses rotting in the street <shudder>. A cheering crowd (The Dudes ?) and the cry of “this ain’t rock ’n’ roll, this is genocide” leads us into the title track. Much in the vein of “Aladdin Sane” opener “Watch That Man”, a proper rocker.

    The next three tracks, “Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing (Reprise)” are effectively one song. It’s a musical all by itself, a look into the rotting heart of Hunger City. Your only chance of a lover is a prostitute, the hustlers, pushers and pimps are now politicians, “The News” has come to pass. The lyric in “Candidate” that goes “My set is amazing, It even smells like a street” hints at the forthcoming tour. This trio of songs also happens to be one of Bowie’s greatest vocal performances as it moves from a deep bass to a soaring tenor, it’s quite breathtaking in places. 

    Side 1 closes out with a song that’s very close to my heart. That “Rebel Rebel” features one of the greatest guitar riffs ever put to tape helps. Glam Rock was dying at the end of 1974 and so Bowie gives us one of Glams greatest moments, the big kiss off. I’ve always thought of this as being my wife’s song. She is my Rebel Rebel girl and yes, “hot tramp”, I do love you so x

    Side 2 is made up of songs that were clearly written with a view to being part of the “1984” musical; “Rock ’n’ Roll with Me” must have been earmarked for a scene between Winston and Julia and it is, in isolation, a gorgeous ballad; “We Are The Dead” is a direct quote from Orwell’s novel (“We are the dead. Our only true life is in the future. We shall take part in it as handfuls of dust and splinters of bone. But how far away that future may be, there is no knowing.”); “1984” and “Big Brother” are pretty self explanatory within the story and “1984” is this albums pointer song, a very funky arrangement pointing the way toward more “plastic soul” to come. It all ends with “The Chant Of The Ever Circling Skeletal Family”.

    “Diamond Dogs” is a masterpiece (another album I have multiple copies of, just two). On certain days it is my favourite of David Bowie’s albums (on other days it’s others). It’s also a metaphorical full stop on the Ziggy years. He was about to set out on the theatrical and hugely ambitious Diamond Dogs tour and there were big ch-ch-ch-changes afoot…

    Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing (Reprise) - https://youtu.be/vrfc8c6VkTA