Ranking Bowie

Recently I came across posts on very different Forums (Mojo and Classic Horror) on the best albums by David Bowie. I was inspired by Tim Lucas listing his favorites from best to worst and thought I would give it a go. With my recent writings on LOW and BUDDHA OF SUBURBIA I thought it might be an interesting thing to attempt. I must admit I surprised myself with some of my choices. These just include Bowie's studio albums, I have not included any of the live albums, eps or compilations. I also decided not to include the Tin Machine records, which I like very much, because David has always insisted those were very much group records and here I am just focusing on his solo records.

In order from best to worst.

1. LOW: No surprise here for anyone who saw my previous posting on this album. It is my all time favorite album by anyone so it sits firmly at number one.
Favorite Track: BE MY WIFE

2. STATION TO STATION: One of his most remarkable and astonishingly inventive works. Not a false move on it and the fact that he doesn't even remember recording such a masterpiece makes it even all the more amazing.
Favorite Track: WORD ON A WING

3. ALADDIN SANE: Even more than ZIGGY STARDUST, Bowie's 'American' glam masterpiece shows him at the absolute top of his game. Chilling, awe inspiring, important...all of those things and more.
Favorite Track: DRIVE IN SATURDAY

4. HEROES: The second of the 'Berlin' trilogy. Continues the LOW format for the most part. Visconti's production is majestic and the 'drop by' performances by Robert Fripp are still mind blowing to even the most jaded ear.
Favorite Track: HEROES

5. BUDDHA OF SUBURBIA: The first masterpiece from his resurgence. I wrote much on this album earlier in this blogs history. Heartfelt and genius recording.
Favorite Track: BUDDHA OF SUBURBIA

6. ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS: Mick Ronson's soaring guitar work and orchestration on MOONAGE DAYDREAM alone would make this one of the great albums. Add on it's cultural impact and the fact that every song is near perfection and you've got still one of the most monumental rock albums ever released.
Favorite Track: MOONAGE DAYDREAM

7. HOURS: A real personal favorite. Bowie delivers some of the purest songwriting of his career with the great Reeves Gabrels making his last stand on a Bowie record. Special thought to the lovely Holly Palmer, the best back up vocalist Bowie ever had.
Favorite Track: IF I'M DREAMING ALL MY LIFE

8. SCARY MONSTERS: Fripp again returns on Bowie's last great album before his near ten year freeze.
Favorite Track: TEENAGE WILDLIFE

9. 1. OUTSIDE: Still one of the most thrilling records I have ever bought. A mind bending and at times psychotic look into the mind of serial killer Nathan Addler. Eno produces one of Bowie's greatest sonic assaults.
Favorite Tracks: WE PRICK YOU

10. HUNKY DORY: Bowie's songwriting skills have never been so pure and sharp as on this record. THE BEWLAY BROTHERS remains one of the most haunting final tracks on any rock record.
Favorite Track: QUEEN BITCH

11. YOUNG AMERICANS: Bowie gets down in Philadelphia. A cocaine fueled, seductive soul masterpiece. Contains some of Bowie's most arresting vocals and the great Carlos Alomar has never been better.
Favorite Track: WIN

12. DIAMOND DOGS: With the Spiders gone Bowie creates much of this nightmarish album alone. His guitar work on this record is terribly underrated, as are the freakish cut-up lyrics he came up with it.
Favorite track: SWEET THING

13. EARTHLING: Bowie turns 50 and turns everything up to eleven. The album's real strength is in just how strong the songwriting is. A great companion is a series of acoustic radio recordings Bowie and Reeves played to promote this album showing just how strong, even stripped, the songs were.
Favorite Track: SEVEN YEARS IN TIBET

14. LODGER: Bowie pulls back a bit from the chilly extremes of LOW and HEROES to create this frenetic and strangely haunting record. After this he would begin to 'move on'.
Favorite Track: LOOK BACK IN ANGER

15. MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD: Should be higher I know. Ronson becomes a legend on these tracks.
Favorite Track: AFTER ALL

16. HEATHEN: Bowie's answers LOW 20 years later with this return to the soundscapes of Tony Visconti. Striking, haunting stuff.
Favorite Track: SLIP AWAY

17. PIN UPS: Bowie pays tribute to the sixties British groups who inspired him so much. The final Spiders album is still a furious sounding spike that remains one of the great cover albums ever recorded.
Favorite Track: SEE EMILY PLAY

18. REALITY: Bowie's ode to New York after 9/11. Gabrel's is missed at this point but the songwriting is sharp and it's astounding that the man can still record something so cohesive and powerful sounding.
Favorite Track: BRING ME THE DISCO KING

19. BLACK TIE WHITE NOISE: Bowie picks up the pieces and foreshadows the upcoming triple crown of masterpieces he is getting ready to record. Bit too smooth in spots but this remains a fine album.
Favorite Track: YOU'VE BEEN AROUND

20. SPACE ODDITY: Bumpy in spots but it has some remarkable moments, you can hear the rumbling of the revolution he was getting ready to spark in these grooves.
Favorite Track: SPACE ODDITY

21. LET'S DANCE: Something was going wrong, it is obvious now. Suddenly the incredibly prolific Bowie was having trouble coming up with a full album of new material. Vaughn's guitar work is fine, if buried. The production is beyond slick, it made him very rich and broke a lot of people's hearts. The singles are still astonishing though.
Favorite Track: CHINA GIRL

22. NEVER LET ME DOWN: Thought of by almost everyone, including himself, as Bowie's worst; actually it's not but soundwise it is still an overproduced mess. Sift through all of the muddy sound and guitar bombast and you will find Bowie for the first time since SCARY MONSTERS delivering an album of more than just seven or eight tracks. He was writing again but he knows he is in trouble...he should revisit a couple of these tracks though because there are a couple of very buried jewels here.
Favorite Track: TIME WILL CRAWL

23. DAVID BOWIE: First album with just a few hints of how great he would soon become.
Favorite Tracks: LOVE YOU TILL TUESDAY

24. TONIGHT: The absolute low point, a strange mixture of bad covers and uninspired originals. Only two tracks are noteworthy, the fun BLUE JEAN and haunting LOVING THE ALIEN which he revived on his REALITY tour.
Favorite Track: LOVING THE ALIEN

Bowie's career has been remarkably prolific, I must admit about halfway through this list I regretted starting it as it deserves much more detail than I had time to give it.
Bowie and his remarkable career will come up more on this blog in the future, hope this list was fun to look at for fans. To the uninitiated I stand by anything in the top 15 as a perfect starting point for your journey with the great thin white duke.

David Bowie's Spanish Film Festival at High Line

David Bowie's ambitious multimedia High Line Festival started this week in New York and it looks like a highlight is the film festival he is putting on. Bowie, a life long film buff, has chosen 10 of his all time favorite Spanish films and is presenting them at the festival starting tonight. Including works by Bunuel and Fuentes among others, this is an incredibly diverse and impressive set of films Bowie has picked out. Two major works, and personal favorites, are the amazing SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE and Julio Medem's lovely and heartfelt LOVERS ON THE ARCTIC CIRCLE. For those curious to see the full listing I am adding a link below that will take you to Bowie's selections.

http://www.highlinefestival.com/tickets.php?cat=film

Sandie Shaw at Sixty

The eternally cool Sandie Shaw turned 60 this year and to celebrate it Mojo magazine is putting on a special live 'In Conversation" event with her. Mojo is offering a chance to win some free tickets over at http://www.mojo4music.com/, so any lucky British readers might want to check it out.
I discovered Sandie a couple of years back through her incredible 1969 album REVIEWING THE SITUATION, which is one of the great largely unknown masterpieces of the period.
Sandie was born Sandra Ann Goodrich in February of 1947 in Dagenham. After being discovered while still a teenager by singer Adam Faith, Sandie had a long string of great and influential hit singles in Britain throughout the sixties. One of her most famous tracks, PUPPET ON A STRING, was named by David Bowie as one of his favorite songs and he performed it live during his most recent REALITY tour. Another major musical figure influenced by Sandie's work was Morrissey who invited Sandie to sing on The Smith's awesome HAND IN GLOVE in 1984. Sandie's version of the great track was a hit in Britain and re-introduced her to an entirely new generation.

Long one of the most underrated figures of sixties and seventies British rock the last few years have been really good for Sandie's musical legacy. A major box set and many of her best albums have appeared re-mastered on cd. The mighty REVIEWING THE SITUATION is still available as a UK import with great sound, liner notes and bonus tracks (including a stunning take on Paul McCartney's JUNK).

Sandie has a fantastic website that I highly recommend at
http://www.sandieshaw.com/index2.php
It's one of the best official artist websites around and provides a great overview of her 40 year career and lots of other goodies.

For the uninititated there is a recent EMI best of collection which features many of her best singles and b sides or dive in with the 4cd box NOTHING COMES EASY. Every music fan should also own the REVIEWING THE SITUATION album which can be found fairly cheaply through most of the best online vendors (or if you are lucky enough at a local hip record store).

YouTube has many clips of Sandie, here is a favorite with her performing McCartney's THOSE WERE THE DAYS which was released shortly after Mary Hopkin's original.

My Favorite Closing Shots: John Frankenheimer's I Walk the Line and Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell To Earth

Dust Off Those Grooves (Chapter Ten)

When the dust settles on the remarkable career of David Bowie I believe two things will become evident. The first being that this man is the most innovative and important artist of the rock era and secondly that he reached his artistic peak in, not in the 1970s, but in the 1990s.
Bowie's artistic disintegration in the eighties has been well documented in many publications and after reaching his nadir with the heartbreaking Never Let Me Down album Bowie would begin to formulate the most impressive artistic comeback in rock since Elvis in 68.
Bowie's first step towards redemption was the savage project he formulated with guitarist Reeves Gabrels. Tin Machine is typically made fun of these days but one listen to the first album clearly shows just how necessary that band was. Blasting away the eighties, with one of the most brutal albums by a major artist ever, Bowie buries every over-produced and under-written song he had spent the previous five years performing.
After the furious Tin Machine period where Bowie would successfully alienate the audience that had adopted him in 1980's he would re-enter the studio with none of than Let's Dance producer Nile Rodgers. At first it seemed like Bowie was stepping backwards but it soon became apparent that Bowie was attempting to recapture his voice by going head to head with one of the men whom he had originally lost it with. The talented Chic founder Rodgers would find Bowie to be a very different artist from the one whom had made Let's Dance the decade before. Bowie took full control and produced an album that was at times heavily flawed but always interesting. Black Tie White Noise would debut at number one in Britain and would contain a couple of tracks that could be counted among Bowie's best, including the terrifying Jump They Say, but it wasn't a masterpiece to rank among his finest work. Bowie was already quietly getting ready to deliver that.
1993 saw director Roger Michell approach Bowie with the idea to provide the soundtrack to a mini-series he was working on entitled The Buddha Of Suburbia, based on the novel by Hanif Kureishi concerning a young man attempting to come of age in 1970's England. The idea that Michell had was to originally use Bowie's work from the seventies but Bowie liked the story immensly and agreed to provide new material.
Recorded in Switzerland, The Buddha of Suburbia is the great lost David Bowie album. Out of print for years and the weakest seller in his catalogue, some hardcore Bowie fans don't even know about it. Yet it is in these ten tracks where he hear Bowie truly reclaiming his art and it would signal the trilogy of masterworks (Outside, Earthling and Hours) that he would produce in the years following its release.
The Buddha of Suburbia would see Bowie returning not just to the strong song writing of the early seventies but also the longer instrumentals that had populated Low and Heroes.
Harking back to early compositions like The Bewlay Bros. and All The Madman the title track of the album would become one of the greatest of all Bowie songs. A lovely and exciting song that would recall not only the early seventies but would also see Bowie tipping his hat to newer British bands he admired like Suede and The Stone Roses, it is one of the great 'British' songs Bowie has ever recorded. The line 'Elvis is English and climbs the hills' among others would mark this a Bowie's homecoming and within a few years he would take to performing in a Union Jack coat.
After the stunning title track the album switched gears completely into a six minute plus instrumental entitled Sex And The Church. The song is a weird mix of house and free jazz with Bowie providing some buried spoken word throughout. Nicholas Pegg, author of the indispensable The Complete David Bowie, would note that the song's conclusion would sneak bits of The Jean Genie in before suddenly ending.
South Horizon is reported to be Bowie's favorite on the album and it is a delicious instrumental that sounds like Roxy Music doing a Cecil Taylor song. Mike Garson's piano is at it's most experimental here and the song weaves a hypnotic six minute groove.
The seven minute track The Mysteries sees Bowie returning to the ambient like instrumentals that he cut with Eno for Low and Heroes. It is one of Bowie's best moments as an instrumentalist and it would pay tribute to an expiermental moment in popular music that I still don't think has topped.
Strangers When We Meet would provide the album its next great moment and would serve as one of the most perfect pop songs Bowie has ever delivered. A glorious five minute side that Brian Eno loved so much that he would have Bowie record a second version two years later to close their astonishing Outside album.
Dead Against It is the most frenetic song on the album and would be selected as the B-side to the title track single. Untitled #1 again has Bowie harking back to his work with Eno in the seventies. Lush, sweeping and lovingly rendered with a line, "It's clear that some things never change", that sums up the entire album.
The album would close with one final stunning ambient piece, Ian Fish U.K. Heir and a reprise of the title track featuring a solid, but unnecessary, Lenny Kravitz guitar solo.
The Buddha of Suburbia is an album that manages to do the near impossible task of looking back and forward at the same time. It also works as a perfect introduction to the massive scope of Bowie's career as it seemingly features something from every one of his musical persona's.
The album has had a strange release history. Originally a botched British only release that was incredibly released as a straight soundtrack and not a new Bowie album. It managed only to get to 87 on the British charts and quickly slipped out of print. It finally got a quiet American release in the mid 90's with a new cover and that version also fell quickly out of print. It remains the only Bowie album that is currently not in circulation. It is also one of Bowie's favorites of all of his own work and he would draw heavily on it for his All Saints instrumental album.
Bowie would soon, after recording Buddha, be back in the studio with Brian Eno for the audacious and already influential Outside album. He would continue to grow more and more confident throughout the 90's and this decade with a series of albums that I believe will hold up as well as his best work from the 70s.
Dave Thompson in his fine study of Bowie's career renaissance, Hallo Spaceboy, would note that Bowie is, "moving into what will unavoidably be described as the next phase of his career from a position not only of contentment, but also of unparalleled creative strength". That is correct and for anyone curious to hear the moment when Bowie truly regained his genius should seek out the most elusive of all of his work, the magnificent Buddha Of Suburbia.

Bowie's Low Thirty Years On

Thirty years ago if you would have walked into any record store you might have seen a certain album called LOW gathering dust on the new release racks. You might have been struck by the striking cover photo and taken an open copy into a listening booth. Dropping the needle on random spots you would have heard something remarkably different and daring; from the deliberately chopping short splintered songs on the first side to the long instrumentals on side two. It would have been unlike anything else you had ever heard and thirty years after its release LOW remains a unique and audacious creation.
David Bowie released LOW just after his birthday in January of 1977. Initial reactions to the album were lukewarm to say the least. Critics were pretty condemning and fans were perplexed. After initial solid sales it quickly fell off the charts and became one of Bowie's poorest selling albums.
It soon became apparent that LOW was something remarkable and within just a few years its effects began to be felt in a wide variety of artistic fields. Bands like Joy Division among a slew of others would take it's chilly sound to more extreme levels. Pretty much the entire post punk movement was built on LOW.
The creation of LOW remains a misunderstood one. Often credited as being recorded completely in Berlin with Brian Eno in the producer's chair, LOW was actually recorded in France with Tony Visconti producing. Visconti remains one of the seventies most unheralded visionaries and he is deserving of major credit for LOW'S revolutionary sound. More mysterious is the album's connection to Nicolas Roeg's THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH.
Much of LOW'S side two was originally written for THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH's soundtrack but Roeg had never intended to use Bowie as composer. What exactly was recorded for the soundtrack and just how it sounded is debatable. A mysterious bootleg appeared in the seventies called THE VISITOR which purportedly claimed to be the original recordings but it is now said to be locked in the private vault of a certain Thomas Jerome Newton.
While Brian Eno did not produce LOW his contributions are immeasurable. He shared Bowie's love for the music of bands ranging from NEU!, CAN, POPOL VUH and KRAFTWERK and LOW helped turn an entire generation on to these remarkable German groups.
It remains an album that has spiritually affected many people, including myself and as Brian Eno said an album, 'that many people built an entire career from'.

The thing that we know of as 'the album' is slipping away from us, it is becoming something unrecognizable. LOW is a perfect reminder of just how powerful two sides and less than forty minutes of music can be. I have many albums I love but LOW is the one I would reach for to put on the turntable if I knew the world was coming to an end. Our downloaded culture needs reminding of its spiritually charged grooves more than ever and throughout this year I will be paying tribute to it.

Bebe Buell

To a lot of younger people she is probably best known as Liv Tyler's mom (not a bad thing to be known for) but Bebe Buell has had a fascinating life that has included time with some of the most famous rock musicians in history.
I just recently discovered Bebe's fantastic website and wanted to recommend it. It contains hundreds of vintage photos of her, Liv and many of the Seventies best rock icons ranging from David Bowie to Blondie to Stiv Bators. Also on the site are various articles, interviews, music recommendations, Bebe's own music, links and more. It's a really cool site with lots of surprises on it.
The site is located at

http://www.bebe-buell.com/

It's a good way to pass an afternoon.

I've been fascinated with Bebe for awhile and her autobiography REBEL HEART is an interesting insiders look at seventies and eighties rock music. Bebe's talented, has a cool daughter and inspired Elvis Costello to write some of the greatest songs ever written. Give her site a visit and check out her book if you haven't read it.

Dust Off Those Grooves (Chapter 13) Bryan Ferry The Bride Stripped Bare

Bryan Ferry's furious 1978 release THE BRIDE STRIPPED BARE was a relative failure upon initial release and is now mostly remembered in the context of Jerry Hall leaving him for Mick Jagger. Rolling Stone exclaimed in the headline of their original negative review that the album was "more Edith Piaf than Muddy Waters" and I always wondered why that was considered a bad thing.
THE BRIDE STRIPPED BARE is one of the great break-up albums of all time as it is an album that had Ferry responding to punk and the criticism he had fell under after his first solo albums.
No band had been more progressive or acclaimed than Roxy Music in the early seventies but by the time of the brilliantly subversive MANIFESTO and FLESH AND BLOOD they were becoming more and more disdained by groups and critics who had forgotten what the word irony meant. So THE BRIDE STRIPPED BARE is an incredibly ambitious album, one that sees Ferry trying to answer his critics with a reminder that he could indeed rock while still maintaining the cool and slightly sinister air that he had developed for himself with Roxy Music.
THE BRIDE STRIPPED BARE is an album obviously made by a man in distress. It is one of the most authentically paranoid albums ever recorded and it is a startling cohesive album considering it is a mixture of original songs and cover versions.
Ferry is one of the great underrated singers of the rock era, he is an extremely talented song stylist who has the unique ability (like one of his idols Elvis Presley) to take seemingly any kind of song and make it uniquely his own. He is also an incredibly important songwriter and when he is at the top of his game (FOR YOUR PLEASURE, COUNTRY LIFE, FRANTIC) he is pretty unmatchable.
Ferry had been unhappy with 1977's IN YOUR MIND, even though it contained several astonishing tracks and the brutally good guitar work of Chris Spedding, and he wanted THE BRIDE STRIPPED BARE to signal a new beginning for him.
The album opens with the surprisingly volcanic SIGN OF THE TIMES, one of the shortest and most potent songs Ferry has ever recorded. It's crunching twin guitar attack of Waddy Watchel and Neil Hubbard combined with some of Ferry's most biting lyrics proved a thrilling starting point. The single famously failed at the height of the punk movement but it holds up just as good as say anything off The Clash's second album that was released around the same time. When Ferry spits out, "Here is a rainbow for your hair" we know that glam is truly over and that we are in the midst of something far more desperate and real.
The album's second track, CAN'T LET GO, is its most famous as Ferry and Roxy Music have revisited it live many times throughout the years since THE BRIDE STRIPPED BARE original. Again the duel guitar work by Watchel and Hubbard is incredible and Ferry delivers one of his most pained and impassioned performances. Never has anyone so known for being so cool, that they are almost cold, sounded so vulnerable. The song has been looked at as an obvious message to Jerry Hall but there is the sense that Ferry is singing also to the time period that he came from that was obviously disappearing.
The albums next two tracks were two of the most surprising choices of Ferry's career up to that point. The famous soul track HOLD ON I'M COMING had been a major hit for Sam and Dave in the sixties and Ferry's crunchy version is a fine cover with again his impassioned vocals carrying the track. Even more surprising was the tough version of J.J. Cale's SAME OLD BLUES. Ferry sounds absolutely possessed with anger on this track with Alan Spenner's impressive bass playing standing out.
The gorgeous ballad WHEN SHE WALKS IN THE ROOM marks the albums halfway point and it's a lovely track with Ferry singing lines like, "And your fair weathered friends fail to speak, they're so afraid still waters run deep". The song's final few moments with Ferry and Waddy Watchel harmonizing the title is incedibly haunting and absolutely devastating sounding when you consider what Ferry was going through at this point in his life and career.
Al Green's TAKE ME TO THE RIVER shows just how much bad luck Ferry was having at this point. Originally ridiculed for his version, it would soon become a monster hit for the Eno produced Talking Heads with David Byrne obviously more inspired by Ferry's version than Green's original.

THE BRIDE STRIPPED BARE'S masterpiece follows with Ferry's thunderous stab at The Velvet Underground's WHAT GOES ON. Ferry transforms Lou Reed's original into a frustrated and impassioned plea and when he suddenly starts incorporating lyrics from The Velvets BEGINNING TO SEE THE LIGHT into the mix we are caught in one of Ferry's great moments. The accompanying video featuring a bearded and weary looking Ferry is one the indelible images in a career full of them.
Another beautiful ballad follows in CARRICKFERGUS and like CAN'T LET GO we have Ferry admitting his inability or need to move on. It's a lovely version of a much often performed traditional Irish song.
One last cover is THAT'S HOW STRONG MY LOVE IS and Ferry's version hearkens back to not only Otis Reddings version but ironically Mick Jagger's vocal take on The Rolling Stones cover. All is fair in love and war it seems.
The eerie THIS ISLAND EARTH closes the album and it would have been right at home on one of Roxy Music's early albums. It is worth noting that Ferry's excellent keyboard work here resembles some of Eno's solo albums from this period which gives a good example that these two have always been in a way connected.
Ferry has recently returned to THIS ISLAND EARTH with some remarkable live performances and a BBC session which saw this great lost track getting an amazing response. It is one of Ferry's loneliest numbers and one of his best.

THE BRIDE STRIPPED BARE was Bryan Ferry's biggest gamble and biggest failure in the decade which he owns as much as David Bowie or any other iconic figure you can think up. It was troubled from the beginning as it was originally planned as a double album (the scrapped songs showed up later as b-sides) and an odd, half-hearted marketing campaign sealed it's fate.

The album is not often mentioned among Ferry's best and while it doesn't have the majestic draw of his greatest albums it does give us a rare glimpse of one of our coolest and most important artists at his most open and vulnerable.

Ferry's newest album, Dylanesque, has just been released and the much anticipated new Roxy Music studio album will hopefully arrive later this year.

Please note that the above WHAT GOES ON sleeve collage comes from the remarkable THESE VINTAGE YEARS site. Visit them at www.vivaroxymusic.com for a comprehensive and up to date guide to the wonderful world of Roxy Music and Bryan Ferry.

"Until We Meet Again"

Thirty years ago tonight at Indianapolis's Market Square Arena an exhausted, disillusioned and sick Elvis Presley stepped onto a stage for the final time. He would be backed by his James Burton led TCB band, a band often described as one of the greatest live bands ever assembled, and he would perform 21 songs from all parts of his remarkable 23 year career. The reviews of the Indianapolis show were among the best of that emotionally and physically devastating 1977 Summer tour but the reality is that it is like many of the shows from that year, a combination of a tired artist walking through some songs while investing others with explosively spiritual readings that would show the last things to leave Elvis Presley were his voice and heart.
Much has been written about Elvis in that final fateful year of his life. It has always baffled me as to how people can take such glee in cruelly making fun of someone who was in such an obvious state of emotional and physical turmoil, but that is exactly what the last thirty years have brought. Whether it be the ill conceived CBS television special that was aired to pay off Colonel Parker's gambling debts, or the factually and spiritually corrupt Albert Goldman assignation job of a book in 1981 to people who have no conception of how important culturally and devastatingly talented this man was; 1977 and the years since have taken much away from the legacy of Elvis Presley.
The thing that strikes me most about that fateful final year is just how, even at his most vulnerable and damaged, great Elvis Presley remained. For all of the rushed through and lifeless performances that he gave that year, each show would also feature some of the most powerhouse vocals of his career. I'm not an apologist for Elvis in 1977. The man was sick and needed to be in a hospital and not on the stage but there are moments, like when he is singing HURT, HOW GREAT THOU ART, BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER and especially a exorcising UNCHAINED MELODY, that the most powerful aspects of Elvis come out. Also noteworthy is that this was clearly a man who was remembering something special from his past and the spirited performances of TRYING TO GET TO YOU, LITTLE SISTER and an acoustic driven THAT'S ALL RIGHT all point to the fact that Elvis seemed to be finding solace in much of the rock music of his youth. A planned rock and roll studio album was being discussed for late 1977 and with people like John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger and David Bowie clamoring to write and produce for him, the late seventies could have been a most glorious time of renewal for Presley.
But it wasn't meant to be and as tragic as the final year of Elvis Presely's life was, it is hard to imagine things any other way now. The site of Elvis Presley's final show was a sports arena built for the Indiana Pacers in 1974. Elvis had played there before but in that final show it has been reported that the 18,000 people that saw him thirty years ago tonight was the most the arena could hold.
The show was pretty typical for 1977 with the aforementioned THAT'S ALL RIGHT being the opening song after the 2001 theme played. The beguiling and always powerful CAN'T HELP FALLING IN LOVE closed the set which included readings of songs ranging from YOU GAVE ME A MOUNTAIN to LITTLE SISTER to a surprising, for 77, I CAN'T STOP LOVING YOU. The final words Elvis Presley spoke on stage were, "Until we meet again, may God bless you...adios."
The Elvis Presley of 1977 was the same Elvis Presley who had stunned people in his legendary 1968 comeback special, just like he was the same man who had made millions of people happy in his 31 feature films, and the same person who had inspired every major rock artist of the sixties and seventies with his work in the fifties...and finally the Elvis Presley of 1977 was the same little boy who grew up in poverty stricken Mississippi dreaming he could reach something else. The career of Elvis Presley can be split up into parts but it should never be forgotten that this was the same man all the way through and there was still a lot of that young dreamer left in him even at the end. Elvis in 1977 is often described as 'old Elvis' which is a mistake because Elvis Presley never had the chance to grow old, he was just 42 when he died.

Like many landmarks Americans take a weird satisfaction in destroying, Market Square Arena was imploded a few years ago to a crowd of hundreds; a crowd that erupted in a mixture of boos and cheers when the destruction happened. It has always reminded me of a line Lou Reed wrote in 1989, "Americans don't care too much for beauty, they'll shit in a river and dump battery acid in a stream..then complain that they can't swim." There is a strong element in our country that takes a certain sick satisfaction in tearing down our landmarks and idols. Certainly for the last thirty years they have tried to do it to Elvis Presley and yet somehow he remains; like some sort of indestructible reminder that you can't kill a dream that millions of people have ended up sharing.

Elvis Presley was often described, throughout his life, as someone who wanted nothing more than to make the people around him happy, and up to those last moments when he walked off that Indianapolis stage he was still doing just that. His ultimate sacrifice for making people happy was finally his own life, which perhaps says as much about the world we live in as anything else ever could. Ironically, even thirty years after he sang those final notes, Elvis Presley continues to make millions upon millions of people happy...whether you are a fan or not, that is a fact that should be celebrated.

Golden Years: Happy Birthday To Elvis And David

Elvis Presley and David Bowie were both born on this day in 1935 and 1947 respectively. For a small celebration here is the song Bowie wrote for Elvis back in 1975, the still stunning GOLDEN YEARS. Bowie had it in mind to produce Elvis and wanted very badly for him to record this masterful song. Angie Bowie is said to have gotten the demo to one of Elvis's friends in 76 but it is unknown as to whether he ever heard the track.
Bowie went ahead and recorded the song in 76 for his stunning STATION TO STATION album, and he would score a major hit with it. Listen close and you can hear he is clearly emulating Elvis, and the song sounds absolutely custom made for the King. I often wonder what would have happened had Elvis recorded this song in that fateful year before he passed away. It might have changed nothing, or it very well could have changed everything. We'll never know...still Bowie's version is a masterpiece and is a highlight from STATION TO STATION, one of his very best albums.

Also here is some of the footage influential filmmaker Jonas Mekas shot of the one time Elvis and Bowie were in the same building together, during Elvis' historic run at Madison Square Garden in 1972. Bowie came dressed as Ziggy Stardust and still talks about the mindblowing show to this day. Also in attendance that night were members of Led Zeppelin, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Paul Simon, and rumors have suggested Andy Warhol and members of The Velvet Underground including Lou Reed...

Terence Stamp As John Soames

A good friend recently hooked me up with a film that I have been wanting to see for a very long time and I thought I would throw out my initial reactions to it here.
Very few film fans would question that Terence Stamp is one of the finest actors of his generation, which makes the unavailability of some of his key films all the more perplexing. The 1970 Amicus production THE MIND OF MR.SOAMES has proven itself one of the most elusive.
SOAMES is an odd film that ranges from being extremely effective to oddly flat. Terence Stamp plays John Soames, a man who was born into a coma and has been asleep for his whole life. In his early thirties a scientist figures out a way to revive him and the film follows Soames 'rebirth' as it is.
The biggest problem with SOAMES is how lopsided it feels with an extended opening that is way too long and the clipped off ending that feels more confused than ambiguous. That said, there is much too admire in the film and much of it centers on the incredible performance by Stamp in the title role.
THE MIND OF MR. SOAMES is the end of Terence's first run as one of the most beautiful and intelligent actors of our time. A very personal and spiritual journey would follow SOAMES for Stamp and he wouldn't reappear until the mid seventies. Stamp had just shot the equally elusive UNA SATGIONE ALL'INFERNO before making SOAMES and he was two years past his most famous work from the Sixties. There is a real haunted quality about Stamp's work as John Soames that I don't think any other actor could have brought to the table. Sure, he should be commended for playing a grown man who is basically a newborn but Stamp does much more with this role than one might think.
Nobody has ever played boredom and weariness as well as Terence Stamp and in some of the most successful moments of SOAMES, Stamp is able to play out these emotions better than any other performance I can think of. While the film reminded me of many others, namely with its themes of an all seeing media, the one other work that I thought of most was Nicolas Roeg's THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH (1975). Specifically the interrogation and home imprisonments scenes of the last half of the film. Bowie has said on numerous occasions that he was very inspired by Terence Stamp and I wonder if he saw THE MIND OF MR. SOAMES when it played in London in 1970.
THE MIND OF MR. SOAMES started out life as a novel by Charles Eric Maine and I would be most curious now to read the book, as I am sure that it takes the time to really handle the themes the film is only able to slightly address. A glance at director Alan Cooke's filmography shows most of his work to be in television so it is surprising perhaps that the film doesn't center more on the early idea of 'reality' based programming. Outside of camera crews constantly around filming and some small moments with some of the reporters, the film doesn't look too closely at this and leaves it essentially in the background. It does give a more oppressive weight to what Soames is going through but I was left wanting more of it.
I did admire greatly the score by Michael Dress, who had just scored one of my all time favorite films, the moving Gene Wilder-Margot Kidder movie QUACKSER FORTUNE HAS A COUSIN IN THE BRONX (1970). His score here is very inventive, suitably creepy and works very well.
Oscar winning Billy Williams provides the film's cinematography and it is an exceptional looking film even though the full screen version I watched had a tv quality about it (I blame this more on Cook rather than Williams though).
The cast for the most part is very solid and gives Stamp good supporting performances. These include both Robert Vaughn and Nigel Davenport. Plus very pretty, but underused, Vickery Turner who reminded me very much of a young Melanie Griffith with red hair.
THE MIND OF MR. SOAMES isn't a great film and it isn't up to par with the best Amicus productions, but it is well worth seeking out if just for the astonishing performance by Terence Stamp. This is the last role we have from him where he still seems remarkably young. When he returned to the screen in the mid to late seventies, he was still brilliant and beautiful but he seemed changed and much of the youthful energy he brought to his roles in the Sixties had vanished.
THE MIND OF MR. SOAMES is prime for a dvd release, let's hope the time for this flawed but interesting little film will soon come.

For A More Detailed and Thought Out Review, Please Visit Cinebeats Recent Look At It. The Link Is To The Right.

Criterion's Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence Out Tuesday

Just a quick note concerning the fact that Tuesday marks the release of Nagisa Oshima's Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence on DVD and Blu-Ray from The Criterion Collection. This remarkable film starring David Bowie and Takeshi Kitano was unfairly critically maligned at the time of its release so this new release is an important one. Here are the Criterion's specs (taken from their site) for the discs:

New, restored high-definition master (with DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)

The Oshima Gang, a 1983 making-of featurette

New video interviews with producer Jeremy Thomas, screenwriter Paul Mayersberg, actor Tom Conti, and actor-composer Ryuichi Sakamoto

Hasten Slowly, an hour-long 1996 documentary about author Laurens van der Post, whose autobiographical novel was the basis for the film

Original theatrical trailer

New and improved English subtitle translation

PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Chuck Stephens and reprinted interviews with director Nagisa Oshima and actor Takeshi Kitano

The Art of the Movie Poster (David Bowie Birthday Edition) The Man Who Fell To Earth

Art Decades: Dianna Dilworth's Mellodrama: The Mellotron Movie (2009)

One of the best documentaries in recent memory, Mellodrama: The Mellotron Movie (2009) is director Diana Dilworth's engrossing, fascinating and surprisingly moving look at the history of the truly game-changing instruments the Mellotron and Chamberlin. Dilworth's remarkable film, featuring insightful interviews with everyone from Brian Wilson to Fabio Frizzi to Jon Brion to Michael Penn, is everything a great documentary should be and it is never less than completely engrossing.
Chronically the rise and fall (and rise) of what was essentially music's first 'sampling' machine, Mellodrama: The Mellotron Movie (2009) is a film about an incredibly important subject that hasn't been explored anywhere near as much a it should have been. While, the Mellotron's place in musical history is often overlooked, Dilworth's striking film puts it in its proper historical perspective and makes clear that Harry Chamberlin's invention (originally designed so middle-upper class families could recreate the glorious sounds of a big-band without leaving their suburban homes) changed the way we listen to and hear recorded music. Far from just a dry art-history lesson though, Dilworth's film ultimately becomes a work about a seemingly unconnected group of musicians and music-lovers quest to rediscover and re-introduce the sound that they heard on so many pop and rock records of the sixties and seventies.
And what about that sound? Featured unforgettably on records from the likes of The Beatles, The Bee-Gees, King Crimson, Goblin, Abba, Black Sabbath, Elvis Costello, Aimee Mann, Jon Brion, Radiohead and Fiona Apple, the sound of both the Mellotron and the Chamberlin is ingrained deep in many of my psyches; mine certainly included and I found myself responding emotionally to Dilworth's film in an extremely deep and profound way.
Mellodrama: The Mellotron Movie (2009) is available from Bazillion Points in a gorgeous fold-out DVD featuring many bonus interviews as well as a booklet. A stirring soundtrack is also available and I highly recommend both to music and pop-culture lovers. More information on the DVD can be found at the link above and more info on Dianna Dilworth can be found at her official site, located here.

M.I.A. on Region 1 DVD Tribute Month (Film 12) Images From My All Time Favorite Films: Cracked Actor: A Film About David Bowie (1975)

When asked what my favorite film is, I usually respond by naming this one:



When asked what my favorite album is, I almost always name this one:



Both had some of their most important origins in this remarkable BBC documentary:

Images From My All Time Favorite Films: Ulrich Edel's Christiane F.