Five Years / Changes / “Heroes” / Breaking Glass / Ziggy Stardust / Look Back in Anger / Fashion / Modern Love / Panic in Detroit / Rebel Rebel / China Girl / A New Career in a New Town / Life on Mars? / Beauty and the Beast / Sound and Vision / Let’s Dance / John, I’m Only Dancing (Saxophone Version) / Space Oddity / Ashes to Ashes / Subterraneans
Station to Station / Under Pressure (w/Queen) / I’m Afraid of Americans (V1) (w/Nine Inch Nails) / Joe the Lion / Oh! You Pretty Things / Young Americans / Moonage Daydream / Blue Jean / Always Crashing in the Same Car / Be My Wife / Dead Man Walking / Time / Fame / 5:15 The Angels Have Gone / Suffragette City / Stay / Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide
Recently I discovered that a friend of mine who’d been enjoying the mixes I’d been posting had as close to zero exposure to or knowledge of David Bowie as you can get in contemporary society. I think the only Bowie song he knew that he knew (there are known knowns and unknown knowns, after all) was “Changes.” Per his request, and per my own Bowie fixation, I made the two-part mix you see above.
I’m not going to even pretend to be disinterested or objective or discerning when it comes to Bowie–I love virtually everything he’s ever done to pieces. So making a mix was tough, particularly because I couldn’t just take the big hits as read since my buddy had never heard them, or at least never put them all together with Bowie. But nor did I just want to reproduce the many Best Of collections that already exist. (I personally recommend the three-part series that spans 1969-1974, 1974-1979, and 1980-1987–strong selections and lovely art direction.) So this ended up being a combination of a goodly number of Bowie’s giant, monstrous, undeniable singles with a selection of my own personal favorites. It’s not a crate-diving project by any stretch of the imagination–no B-sides, no live recordings, a grand total of just four tracks post-Let’s Dance (including a paltry three from his immensely enjoyable ’90s/’00s altrock-god renaissance) and merely one pre-Hunky Dory, and no Tin Machine whatsoever–but I think it’s an enjoyable blend of rock-radio staples and interesting album cuts that will hopefully make my friend fall in love with David Bowie.
Very good mix overall.
I wish you could’ve made room for New Killer Star, somehow. It’s my favorite track from his late period, and I think a classic Bowie song in general. But I know how it is with mix constraints; something’s gotta give.
You’ve done a great service to your friend. If only there was some way to subliminally embed the video of “Ashes to Ashes”…
No Absolute Beginners?
Matt: Well, I’ll send him some video links at some point.
Charles: New Killer Star was definitely on the bubble, along with Never Get Old. I think the biggest heartbreaker for me, though, was not including anything from Outside–I could just have easily have included five or six songs from that record. I’m Deranged went in and out for a while. And I’d have liked to include You Belong in Rock ‘n’ Roll from Tin Machine 2. And The Mysterie from Buddha of Suburbia. And The Dreamers from ‘hours…’. And Queen Bitch and Aladdin Sane and Cracked Actor and The Bewlay Brothers and Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing (Reprise) and The Man Who Sold the World and The Width of a Circle and Can You Hear Me and Lady Stardust and Lady Grinning Soul and Memory of a Free Festival and Andy Warhol and Big Brother and Watch That Man and TVC-15 and Golden Years and Drive-In Saturday and Velvet Goldmine and The Jean Genie and Soul Love and Starman and and and and and and…
Tim: No, no Absolute Beginners. 🙂
I’m curious to hear your opinion of Bowie’s Labyrinth soundtrack
Apparently Bowie’s going to be on the Inglourious Basterds soundtrack. They’ve got his theme song for the “Cat People” remake on their track list. I don’t have any idea how that particularly 1980s-ish tune fits into the whole WWII thing, but that’s the word on the street.
I loves it.
I’ve never had a friend take so much time and effort to include me on something they ADORE to the level that you did.
I’m PROUD. 🙂
Great picks.
As Tom said about the Masters of American Comics show, it’s no fair complaining about what got left out unless you have specific recs for what you’d swap.
So as much as I love LOW, including almost the whole album seems a bit much. I would kill the tracks from the second half of side A, since you’ve already established “the LOW sound” and you only need to demonstrate the “repeat catchy fragment against tragic chord changes” structure once (Wife, Career).
Adding some early 90s would make the Earthling tracks seem like less of a shock — he was doing full-on techno as early as 1993, with BLACK TIE and BUDDHA. Not to mention OUTSIDE.
You gotta have a big lush happy new-millenium Bowie song on there — I would do “Everyone Says ‘Hi'” or “Afraid” or “Reality.”
There’s not really any post-Ziggy ballads here. Either of the two devastating “WxxW”s on STATION would be great. Kill “Joe the Lion” which is redundant if you’ve got “Beauty and the Beast.”
Finally, as much as I get bored when people focus on Bowie’s sexuality, I think you have to admire the feat of queering the Rolling Stones. “Let’s Spend the Night Together” kicks the original’s ass while wiggling its own.
PS. okay, one last dig. I can’t support any Bowie survey that includes “Blue Jean” but not “1984.”
Karaoke at MoCCA?