Here is my David Bowie- VH-1 Storytellers review as it appeared at ALTERCATION:
The premise of VH-1's Storytellers was to get an artist to spill the beans about the genesis of his most popular songs, and maybe give a pointer or two about the songwriting process. Who better than David Bowie then, an artist I have been a huge fan of since Ziggy Stardust found its way into my bedroom and scared the crap out of my mother in 1972, and whose lyrics consistently make little to no sense...to me. On this CD/DVD release, you get the episode as it aired, as well as 4 bonus tracks that didn't. Inexplicably, those 4 tracks are only tagged onto the DVD. (Super annoying.)
Musically, it's fine, with Bowie and his band performing almost acoustic versions of songs, that really were just part of his current tour's set list, as opposed to songs that may have benefited from the background the show was there to offer. Bowie's storytelling is a bit camp, and doesn't really address the songs and their content so much as it just illustrates what may have gone on around the time of the writing. So the crazy lyrics of "Drive In Saturday" get little explanation, but Bowie does inform us that it was written for Mott The Hoople as a follow-up to "All The Young Dudes." Mott turned it down, and Bowie overreacted by shaving off his eyebrows. I guess that's a cool enough story.
This is from Thursday's "Top 5" over at Len Berman Sports.
The Baseball Hall of Fame has been the hot topic this week. While we've been debating Pete Rose, a quote from "Cooperstown Confidential: Heroes, Rogues and the Inside Story of the Baseball Hall of Fame" byZev Chafets might be informative. He writes that as of 2007, the Hall included "a convicted drug dealer, a reformed cokehead who narrowly beat a lifetime suspension from baseball, a celebrated sex addict, an elders of Zion conspiracy nut, a pitcher who wrote a book about how he cheated his way into the Hall, a well-known and highly arrested drunk driver and a couple of nasty beanball artists." And that just included the living members.
Now about that Hall of Fame character clause......
AND FINALLY...
Read Charles Blow from today's NYT.
Hard to listen to a guy who believes the last good CD released was "The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill" from 1999. What an ass.
2 comments:
Yahoo!, another saturday post, i'm loving it!
Ok, since you brought up Pete Rose, here's my two cents. Any self-respecting Mets fan, who remembers 1973, will never, ever want to see that low life in the HOF. It used to be great watching him get pelted with garbage when he was moved to the outfield in late innings. Oh, the fun days at Shea.
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