A giant tip o' the hat to Morningline1 for tweeting this to me.
Great stuff. Great talking heads, especially Carlos Alomar, Brian Eno, and an all too brief Earl Slick. Ava Cherry, on the other hand, sounds like she made everything up on the spot.
Does anyone know what happened to drummer Dennis Davis? Take a look and you'll see why I'm asking.
Fab film. Watch it.
10 comments:
I don't have time to watch it right now, but the first 2 minutes kick ass.
Very cool stuff -- a lot of footage I've never seen before (although, admittedly, I'm not a fan on that level). Not quite sure why they skipped the Diamond Dogs period altogether and went straight from Ziggy to Young Americans, which is inaccurate in terms of his artistic development. All the more strange as they spent chunks of time on his two big acting roles (Man Who Fell to Earth and Elephant Man). Nobody's going to remember Bowie for his acting.
William,
I agree that spending as much time as they did on Bowie's acting was odd, I'm thinking that choosing the Young Americans period made sense.
While I prefer the three records between Ziggy and Young Americans more than YA, "Aladdin Sane, "Pinups," and "Diamond Dogs" are arguably more of the same. So in keeping with the premise of the film, the year where Bowie made another transformation--1974-1975 seems legit. Or at least that's how I'm reading it.
Diamond Dogs wasn't quite Ziggy era to me, although he looked like it image-wise. Bowie was trying to do a concept album based on Orwell's 1984, and some of the songs (like "We Are the Dead," "Sweet Thing" and "Candidate") were like nothing Bowie had done before. The song "1984" pointed in the direction of Young Americans. "Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family"? Man, shit like that was brand new for Bowie.
I guess that album was a failure in some senses, for Bowie, but would have been a pretty good album for most artists.
If we're looking at eras, too, the first album and Man Who Sold the World had pretty strong identities of their own. Frankly, I thought the "Five Years" concept was more than pretentious and just not accurate, but I gather "BBC" and "pretentious" go hand in hand.
Still, all in all, a very enjoyable watch. And Charles Shaar Murray really should see a dentist.
Great show! Learned a lot that I didn't really know about Bowie.
It was great to see him go from being obviously coke-fueled to clear-eyed and focused and enjoying life again. I think the press sees him as an enigma, because he is such a private man. I believe he is just an extraordinary artist who must express himself, but doesn't necessarily want the fawning attention of the press. Some of the journalists from the '70's were just idiots, and Bowie disdained such idiocy.
Thanks for sharing this, Sal.
My first exposure to Bowie was "Aladdin Sane," the week it came out. Then I went back and got Ziggy and continued forward with every release. To my young ears, 1972-1974 sounded similar. Amazing, but it felt like Bowie was Bowie, a glam rocker.
"Young Americans" threw me...in a bad way. Again, the is my only defense for the exclusion of Diamond Dogs.
But reading what you wrote William, now, much older, I can see how Diamond Dogs was nothing like Bowie had released prior.
Good argument.
Glad you all enjoyed it. I got the link from a tweet from Chickfactor fanzine late Sunday night. It was great also because I don't have HBO and really wanted to watch the Liberace movie! The first Bowie album I bought was David Live. He looked so ill in a lot of the footage, still pictures are just slim and glamorous.
Lesley (morningline1)
Wowza! This was just great. Bowie is pretty unique no matter how you slice it. I was surprised there was no mention of that "ragamuffin from Texas" SRV during the serious moonlight portion of the film.
For those wondering about the emphasis on his acting and TMWFTE, that film was aired immediately after the doc. The makers of the doc may not have known that but as it was a Bowie night, I'd guess that they did.
Steve Mc
wha happened i missed the party
hey part of my word verification was kiko ya think they're los lobos fans
Post a Comment