C/D : David Bowie "Chilly Down (with the Wild Gang)"

Its a song for a children's film. It works as such. Better than f'ing Raffi or Barney.

How about his collaboration with Mickey Rourke on, I believe, "Never Let Me Down"?

(One thing I like about this song is that it uses the same chords as "Quicksand", so while all these funny squeaky voices are cluttering the vocal space, in your mind you can hear the young Bowie singing "Don't believe in yourself, don't deceive with belief, knowledge comes with death's release...")

"I need to come clean about something here. I've never been terribly impressed by David Bowie. He has always struck me as an extremely normal person of average intelligence who has been told over and over again that he is a genius so he goes out of his way to dress like a clown and create pretentious "art" that hardly ever rises above generic rock, characterized by unexpected shifts into odd, unappealing chord sequences and topped by a nothing British bland voice of nothingness. I have always been confused by people who put him up on a pedestal because aside from an album's worth of great hit singles, he has never struck me as anything more than a simple-minded follower, definitely not an innovator (or at least, not an innovator of anything worth innovating!). But he has a ton of fans, so I'm going to try really hard to focus on these records and both describe how they sound to me personally and come to an understanding of how everybody who likes him is somehow not a stupid asshole with ears literally dripping shit all over the floor."

OTM, MUTHAFUCKA!!! OTM!!!!

OTM!!!!!!!

Sure, Bowie has done some awful stuff, but he's touched heights few other artists have. He's an extremely bright man and attractive man with a quite extraordinary voice. His chord sequences are actually very original and haunting, his backing vocal arrangements incredibly good, his production skills patchy ("Raw Power") but often amazing ("Transformer", "Diamond Dogs"). He's perhaps one of a handful of truly postmodern artists to have worked in the late 20th century. A lot of his work is touched with undeniable genius: look at the sweeping, symphonic structure of "Sweet Thing / Candidate", the oddness of "Andy Warhol" or "DJ", the odd structures of "Joe The Lion" or "Breaking Glass". He's exerted extraordinary Pied Piperlike charismatic power over so many other artists that he's become a whole genre, really, but his work in the 60s and 70s always went way beyond the genres he played around with. I mean, "Young Americans" is a pretty odd soul album, isn't it? A soul concept album about a black presidential campaign? Listen to the way Bowie coke-provises the lyrics and almost scat-sings his way through the title track. Look at him perform it as the first white artist on Soul Train, looking absolutely amazing, the ultimate whiteblackschizococainedandy! Total fucking genius!

I've never thought of this album this way.

I saw this movie again recently, and jesus, that "Chilly Down" song is jaw-droppingly bad. You can't help but wonder how much coke the guy was snorting for him to release that. Especially when, he, the villain of the movie, is seen singing it with sock puppets in a whimsical sideshow fashion.