Ground control to ILM

If pushed I'd have to say second best. Station To Station pips it!

Some years back, there was a "write a bowie song" competition on his website. I only had a rub internet dialup link so got a friend to d/l the song tune. So I penned a quite alright lyric, uploaded it and nothing.

There was a feature where you could judge other people's contributions. My god how poor they were. Even the Feeling could do better!

Anyroad, I did read the winner's lyrics and I admit they could be conceivably judged to have been better than mine. By a person. The next person could have liked mine better, but fair play and well done Alex Grant. I remember his name as it was so close to mine alphabetically.

(In case you think I'm being grosskopf, Robbie Williams did a similar competition and the lyrics I did for that were possibly the worst I've ever and bad to the extreme. (Still better than the Feeling tho))

The Bowie product in the shops at the time was Never Let Me Down: we were canny enough to avoid this. I think the first ones I listened to were Changesonebowie and Scary Monsters, then the glam stuff, then the Berlin stuff, then the early stuff.

It was a very intense phase, because I was hardly listening to anything else, but it didn't last long: I discovered the Smiths, who demonstrated that you didn't have to be an androgynous sex alien to be alienated. Bowie slipped down my inner charts after that, with occasional mini-revivals.

A few years ago I was on the radio slagging him off in a head-to-head with Andrew Collins. I didn't really mean it, though he doesn't matter that much to me any more. Sorry DB and happy birthday.

Anyway, the first Bowie song I was really aware of hearing was "Let's Dance" (which I played earlier today, Happy Birthday, David) and I still love it to bits, of course. However, a song I never knew was his until I went through my mom's record collection and came upon that song I had always loved on a mixtape my mother made for the holidays was "Sound And Vision". I haven't really been out of my Bowie phase ever since ;)

but I still can't get behind anything he did after oh 1981 or so.

I do adore "Yassassin" from Lodger, as far as studio recordings. There is something charming in its cranky vocals and musical clunkiness.

Though I did know someone who was inspired to get more Lester Bowie because of that record.

I first read that as 'both voluptuous on 70s radio' and was v. intrigued.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qsRgrPJ2pY

That's the way I'd saym and it and most other Brits too I'd guess. Though no doubt some Bo-ee people will correct me on that.

Completely freaked me out. I thought it was the greatest thing ever...

My family never really listened to music, so I don't think I heard a single Bowie song, except for maybe Jean Genie, until I got to college. Before then, for some reason I just lumped in with Billy Idol as some symbol of the 80s. In fact, I'm pretty sure I mixed them up a few times in my head.

The first Bowie song I heard after getting into music a little bit was probably Space Oddity, which I thought was probably the best song ever at the time. I bought the best of 69-74 and Ziggy Stardust and was content that I had heard most of the best Bowie had to offer. Whoops.

Finally I got around to his other stuff, at least up to Scary Monsters. I've heard every album he's recorded up to then, except for Lodger. Since I love Station to Station/"Heroes"/Low, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna love Lodger. But I almost want to save it, just so I'll always have something to look forward to.

i got back into him - and seriously, i defy anyone to have a sillier way than this - when i left optimo one night four or five years ago, one E to the wind, and danced back to my mate's then flat on the high street. "hey hey," my mate said, in that excitable way only a post-optimo loon on MDMA can do, "listen to my new ringtone".

it was "heroes". a polyphonic version. which went on for six minutes. even though, you know, most people's phones go to voicemail after 30 seconds. anyway, we sat in his living room, buzzing away, drinking tea and listening to a mobile phone. "it's ... it's ... beautiful!" i said, awestruck.

he looked for his copy of "heroes" on CD but couldn't find it. so instead he dug out "low" and put it on ...

... and it was probably the single most powerful musical experience i've had in my life: an album that was all there, neatly filed away in the back of my brain, ready to be loved all over again, bursting into its tragic, beautiful, wracked genius. i won't, because it'd be dull, but i could probably make a fairly good case for saying that, over the course of that album, EVERYTHING I LOVE ABOUT MUSIC is there, even if just for the merest moment.

i've said it before - in some ways rediscovering something you used to love but haven't heard in ages is more of a high than hearing brand new music for the first time - and in this case, with the added benefit of the E, it was just ... oh, really, it was beyond compare. joyous.

bought it again on CD the next day (and "heroes" too) and it's been a permanent fixture in my life ever since. i bought a best-of too and realised that, really, it's ALL godlike (i mean, 16-year-old me was a twat; all the ziggy and aladdin sane stuff ROCKS), and i've since bought "station to station" and the last one and ... hell, there are others, i can't think which.

but, you know, "low" is and remains and always will be something transcendent.

My introduction to Bowie happened as a cultural landmark for all '80s babies: the film Labyrinth. That's when I first became aware of David Bowie. Then I filed that information away in my head and did nothing with it until a few years later when, as a 12-year-old, I was trying to cement my own musical tastes and I rediscovered Bowie through "Let's Dance". I loved what I heard and investigated further, and that's how I bought Changesbowie (no "one" or "two" here, just the one cassette). From that point on, I've been cultivating a real liking and respect for the man and his talents.

During my mid 80s noise rock period, Let's Dance was the only tape in my Dad's car I could stand to listen to. It's so overcompressed and flat-sounding, like a pop take on the krautrock tendencies of his trilogy. Afro-teutonic?

Elvis Telecom reminds me how scary Bowie could be - flashback to preteen me seeing the video for "Ashes to Ashes" on late-night TV in the early 80s (along with Devo's "Freedom of Choice") and being both freaked and fascinated.

I always liked "Let's Dance" too!

I never listened to any of his proper albums until relatively recently, I only had that 2CD Singles compilation, then I got Ziggy and Hunky Dory when I was about 23 or so. I only got around to Low and Heroes last year! I'm a lousy Bowie fan, I guess.