It occurred to me that, though Dave Bowie is tantamount to a parent to me, I had never listened to all of his 1975 "plastic soul" album Young Americans. The Bride cringes when "Fame" comes on (which it doesn't - one just hears it wafting from malls and gyro joints sometimes), so maybe that is a good enough excuse for this oversight.
SO! This morning I set out to remedy this! Maybe "Win" or "Right" would turn out to be another "Drive-In Saturday!" There could be gems here. Maybe the cover of "Across the Universe," put through some sort of Blow Monkeys-izer would be something I would cherish!
Well, no - limpid ballads with overprocessed BowieSax on them (hello, Kon-Rads!), the full flowering of the Bowie "croon" (subpar to the keening Newley chirp, as we know), dull drums, and, you know, soul. Soul, as an art form, is just fine - but not when you wrote "Life on Mars?"
About the only other thing I can muster the will to say is that the line about "do you remember/your President Nixon?" is impossibly great, given that Nixon resigned in August and this came out in March. Love that!
No comments:
Post a Comment