Some people come home, put their things away, get comfortable and then pour themselves a drink...others change into their pajamas and put on an appropriate record.
Tonight, I've been listening to Station to Station*
and it's not that hard to believe, especially when you really listen to the whole album, that the man spent the same year he recorded this doing coke and living pretty much on a diet of peppers and milk.
I love David Bowie's music a lot, even if I'm not always sure about the man himself. (There are times I wonder how he's still alive given how many drugs he did in the 70s.)
He's, thankfully, not so reliant on narcotics for inspiration these days and has done some of his best stuff in years. The Next Day, released in 2013, was terrific.
Right now, I'm reading The Man Who Sold The World to find out more about albums such as Heroes, Hunky Dory, Low, Station to Station and Young Americans.
There is a lot of neat stuff about songs from each album, some of my favorite snippets are about "Life On Mars." :
It was an epic journey from the single piano note that opened the song to the climax of Mick Ronson's gargantuan orchestral arrangement...Bowie's vocal--also a first take, according to producer Ken Scott--was equal to the majesty of the arrangement, as he hit a high B flat at the end of the chorus and held it for three whole bars. The passion of that climax contrasted with the acerbic, almost nasal tone of the verse...The clash of cynical despair and passionate commitment was almost shocking--not least for what it revealed about how Bowie saw his own role as a star in the making, at the end of this remarkable performance of a deeply unsettling song.
Author Peter Doggett considers Hunky Dory Bowie's most commercial album of all his career and feels it could have taken the singer to Beatlesque heights. I love the book's focus on individual recordings.
* Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine from allmusic :
Taking the detached plastic soul of Young Americans to an elegant, robotic extreme, Station to Station is a transitional album that creates its own distinctive style. Abandoning any pretense of being a soulman, yet keeping rhythmic elements of soul, David Bowie positions himself as a cold, clinical crooner and explores a variety of styles. Everything from epic ballads and disco to synthesized avant pop is present on Station to Station, but what ties it together is Bowie's cocaine-induced paranoia and detached musical persona. At its heart, Station to Station is an avant-garde art-rock album, most explicitly on "TVC 15" and the epic sprawl of the title track, but also on the cool crooning of "Wild Is the Wind" and "Word on a Wing," as well as the disco stylings of "Golden Years." It's not an easy album to warm to, but its epic structure and clinical sound were an impressive, individualistic achievement, as well as a style that would prove enormously influential on post-punk.
For some gentle unwinding on a late Saturday night, you might want to try this...
The cover of Bruce Springsteen's "I'm On Fire" is beautiful and transcendent. It's off of Acid Pauli's Get Lost V and sounds as if Elvis Presley and Chris Isaak somehow merged together to record this. It's just a stunning track.
Another gorgeous song is "Weightlighting" off the album of the same name by Trashcan Sinatras. More than aptly titled, it takes you outside of yourself as if it were inducing some kind of musical astral projection.
i discover the wheel and watch the buildings go by
you talk a little soft, turn off the radio
i just want to hear all the past times
the rushed hours, the endless lives
don’t become a burden
say the word and be free
you will find a great weight lifting
easing your mind, a great weight lifting
just leave it behind, a great weight lifting
and you will find a great weight lifting
it’s been a lonely winter hibernating away
you need a little sunlight on that face
how long can you stay in the darkness?
dust round the empty nest?
you could make you way out
if you lay down the load
you will find a great weight lifting
easing your mind, a great weight lifting
leave it behind, a great weight lifting
you will find a great weight lifting
just leave it behind, a great weight lifting
and you will find a great weight lifting
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