My Month of Bowie, day 21: 'Earthling' (1997)

And David Bowie surveyed his kingdom. And he was pleased.

The album: Earthling (Virgin, 1997)

Don't turn around!

My thoughts: Boom-BAP-ba-doom-a-doom-BAP! Boom-BAP-ba-doom-a-doom-BAP! Remember when that sound was everywhere? For a while in the 1990s, it seemed like every other song you heard on the radio or on MTV began with those same overcaffeinated drums. Jungle music, they called it. Or drum and bass. Were those the same thing? I forget. Whatever you call it, David Bowie was certainly paying attention in 1997, because the boom-bap-a-doom drums are all over his twenty-first studio album, Earthling. The whole thing sounds like an episode of The Powerpuff Girls. (That show debuted the very next year.)

You could accuse Bowie of merely following some late '90s musical fads on Earthling, and you wouldn't be wrong, necessarily. But I think you'd also be missing out on one of the most fun records he'd done since Let's Dance (1983). Goddamn, even that was 14 years old by the time Earthling came out. How time does fly. This is another one of those albums where I think it actually pays to be a Bowie novice rather than a Bowie expert. Uncultured dumdum that I am, I can appreciate the sci-fi sugar rush of these nine songs. Lyrically, Bowie is pouty and pessimistic as usual—always a rain cloud, this guy—but the music isn't lugubrious or morose in the slightest. It's propulsive.

The one song I already knew from Earthling was the album's penultimate track: "I'm Afraid of Americans." Bowie cowrote this doomy, paranoid ditty with Brian Eno, and it might be one of his very last songs to have a life outside of the album it originally came on. Part of the reason for that is because the single version was remixed by Bowie acolyte Trent Reznor. But I think "I'm Afraid of Americans" stands on its own as one of David's catchiest and most purposeful songs of the entire decade. It's one of the rare times in the '90s that David Bowie sounded like a man on a mission, the way he did in the '70s.

But I was entertained by Earthling all the way through, even if those aforementioned drums do tend to become repetitive over the course of nine songs. I'd never describe this LP as "pretty," but there are some exquisite barbershop harmonies on "Looking for Satellites" that my ears appreciated. Elsewhere, on Outside's final song, "Law (Earthlings on Fire)," there's a repeated, spoken refrain: "I don't want knowledge, I want certainty." A reasonable conclusion, I'd say. The first time I heard this song, however, I thought he was saying, "I don't want knowledge, I want succotash." I think I like my line better.

Next: Hours (1999)

My Month of Bowie, day 20: 'Outside' (1995)

David Bowie's Outside is a record that'll really get under your skin.

The album: Outside (Virgin Records, 1995)

Fire walked with him.

My thoughts: Normally, when I review these David Bowie albums, my strategy is to do no research whatsoever. I just press play and hit the road. I generally listen to these albums while I go for a nice, long walk in the park. I've gotten a lot of steps in because of David this month.

But today, as I listened to his twentieth studio album, Outside, I realized something was definitely amiss. First of all, the album didn't end after 45 minutes or so, like David's albums usually do. None of the individual songs were really sticking in my head but just sort of blurring together. Also, there were more spoken interludes than ever, seemingly all of them done in funny voices. And when I glanced down at the track list, I noticed there were at least five tracks designated "Segue." All these horrible realities began to dawn on me. Oh, jesus, is this another concept album? With characters and a story and all that crap?

So I looked into it and, yeah, this is another one of those. David the theater kid strikes again. Outside has a subtitle, The Nathan Adler Diaries, and a sub-subtitle, A Hypercycle. Oh, good Christ! I just want some goddamned tunes; I don't want to go looking for clues. And if that's not bad enough, this thing goes on for 75 minutes! But this is the album that reunited David Bowie with Brian Eno, so there must be something valuable about it, right? Right?!

David went through many phases in his career, but this was one I forgot about: his Twin Peaks phase. I guess he was really into that show. He was even in the movie Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992). It's now time for a confession. Although I consider myself a David Lynch fan and have seen pretty much all of his feature films, I've never gotten through even a single episode of Twin Peaks. I keep meaning to, but there's just too much of it. I don't have room in my life. I feel weirdly guilty about that.

Outside is not actually part of the Twin Peaks universe, but the album centers around a very Dale Cooper-sounding detective named Nathan Adler investigating the murder of a teenage girl named Baby Grace in a strange, fictional place called Oxford Town. Those spoken interludes I mentioned are monologues by eccentric townsfolk. Does all of this sound familiar? The album's cover, a smeary self-portrait of David Bowie, even looks like the iconic image of Laura Palmer's corpse. 

Wrapped in plastic: a side-by-side comparison of Twin Peaks and Outside.

Musically, Outside reminds me a lot of Nine Inch Nails' noise-rock epic The Downward Spiral (1994), except with weaker songs. And there are certain tracks (like the single "Hallo Spaceboy") that sound like they'd be on Tyler Durden's workout playlist. Which is remarkable because The Dust Brothers' landmark Fight Club soundtrack didn't come out until 1999. I guess what I'm driving at is that this album is very much of its time. You should listen to it on a Discman while drinking Surge outside a Blockbuster.

There's something paradoxical about David Bowie's career that I'm just realizing now, twenty albums into this project. He was so prone to experimentation, provocation, and self-indulgent oddness throughout his entire career that weirdness was his normalcy. What would be an anomaly in another artist's career—imagine if Bruce Springsteen had made this LP—is just another average Tuesday for David Bowie. After a while, the extraordinary becomes workaday. Do you suppose the Addams Family ever got bored of being the Addams Family?

You know what would have been a real experiment for David Bowie at this point in his career? An album of romantic ballads. Or a country album. That would have been daring.

Next: Earthling (1997)

My Month of Bowie, day 19: 'The Buddha of Suburbia' (1993)

David Bowie released two albums in 1993. This was the second.

The album: The Buddha of Suburbia (Arista, 1993)

An obscure Bowie LP.

My thoughts: Okay, here's a weird one, a little glitch in the matrix. When David Bowie was promoting his big comeback album Black Tie White Noise (1993), he sat down for a chat with British novelist Hanif Kureishi for an article in Andy Warhol's Interview magazine. Kureishi had written a novel called The Buddha of Suburbia (1990), set in the 1970s and at least partially influenced by Bowie. When Kureishi's novel was adapted as a four-part miniseries on the BBC in 1993, guess who ended up doing the music? That's right: our man, David Robert Jones.

So the album I'm reviewing today is the soundtrack to a miniseries I haven't seen based on a book I haven't read. Maybe Kureishi's novel was more popular over there than it was over here. It must've been, since the miniseries didn't even make it to American TV in 1993. Honestly, I was almost tempted to skip this one. After all, I didn't review David's soundtracks for Christiane F. (1981) or Labyrinth (1986) either. (Those LPs both exist.) But Wikipedia counted The Buddha of Suburbia as one of David's 26 canonical studio albums. And besides, David himself has said it's his favorite of his own records. What the hell? Let's do this.

You might figure that, since it's meant to accompany a TV miniseries, The Buddha of Suburbia would be mostly instrumentals. And, yeah, there are a handful of those on the album, including a curiously quiet, six-and-a-half-minute piece called "Ian Fish, U.K. Heir." As for the other instrumentals on this album, "South Horizon" and "The Mysteries," I'd describe them as a combination of jazz and techno influences. Both of them go on a bit too long for my taste, unfortunately. You could think of these tracks as updated versions of the ambient music Bowie made with Brian Eno in the late 1970s. But they also sound like they could work in the context of a fashion show, with models in expensive, uncomfortable clothes strutting up and down the catwalk on impractically high heels.

What really distinguishes The Buddha of Suburbia, though, are its vocal numbers. These are as strong as anything on Black Tie White Noise, for my money, though I'm not 100% sure we needed to reprise the title song in its entirety at the end of the album. Supposedly, the second iteration of the song features Lenny Kravitz, but I was hard-pressed to tell the difference between the two versions. There are also some interesting ideas, musically and lyrically, on the track "Sex and the Church," but this one drones on for six-and-a-half minutes as well and doesn't have much new to say in its last couple of minutes.

Was The Buddha of Suburbia worth investigating? Sure, but it's probably not one I'll be returning to once this project is over. At least not for a while. Frankly, if I'd been Bowie's manager in 1993, I might have suggested he ditch the instrumentals altogether, pare the vocal numbers down a little, and release the whole thing as a scrappy little EP instead of a rather bloated LP. Bowie is often cited as a forerunner of punk, but punk tends to get to the bloody point.

Next: Outside (1995) 

My Month of Bowie, day 18: 'Black Tie White Noise' (1993)

In 1993, David Bowie released his first solo album in six years.

The album: Black Tie White Noise (Savage, 1993)

Guess who's back, back again?

My thoughts: After a couple of critical duds in a row, namely Tonight (1984) and Never Let Me Down (1987), David Bowie evidently thought it was time for a change. Had he gotten soft in middle age? Lost his edge? Lost his way? Audiences and critics were wondering if the Thin White Duke still had anything left to say to us, so many years after that first communique from Major Tom.

Before he'd been marketed (successfully) as a solo artist, David Bowie was a member of numerous, short-lived rock groups: The Kon-Rads, The King Bees, The Mannish Boys, etc., etc. Maybe getting back to his roots would do the trick. So his next major endeavor was forming a noisy new four-piece ensemble, Tin Machine, and recording two albums with them, as well as touring. I'm somewhat curious about this material, but I'm skipping it for now. After all, this series is called My Month of Bowie, and if I included absolutely everything in the man's discography, it would take significantly longer than a month. Hell, David's live albums alone number in the double digits, including at least one he made with Tin Machine!

The point is, David needed some time to recharge his batteries. Tin Machine allowed him to do that. In 1993, six long years after Never Let Me Down, he felt it was time to come back with a new solo album on a new label. And he even reunited with Nile Rodgers, the producer of Let's Dance (1983), i.e. the last Bowie album people had actually enjoyed. I keep seeing the 1980s described as a period of "low creativity" for Bowie. I don't find that to be true. He was still creating things, but his ideas were getting buried in cheesy '80s production. It happened to plenty of artists back then.

So does Black Tie White Noise right the ship? Yes and no. In the main, I suppose it's more pleasing to the ears than Tonight and Never Let Me Down, but I still sense a lack of purpose on much of this LP, especially the back half. Black Tie sounds extremely optional to me, while Bowie's very best music sounded mandatory. It just so happened that I listened to this album the same day I saw Spinal Tap II: The End Continues (2025). There's a scene in that film in which David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean) proudly declares that he won a "Holdie" award for recording the best on-hold music. Well, I think a few of the tracks on Black Tie White Noise would have put David Bowie in contention for a "Holdie" of his very own.

What's there to talk about here? Black Tie is Bowie's first solo album of the grunge era, but you'd hardly guess it. Instead of digging Soundgarden and Nirvana, it sounds like Bowie had been listening to a lot of Lisa Stansfield before recording his eighteenth album. Remember that Stansfield made her name with a Barry White-style song called "All Around the World." She took Barry's signature soulful sound of the '70s and updated it with new jack swing production elements. It's conceivable to me that David Bowie heard that song and thought, "Yes, that's what I'd like for my album." You can especially hear this on the title track of Black Tie White Noise, featuring the silky smooth vocals of R&B loverman Al B. Sure.

Look, there's nothing exceptionally wrong with Black Tie White Noise. It's just that there's nothing exceptionally right with it either. It's an hour of competent pop. If George Michael had put out this exact same album in 1993, no one would have batted an eye. To me, a new Bowie album should be an occasion for copious eye-batting. But it's all so goddamned tasteful and well-mannered. In retrospect, Bowie was giving us some clues with the album's title. "Black tie" is what a wealthy man would wear to a formal event, and "white noise" is that pleasant drone people use to fall asleep. Put those together and you have this album.

P.S. I had a rare technical problem in putting together this review. When I originally went looking for this album, I inadvertently found a disc of Black Tie outtakes and remixes and somehow thought that was the actual record! So I listened to it and thought, "This was Bowie's comeback album?!" I didn't see how that could be possible. So I dug a little deeper and found the real LP. Whoops! (By the way, unless you're a completist superfan, don't bother with the extras for this album. They're not worth much.) This setback may have soured me somewhat on the album, so keep that in mind as you read my review.

Next: The Buddha of Suburbia (1993)

My Month of Bowie, day 17: 'Never Let Me Down' (1987)

David Bowie may, in fact, have let some people down with this album.

The album: Never Let Me Down (EMI America, 1987)

Even the album cover is busy.

My take: Never Let Me Down is the first David Bowie album I was acutely aware of. All of his LPs from Station to Station (1976) to Tonight (1984) were released during my lifetime, but I would have been too young to take notice of them when they were new. By 1987, however, I was an adolescent whose family had basic cable. MTV was my life. I was probably even reading Rolling Stone (or at least skimming through it at the newsstand) by that point. So, yeah, when one of the biggest rock stars in the world put out a brand new, heavily-hyped album, I heard all about it.

I even knew that Never Let Me Down, while a commercial success, was not a critically well-received album. (The same could be said of Tonight.) Nevertheless, for the purposes of this project, I approached it with an open mind and no expectations. Or at least I tried to. It's becoming more and more difficult to remain unbiased as this project goes along, especially now that I have sixteen previous albums to compare this one to.

Never Let Me Down finds Bowie still firmly ensconced in his "mall pop" era. Like other legacy acts of his generation, he was obviously struggling to update his sound for the '80s while still remaining true to himself. You can hear that same struggle in the Reagan-era music of Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones, and other rock veterans. After two listens to Never Let Me Down, I'd say that David Bowie hadn't totally lost the knack as a songwriter or even as a singer, but he'd sure lost the knack as a record-maker. This guy released some of the most sonically-satisfying LPs of the 1970s, but Never is drowning in all of the worst musical ideas of the 1980s. At least he sounds more awake on this one than he did on Tonight.

To be fair, I cannot listen to the album the way it was intended in 1987. If you want to fully appreciate Never Let Me Down, you have to buy it on cassette from a Sam Goody, Record Town, or Tape World, then play it on a hot pink boombox with crappy speakers while applying copious amounts of hairspray and eye makeup. Under those circumstances, songs like "Beat of Your Drum" and "New York's in Love" would probably make a lot more sense. Most of the tracks on Never would also blend in perfectly on the soundtrack for a Steve Guttenberg action-comedy.

When you call an album Never Let Me Down, you're all but inviting critics to take potshots at you. Which they did. And I'm sure a few reviewers noted that, on this album, Bowie literally went from singing about "Heroes" to singing about "Zeroes." But "Zeroes" is a textbook example of a song that would have been much more engaging if Bowie had just recorded it in the early-to-mid-1970s. Only the cheeseball '80s arrangement lets it down (pardon the expression). Throughout this entire album, there are frequent guitar solos by David's longtime friend, Peter Frampton. I was ambivalent toward them. I could appreciate Frampton's skill as a musician, but these solos make a lot of the tracks on Never sound alike. Imagine the Miami Vice theme playing on an endless loop.

So what's salvageable here? Well, the album's first two tracks ("Day-In Day-Out" and "Time Will Crawl") are energetic and catchy, even if they both slightly outstay their welcome. The album's title track has a wistful, Lennon-esque quality, again nearly snuffed out by the overproduction. And then there's "Glass Spider," which starts with wonderfully pretentious spoken narration about some kind of giant spiderlike creature that goes stomping around China, devouring victims and turning their skeletons into keepsakes. Lord only knows what this all means, but we haven't had anything like it on a Bowie record since Diamond Dogs (1974). It's entertaining enough, but I couldn't help but think of Nigel Tufnel introducing "Stonehenge." ("In ancient times, hundreds of years before the dawn of history...")

I should mention that, in support of this very album, David Bowie embarked upon the incredibly ambitious and gloriously silly Glass Spider Tour, which featured (among other things) a gigantic spider looming over the stage. Critics huffed, but plenty of tickets were sold. I've looked at some of the footage, and it's mind-boggling. This show deserves an article of its own, but I simply don't have room for it in this project. Maybe somewhere down the line, I'll cover it.

For David Bowie, following this album and the tour, it was time to regroup and refocus. He spent the next few years with his side project, Tin Machine, before reemerging with a new studio album. Bowie went six years between solo records, an unprecedented gap for him. What on earth would a David Bowie album sound like in a post-Nevermind (1991) world? We're about to investigate that very question.

Next: Black Tie White Noise (1993)

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 243: The Erotic World of A.C. Stephen (1999) [PART 1]

Steve Apostolof, aka A.C. Stephen, has his day in the sun.

"Find a penny, pick it up, and all day long you'll have good luck." Remember that one?

Ed Wood on a lucky penny.

Since pennies are worth so little today, you have two choices when you find one lying on the floor or the ground somewhere: pick it up or leave it be. Personally, I'm a penny picker-upper, and I think it's because of that little rhyme we all learned as children. It's somehow comforting to think that these essentially-worthless little coins might be good luck talismans. It redeems them somehow. Ennobles them.

Ed Wood is the lucky penny of directors, except he's a lucky penny that we keep discarding and rediscovering in an endless cycle. Most people look at Eddie and see only a talentless drunk who made cheap, bad movies—a one-cent piece not even worth picking up—but every once in a while, some observant passerby spots him and decides that, yes, it's worth the effort to reach down and retrieve him from the pavement.

Interest in Ed Wood remained high throughout the 1990s, and the spotlight on Ed was wide enough that it shone on some of Eddie's collaborators and contemporaries. Case in point: Stephen C. Apostolof aka A.C. Stephen (1928-2005), the Bulgarian-born softcore director with whom Ed made eight movies between 1965 and 1978. Ed served as a screenwriter, assistant director, and even occasional actor in Steve's movies. While Apostolof was understandably conflicted about being reduced to a supporting player in the Ed Wood saga, it's undeniable that Wood's notoriety brought Steve's movies back into public view for the first time in years.

At least two different companies, both quirky specialty labels, rereleased Apostolof's movies on home video back then. In Los Angeles, Rhino Home Video released its own edition of Orgy of the Dead (1965), plus three volumes called Saturday Night Sleazies (1990-1991). Meanwhile, up in Seattle, Something Weird Video launched its own series of Apostolof reissues. When I was doing my research for the book Dad Made Dirty Movies (2020), I frequently relied on those SWV editions of Steve's films, including Motel Confidential (1969) and The Divorcee (1969).

The tape I wanted.

But one particular item remained elusive: a 1999 compilation tape from Something Weird called The Erotic World of A.C. Stephen. This is a career-spanning compilation of various Apostolof clips from the 1960s and 1970s, including footage from several of the films Steve made with Ed Wood. Somehow, I've never managed to snag a copy of this tape, and it's become a pretty rare collector's item in the quarter-century since its release. After getting sniped at the last second during an Ebay auction, I gave up.

Fortunately, reader and Ed Wood superfan Brendon Sibley was kind enough to digitize his copy of The Erotic World and send it my way. As with the last film Brendon sent me, the faux-Italian pseudo-documentary Mondo Oscenità (1966), there is simply too much here to cover in one article. Instead, I will make this into a two-part series, perhaps three if necessary. I very much thank Brendon for making this material available to me.

The generous, 108-minute compilation begins with a true rarity: the short film Bachelor's Dream aka The Bachelor's Dreams (1967). Steve Apostolof made this 33-minute featurette so that it could be shown in front of his own movies on double feature bills. That way, he could control both halves of the program and get all the box office receipts instead of only half. What's interesting to Ed Wood fans is that Bachelor's Dream is built around some black-and-white test footage that was originally shot by Bob Wilson during pre-production on Orgy of the Dead. Steve merely dusted off this footage, shot some new wraparound footage (some of it in color) to go with it, and added a flimsy storyline to tie it all together. Voila! Instant movie!

Podcast Tuesday: "Legend of the Black Widow"

Joanna Lee lines up a shot in The Other Sister.

When asked about his favorite episodes of Happy Days, producer Garry Marshall mentioned the show's so-called "very special episodes" that dealt with more serious situations. When Garry was a young writer on such lighthearted sitcoms as The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Lucy Show in the 1960s, these topics might have been off-limits to him. But TV changed drastically in the 1970s, especially because of the popularity of Norman Lear's controversial sitcoms like All in the Family, Maude, and Good Times. Those shows were not afraid of tackling uncomfortable topics, and they got good ratings. So the major networks decided to discuss such previously-taboo subjects as disease and mental illness in their prime time comedies. Garry took full advantage, as he explained in a career-spanning archival interview:

With Happy Days, we could do all the pressure group stuff that we couldn't do in some of the other situations, that were not done in the Van Dyke/Lucy days. So it became, you know, philosophically, while you have the audience's attention, you might as well say something. So then we did all our series of pressure groups in a good sense. We did our diabetes show, we did our mentally challenged show, our hard-of-hearing show, whatever that was, the blind challenge. I don't know the politically correct things, but we did all the shows that pointed out to the audience that you could overcome a handicap. You could do all these things.

Did that philosophy carry over into Garry's movies? To an extent, sure. His characters dealt with serious, life-threatening illnesses in Nothing in Common (1986) and Beaches (1988). There was at least one terminally-ill child in Dear God (1996). That film was mostly a feel-good comedy, but it had a preachy side, too, with its message about helping the poor, lonely, and depressed even when you're poor, lonely, and depressed yourself.

However, with his 1999 romantic comedy The Other Sister, Garry really went for it. It's a "very special episode" in movie form, complete with a message about overcoming a handicap. Yet again, he lined up a very impressive cast, including Juliette Lewis, Giovanni Ribisi, Diane Keaton, and Tom Skerritt. This was obviously a project very close to Garry's heart, since he cowrote the screenplay himself with Happy Days scribe Bob Brunner. 

This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, we talk about that film and our reaction to it. We'd love for you to join us.

My Month of Bowie, day 16: 'Tonight' (1984)

Did David Bowie repeat the success of Let's Dance with Tonight?

The album: Tonight (EMI America, 1984)

Bowie prays for an Auntie Anne's pretzel.

My thoughts: What was it about white British rockers and reggae music? Between the 1960s and the 1980s, they all took a sacred pledge to try it at least once. Remember that it was Eric Clapton, not Bob Marley, who topped the charts with "I Shot the Sheriff." But they all dabbled, everyone from Elton John and Paul McCartney to The Police and The Clash. I guess that, in 1984, it was finally David Bowie's turn. I'd like to imagine that he got an ominous letter in the mail with a picture of a skull with dreadlocks on the envelope. On the inside, there was a note reading: "YOU'RE NEXT." So he dutifully went into the studio and recorded his album, Tonight.

Bowie's sixteenth studio LP does not have a great critical reputation, and before embarking on this project, I was largely unaware of it. At the time of its release, the album did what it needed to do: sell some copies and keep David Bowie in the public eye for another year. He retained a lot of the personnel from Let's Dance (1983) but not producer Nile Rodgers. The result was a collection of what I'd call shopping mall music. Most of Tonight sounds like what you'd hear while picking out a new blazer at Chess King. Each copy should have come with a coupon for Orange Julius or Sbarro. Some of the slower, more sensual tracks could work as background music in a Cinemax softcore porn movie. 

Bowie himself trudges through the nine songs like Eeyore on quaaludes. I'm not sure what Bowie's sobriety situation was in 1984, but maybe he needed to get back on coke. So what are the points of interest this time around? Well, we have a seven-minute opening epic called "Loving the Alien." And could there be a more perfect title for a David Bowie song? There was even a posthumously-released Bowie box set by that name in 2018, plus a 1998 Bowie biography by Christopher Sandford. The song itself is decent, but I wasn't wild about the very '80s arrangement and production. I wish David could have recorded this track with his '70s band.

What else do we have here? Tina Turner shows up on the title track. That's nice, even if the song is a little bland for my taste. David's rowdiest pal, Iggy Pop, swings by for the album-closing "Dancing with the Big Boys," which sounds like a prototype for Peter Gabriel's "Big Time." Elsewhere on the album, "Neighborhood Threat" sounds a lot like Danny Elfman's theme song for the sitcom Sledge Hammer! (1986-1988). They may even use the same drum machine, for all I know.

I suppose the song that caught my attention the most was David's mournful cover of "God Only Knows" by The Beach Boys. I hadn't even glanced at the track listing for Tonight, so I didn't know the song was coming. Bowie slows the song way down and sings it as a dirge. Does it work? I can't really say, though it's more entertaining than most of Tonight. Again, I wish he'd done this same song maybe ten years earlier in his career.

I don't want to give the impression that Tonight is a catastrophe or an embarrassment. It's fine to have playing in the background at a party or something, even if "God Only Knows" might kill the vibe under such circumstances. What it lacks is urgency. "Blue Jean" isn't even his best "Jean" song. (That's "Jean Genie" on 1973's Aladdin Sane.) David was running dangerously low on inspiration when he cut this album, but EMI America must have needed something to fill a hole in their release schedule. Tonight is a take-it-or-leave-it album. I'm leaving it, personally, but I wouldn't blame you for taking it.

Next: Never Let Me Down (1987)

My Month of Bowie, day 15: 'Let's Dance' (1983)

In 1983, David Bowie wanted his MTV, and the feeling was mutual.

The album: Let's Dance (EMI America, 1983)

Bowie's gonna fly now.

My thoughts: You'd probably guess that legacy artists of the 1960s and 1970s had a tough time of it in the 1980s. In short order, the basic cable network MTV drastically changed the music industry, making instant superstars out of flashily-dressed young synth rockers with teased hair and heavy makeup. Suddenly, the music video was the format of choice, emphasizing style and image over substance. Surely, then, the decade would belong to the Adam Ants and Boy Georges of the world. The obsolete rock and pop acts who had dominated the charts in previous decades would be sidelined to make room for these brash upstarts.

And yet, look at what actually happened in the 1980s. Bruce Springsteen and Michael Jackson, both well established by the time Reagan took office, reached unprecedented heights of popularity in the new decade. Pop tunesmiths like Billy Joel, Elton John, and Paul McCartney didn't disappear from the charts either. Potential '70s dinosaurs like Yes, Genesis, Chicago, and Heart overhauled their sound to better suit the times. Legacy acts like Steve Winwood, The Moody Blues, and especially Aerosmith staged impressive comebacks. Nostalgia-themed films like Back to the Future (1985), Stand by Me (1986), Dirty Dancing (1987), and La Bamba (1987) kept classic rock alive on radio and TV.

In short, the past didn't go away. It was everywhere!

So David Bowie, still only in his 30s, had a better-than-average shot at making it big in the 1980s. Reinvention was his thing. He was more than photogenic enough to be a music video star. And he'd been incorporating electronic elements into his music for years. The cover of his first MTV-era album, Let's Dance, showed the singer as a prizefighter. Clearly, this was a fight he'd been training for. And he had a new producer in his corner: Chic's Nile Rodgers, who drew inspiration from his own (plentiful) hit records, particularly "Good Times."

One curious thing about Let's Dance is that it contains three inescapable hits that I heard dozens of times in the '80s—"Modern Love," "China Girl," and "Let's Dance"—and those are the first three songs on the album. Back to back to back, baby! I heard these tracks so many times as a youth that it's difficult to "review" them now. It's like trying to review your old yearbooks or your family vacation photos. I suppose I still like all of them in 2025, though my feelings are all tied up with complicated mixed emotions about my childhood. 

My Month of Bowie, day 14: 'Scary Monsters' (1980)

Why did David Bowie never play a scary clown in a horror movie?

The album: Scary Monsters (RCA, 1980)

Send in the clowns?

My thoughts: I went into Scary Monsters knowing it was David Bowie's attempt to make a more commercial album after the artistic experimentation of Low (1977), "Heroes" (1977), and Lodger (1979). So I braced myself for a more disciplined, less eccentric Bowie this time around. And what did I get when I pressed play? A Japanese woman yelling at me about god knows what.

That woman is Michi Hirota, Bowie's Japanese instructor at the time. What she's yelling is a translation of the lyrics of the opening track, "It's No Game." When David himself decides to join the song already in progress, his vocals are tense and strained, with a lot of little yips and yelps like David Byrne used to do. In fact, I'd say Scary Monsters is Bowie's second consecutive album, following Lodger, that sounds like an honorary Talking Heads record. I'm not sure if he was following their lead or they were following his. Looking at the timeline of various Bowie and Heads releases, I'd say they reached many of the same conclusions independently. Is it a mere coincidence that the 'Heads released an album called Little Creatures (1985) five years after Bowie released Scary Monsters?

This LP was supposed to be David's return to the pop mainstream. So is this album poppier and more radio-friendly than its predecessors? I guess so. David was a deeply weird guy drawing on many disparate musical influences, so this is about as "normal" as he was capable of being in 1980. Scary Monsters was never going to be another Off the Wall (1979), though I imagine David probably liked that album an awful lot. 

Which brings me to another point. About halfway through listening to Scary Monsters, a thought occurred to me: David Bowie skipped disco. I mean, he just completely sidestepped it. While John Travolta was getting down to "Stayin' Alive," Bowie was off in Berlin, listening to krautrock and trying to kick his drug habit. Certainly, other British rockers of Bowie's generation—Mick, Paul, Rod, Freddie, Elton—flirted with disco to some extent. But David's time was taken up by working with Iggy Pop and Brian Eno. By the time he recorded Scary Monsters, the disco era was already ending.

An album is only as strong as its songs, and Scary Monsters has another batch of good 'uns. I'd say the most memorable ones here are the quasi-fascistic "Fashion," the spooky title track, and the mournful "Ashes to Ashes," which acts as a sort of sequel to "Space Oddity" and gives us an update on poor old Major Tom. If you were wondering whether "Oddity" was about an astronaut or just some guy doing a lot of drugs, well, "Ashes" makes it clear: Major Tom's a junkie. Or maybe he became one after leaving the space program, I don't know.

When you listen to an artist's entire recorded repertoire in one month, you really don't have time to appreciate the subtle nuances of each individual album, let alone each individual song. When these albums were first released in the '70s and '80s, there were months or even years in between them. If you were a Bowie fanatic, you could live with an album like Scary Monsters for a good, long time and really familiarize yourself with its contents—not just the singles but the deep cuts, too—before the next one came out. 

I don't really have that luxury. I can only get a vague sense of the surroundings and move on. Based on that, I can't really say that Scary Monsters is an immediate favorite of mine. But maybe, if I spent more time with this album, the songs would burrow their way into my brain and take up residence there.

P.S. Since this was David Bowie's first album of the 1980s, I was going to write about how he had to reinvent himself, his music, and his image for the new decade. But that's not really applicable to Scary Monsters. The '80s hadn't quite become "THE EIGHTIES!" yet, at least not as we remember that decade. In particular, a certain American cable network hadn't started broadcasting. So we'll save that discussion for David's next album. Rest assured, a change is gonna come.

Next: Let's Dance (1983)

My Month of Bowie, day 13: 'Lodger' (1979)

Bowie gets smashed on Lodger.

The album: Lodger (RCA, 1979)

A flattened David Bowie.

My thoughts: I didn't grow up listening to the music of David Bowie—except for a few intense months when I was about 14—but I did grow up listening to the music of Talking Heads. Their albums were dear friends to me when I was an adolescent. David Bowie's Lodger might as well be a Talking Heads album. It has that same sound: herky-jerky like New Wave but with more of a groove to it so it doesn't sound sterile or robotic. God, I wish I'd been smart enough to listen to this album when it could have done me some good. There are cuts on it that sound like they could have come directly from Fear of Music (1979) or Remain in Light (1980).

Obviously, the biggest connection between the two Davids (Bowie and Byrne) is Brian Eno. Now that I think of it, I've never actually listened to My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1981) all the way through. I'm gonna put that one on the to-do list. No time for it this month. I think I'll enjoy it.

By all rights, Lodger should sound like an ending. It's the third part of Bowie's Berlin trilogy and his last album of the 1970s. And yet, it doesn't sound like the end of anything. When it came out, Bowie was only a year away from divorcing Angie, his wife of ten years. But Lodger doesn't sound like a breakup album either. Well, on the opening track ("Fantastic Voyage"), Bowie does sing, "I don't want to live with somebody's depression." That doesn't sound like a man in a happy marriage. 

The aforementioned Mr. Eno is a big part of Lodger, cowriting six of the ten songs. But unlike Low (1977) and "Heroes" (1977), Lodger doesn't have any lengthy, spooky instrumental passages. It's more rock-forward and down-to-business than the other two. In that vein, "Boys Keep Swinging" shows that Bowie never stopped trying to make the ultimate pop record. He's as obsessed with that goal as Paul McCartney, Brian Wilson, Phil Spector, or any of the half-mad Captain Ahabs of the music world, always chasing that white whale.

Somehow, I had this (wrong) idea in my head that Bowie's Berlin trilogy would be drab and difficult, with the songs averaging 50 BPM. I guess the word "Berlin" threw me off. Maybe that's why I'd been avoiding these albums for so long. But even though Bowie's lyrics on Lodger are labyrinthine as always, hinting at some kind of internal struggle we're never totally privy to, the music packs a wallop. He's not in a mellow mood on Lodger. The music here is punchy and aggressive, the sound of a man who has survived the craziest decade of his life and is readying himself for the fight to come.

Now he's only 32. And all he wants to do is boogaloo.

Next: Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980)

My Month of Bowie, day 12: "Heroes" (1977)

If David Bowie is a religion, then Heroes is the hymnal. 

The album: "Heroes" (RCA, 1977)

Bowie: Now you see him...

My thoughts: There was an animated GIF I used to see rather frequently on the internet depicting David Bowie as he appeared on the cover of "Heroes," the second album in his famed Berlin trilogy. In the GIF, Bowie would wave his hand in front of his pale, unsmiling face, and his eyes, nose, and mouth would instantly disappear, leaving nothing but a blank expanse. Then he'd wave his hand again, and his famous face would be restored. And the whole process would loop over and over again because that's how GIFs work.

Before I actually listened to "Heroes" all the way through, I thought the GIF was just a typical internet nonsense joke. But now, I think it's a pretty good representation of the album itself. This LP was released less than a year after Low (1977), and Bowie was presumably drawing on the same musical influences this time around, namely German experimental rock and the ambient musical stylings of English musician Brian Eno. 

Based on that description, you'd think the Berlin trilogy would be unlistenable and impenetrable, maybe even the musical equivalent of a migraine headache. But "Heroes" isn't like that at all. Instead, the album feels invigorating and alive—contemporary and forward-thinking without being overly trendy. The title track, in particular, sounds like you've met up with Lou Reed when he's in a particularly chipper mood... or as chipper as he gets. This is a Lou Reed who would help you carry groceries to your fifth-floor walkup.

When I reviewed Low, I said that Side 2 of that album contained some long instrumental passages that sounded like they belonged in a science-fiction movie. This, I suppose, was the influence of Brian Eno showing through. Well, "Heroes" doubles down on that material. Triples down. Quadruples down. It feels like most of the second half is taken up with the eerie Eno-phonic instrumentals. There's something pleasingly tranquil about these tracks. It's the kind of thing you'd want to listen to while watering your plants or tending to a rock garden. Maybe, after the craziness of his life in America, Bowie wanted to recalibrate. This music helped him do that.

There are times when "Heroes" barely sounds like a David Bowie album, at least not the Bowie we've come to know over the course of the last 11 albums. But then, in the album's closing track ("The Secret Life of Arabia"), he sounds like himself again. That's why I said the animated GIF was such a good representation of this record. Bowie's rock star persona has become a disguise he can put on or take off with a wave of his hand.

Next: Lodger (1979)

My Month of Bowie, day 11: 'Low' (1977)

David Bowie began his "Berlin trilogy" with Low.

The album: Low (RCA, 1977)

Was Low a new high for Bowie?

My thoughts: By 1976, the year he made Station to Station, David Bowie was such a paranoid, drugged-out mess that he moved from Los Angeles to Berlin with Iggy Pop to get clean. How chaotic does your life have to be that Iggy Pop is a crucial part of your sobriety plan? 

Still in all, this sounds to me like the perfect idea for a prime time sitcom. Imagine persnickety Tony Randall as Bowie, a constantly-shirtless Jack Klugman as Iggy, Don Knotts as Brian Eno, Suzanne Somers as Angela Bowie, and Don Rickles as Drugs. (To clarify: Rickles would be the human embodiment of drugs, and he'd move next door to Bowie to tempt him every week, like the devil sitting on Bowie's shoulder.) It's The Bowie Bunch, Thursdays at 8:00 on ABC!

If such a sitcom were ever made, the instrumental "Speed of Life" would make an ideal theme song. That's the track Bowie uses at the start of Low, the first album in his famed Berlin trilogy that found him collaborating with experimental musician Brian Eno and taking inspiration from German bands like Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Neu!, and other ones I've probably never heard of. This is such a storied era in Bowie's career that it merits a documentary all its own.

I'd certainly heard of the Berlin trilogy—rock critics and historians have been overanalyzing it for years—but I can't say I'd ever actually listened to any of these albums all the way through until this project. So I really had no idea what to expect from Low. I probably thought it would sound bleak and sterile, perhaps even mechanical, but I didn't find the album to be any of those things. In fact, this album contains "Sound and Vision," one of those perfectly-realized '70s pop gems that Bowie was so eerily good at making. It's like a hot toddy on a cold night.

And then, there's "Be My Wife," which contains these very simple, straightforward lyrics: "Please be mine/Share my life/Stay with me/Be my wife." That's a message you'd expect to hear on a 1950s doo wop record. Take, for example, "Life is But a Dream" (1955) by The Harptones. That song famously starts with these stark lines: "Will you take part in my life, my love?/That is my dream." After making my way through ten albums with abstract, ambiguous lyrics, it was refreshing to hear David Bowie speak so plainly for a change. Or maybe he's been speaking plainly this whole time and I just haven't been paying close enough attention.

Supposedly, some of the tracks on Low are pieces that Bowie was workshopping for the soundtrack of Nicholas Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976). Ultimately, Bowie starred in that downbeat science-fiction film but did not record the soundtrack for it. (That task fell to John Phillips.) On Side 2 of Low, there are indeed some tracks with longish instrumental passages that sound like they belong in a pessimistic '70s sci-fi movie. But even these I found eerily pretty and not merely depressing. I was especially fond of Low's closing track, "Subterraneans," with its choral refrain: "Share bride falling star..." It reminded me somewhat of the Missa Luba (1965), the famous Congolese interpretation of the Latin mass. 

I wonder, once I hear the second and third entries in the "Berlin Trilogy," will they somehow coalesce into something even greater? You know, like one of those combiner robots from a Japanese cartoon? One way to find out. And I'm just realizing now that "low" is the antonym of "high." Boy, what a dope I am sometimes.

Next: "Heroes" (1977)

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 242: The House That Ed Built (2019)

Shane Schoeppner directs and stars in The House That Ed Built.

Ed Wood has long served as a patron saint to low-budget filmmakers everywhere. And why shouldn't he? Ed's movies, though the object of widespread ridicule for decades, are as personal and distinctive as those of any of cinema's great auteurs. Plato famously declared books to be "immortal sons defying their sires." Can't the same be said about movies? Eddie died nearly half a century ago, and we're still picking apart the cheap exploitation films he made between 1948 and 1978. Box office grosses, industry awards, and critical praise are nice perks (if you can get them), but I think being remembered tops them all. That is Ed Wood's ultimate vindication, his last laugh.

Making independent films can be a brutal, heartbreaking, frustrating, and even humiliating process. Ed Wood knew all about that. The hours are long, the risk is high, and the rewards can be nonexistent. And yet, if you're determined enough to make a movie of your very own, you'll accept all of that. What choice do you have? I'll recommend two great films to you: John Paizs' comedy Crime Wave (1985) and the documentary American Movie (1999). They're both stories about eccentric independent directors hellbent on making their own movies, perhaps past the point of reason. Neither of those films references Ed Wood, but I'm sure Eddie could have related to them both. His spirit dwells in them.

On the other hand, some low-budget indie directors have made features and shorts directly and unambiguously inspired by the life and career of Edward D. Wood, Jr. I have already covered several examples in this series: Jesse Berger's Glen or the Bride... (2014), Bart Aikens and Scott Allen Nollen's Ed and Bela (1986), and Andre Perkowski's Devil Girls (1999) and The Vampire's Tomb (2013). Some of these I've quite enjoyed, others have been tough to sit through. But, again, I feel Eddie would have appreciated each one of these.

My Month of Bowie, day 10: 'Station to Station' (1976)

David Bowie hears that train a-comin'.

The album: Station to Station (RCA, 1976)

Bowie was going places in '76.

My thoughts: In the 1970s, David Bowie was as reliable as a car company. Every year, like General Motors or Ford, he'd release his new product line. Sometimes, it would be a total, dramatic overhaul; other times, it would be a tasteful refinement of what had come before. But it would all have that distinctive David Bowie stamp on it, as recognizable as a Chevrolet emblem. "Come on down and see the '76 Bowies! Drive one home today!"

What makes this so improbable is that David Bowie, the human being, was an utter mess in the 1970s. His tenth album, Station to Station, was made at a particularly fraught time when he was dealing with substance abuse and mental health issues. The title even reflects his uncertain, itinerant lifestyle. Station to Station should sound like a mental breakdown captured on vinyl, about as "accessible" as Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music (1975). But it doesn't. The lyrics hint, obliquely as usual, at the turmoil in Bowie's life. But the music sounds confident, assured, and even playful. 

How do I account for this? Well, either his collaborators knew how to keep him on track (pun intended) or Bowie himself was able to get his act together just long enough to record an LP. Then, once a new collection of songs was in the can, he'd let himself fall apart again. However he managed to do it, I'm glad he did because Station to Station is another corker—not a direct sequel to Young Americans, necessarily, but not a complete rejection of it either. Again, it's more like a refinement of an existing product line. This is state-of-the-art Bowie in the year of our Lord 1976.

Listening to Station to Station jostled loose some memories, because it contains a couple of songs I remembered hearing as a teenager, namely the epic title track and the New Orleans-inflected "TVC 15." As I was listening to the latter, with its celebratory, Professor Longhair-style piano, I realized that I had no idea what the song was about. So I looked into it. According to the internet: "This song was reportedly inspired by Iggy Pop’s drug induced hallucination that the television set, in Bowie’s LA home, had swallowed his girlfriend." See, that's what I'm talking about. Bowie's life was beyond crazy in 1976, but it (somehow) didn't result in difficult, discordant music.

One more thought I had while listening to this record: Bowie, like all musicians, is the product of his influences. I can hear traces of Chuck Berry, Lou Reed, and Jacques Brel in the grooves of Station to Station. I also detect the influence of '70s funk musicians like James Brown and Jimmy Castor. But I can hear how Bowie himself inspired the musicians who came after him. In particular, I'm guessing that this LP hit David Byrne of Talking Heads pretty hard. How appropriate that Byrne later inducted Bowie into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

This is a very exciting juncture in the project because I'm about to dive into Bowie's famed "Berlin trilogy." I've heard good things.

Next: Low (1977)

My Month of Bowie, day 9: 'Young Americans' (1975)

Uncle David wants you.

The album: Young Americans (RCA, 1975)

1975: The year David got soul.

My thoughts: Sure, I've questioned the wisdom of doing a monthlong series of articles about David Bowie, a highly-accomplished artist about whom I know almost nothing. Everything about this guy was so complicated: his personal life, his music, his career. At times, I've felt ridiculously unqualified to write even these simple little reviews of his records. David's eighth album, the dystopian nightmare opera Diamond Dogs (1974), was so opaque after two listens—apart from the gut punch of "Rebel Rebel"—that it nearly broke me. I mean, what am I actually supposed to say about this thing? It's... good? That hardly seems to cover it.

But today, I arrive at the soul-infused Young Americans, an album I found immensely enjoyable and inviting as soon as I heard it. No delayed gratification here. Does it help that the LP is bookended by two of Bowie's most famous songs, "Young Americans" and "Fame"? You bet it does. In 1970, Frank Zappa released a Mothers of Invention album called Burnt Weeny Sandwich, which begins and ends with accessible doo-wop cover songs ("WPLJ" and "Valarie") but has a lot of challenging, often-wordless weirdness in between. That album's title is a clue to its structure. But Young Americans is built more like a Chipwich: cookie on top, cookie on the bottom, ice cream in the middle. 

I felt that David was treading water just a bit on Diamond Dogs, but I was not prepared for how dramatically he would switch up his style for Young Americans a year later. I know he's famous for reinventing himself, but these two albums sound like they were recorded by two different guys with very different priorities. It's no secret that British rockers of Bowie's generation were obsessed with Black American music. See: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Animals, Led Zeppelin, etc. But those groups took their cues from the raucous R&B of the '50s and the upbeat Motown sound of the '60s. Bowie might have been the first of his ilk to embrace the R&B of the 1970s.

Young Americans is united by its triumphant sax solos, which transported me to the fantasy version of New York City you sometimes glimpse in movies or in the opening credits of Saturday Night Live. But attention must also be paid to the album's sumptuous background vocals (some of which are by Luther Vandross) and its inventive drumming as well. The word I'd use to describe the sound of this album is tight. Stylistically, this was new ground for Bowie, but it sounds like he's been playing this kind of music for years, as if he was sent down to Earth specifically to make this album. 

I legitimately don't know what to expect from the next LP on the schedule. I'm torn between wanting a second helping of Young Americans and wanting to see what else Bowie can do. Either sounds appealing to me.

Next: Station to Station (1976)

My Month of Bowie, day 8: 'Diamond Dogs' (1974)

David Bowie gets in touch with his animal side on Diamond Dogs.

The album: Diamond Dogs (1974)

My thoughts: Okay, so what the hell are "diamond dogs"? They must be awfully important to David Bowie. He named his eighth album after them, after all, and the title track is six minutes long. And before we even get to it, Bowie delivers some portentous spoken narration about a dystopian future in which it's the year of the diamond dogs. There are also "fleas the size of rats" and "rats the size of cats" in this future. (Wonder how big the cats are? The size of Volkswagens?) Oh, and did I mention that Bowie is depicted as a half-man, half-dog on the cover? Well, he is. Personally, I'm at a loss to understand any of this.

Normally, I've tried not to do any research on these albums before I review them. I want these articles to be about the music, not how or why it was made. I haven't even talked about such key collaborators as Mick Ronson and Tony Visconti, even though they loom large in the Bowie legend. But after listening to Diamond Dogs, I was so flummoxed that I had to do a little light Googling. Was this some kind of concept album with a story I was supposed to be following? Eh, sort of. 

What happened was, Bowie was working on a musical adaptation of George Orwell's Nineteen-Eighty-Four (1949), but that project was nixed by Orwell's widow. Bowie took the songs he'd already written for it and combined them with material he was working on for other projects at the time, including an abandoned Ziggy Stardust stage musical. He'd also been experimenting with some songs based on the writings of William S. Burroughs, who was famous for his chaotic "cut-up" technique in which he'd literally chop up a text and rearrange the phrases into something new. And all of that stuff—Orwell, Ziggy, Burroughs—got tossed into the stew that was Diamond Dogs.

The infamous cover art for Diamond Dogs.

God, we're four paragraphs in, and I haven't really talked about how the album sounds. It sounds fine, I guess, verging on pretty darned good. It's what I've come to expect from a mid-1970s Bowie album: some rock star heroics, some theatrical decadence, and a little random weirdness just for good measure. By this point, David definitely knew what he was doing in the studio. The song you know from Diamond Dogs is "Rebel Rebel," and there's a good reason for that. Side 1 of the album is kind of a murky morass, and then all of a sudden, there's this guitar riff that snaps the listener to attention. Maybe that's when the amyl nitrate finally kicked in.

I listened to Diamond Dogs twice yesterday, and I'm struggling to remember most of it now. Maybe I should have written this yesterday. Serves me right for being lazy. Perhaps looking over the track list will jog my memory. The title track works itself into a nice Stones-y groove. It could have been on Sticky Fingers (1971), cheek and jowl with "Brown Sugar." Side 2 starts with "Rock 'n' Roll With Me." That was a good one, too, surprisingly tender and emotional. And "1984" reminded me a bit of Isaac Hayes' "Theme from Shaft" (1971) and The Temptations' "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone" (1972). Not sure if that's what Bowie was going for.

I've heard that Diamond Dogs was pretty much the end of Bowie's "glam rock" phase. Maybe he figured he'd taken it as far as it would go. I'm ready for David to move on, too. Not that I disliked Diamond Dogs, but I feel like he's spinning his wheels a bit, creatively. Before I forget: the "diamond dogs" of the title are rebellious, violent punks in the dystopian future Bowie has envisioned for this record. Maybe they're like Alex and his droogs in A Clockwork Orange (1971). I guess that's why this album is considered a forerunner of punk rock. A generation of dissatisfied British kids took these songs to heart. But I think David meant this LP as a warning, not an instruction manual.

Next: Young Americans (1975)