As the Cold War cooled into something like an uneasy truce, songwriters like Warren Zevon, David Bowie, John Cale, Bob Dylan, and Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen addressed world events and the cultural malaise of the period, constituting Late Cold War style in their vivid songs.
Category: David Bowie
Bonus Tracks, Vol. 1: Jerry Garcia, Gram Parsons, David Bowie
The compact disc era brought with it endless reissues of old albums — and to entice us all into buying those old albums for the second, third or fourth time, they often included bonus tracks. Was there a fair amount of barrel scraping as the years went by? Oh yeah. But there were also plenty of completely awesome sounds that gave us fresh perspectives on classic LPs and artists. In this new, ongoing Aquarium Drunkard column, we’ll be diving back into our CD collections to highlight some of the very best bonus tracks …
Iggy Pop & David Bowie :: Shades (1986)
While tracing the collaborative history of Iggy Pop and David Bowie, you inevitably end at Iggy Pop’s 1986 album, Blah-Blah-Blah and its third single, “Shades.” According to the liner notes, the album was produced and co-written by Bowie, but the larger story – the one dipped in gossip and swirled in rock ’n roll folklore – is that Blah-Blah-Blah is a repurposing of throwaway material from Bowie’s ill-fated Tonight sessions, calling into question the classic Bowie/Pop paradox: is it Iggy Pop singing a David Bowie song? Or is it David Bowie producing an Iggy Pop song?
Videodrome :: Labyrinth – David Bowie & Jareth The Goblin King
Like Jareth in the Labyrinth, Bowie was a fantasy figure in the maze of pop culture. Otherworldly sonically and aesthetically, he always seemed to be a few steps ahead of the cultural zeitgeist that he governed over.
Los Hermanos Calatrava :: Space Oddity
Fictional astronaut blues. Here’s a chestnut we’ve been spinning via satellite for years, a grotesquerie which seems to elicit an equal measure of delight and horror depending on the beholder. […]
Iggy Pop :: Fire Girl (Demo)
Despite its status being Iggy Pop’s best selling album, the 1986 David Bowie produced Blah-Blah-Blah has not fared near as well in terms of posterity. Critically speaking, anyway. Big on […]
The Unofficial Bowie: The Later Years
In the late 1970s, after getting his financial house in relative order, David Bowie had a firmer grip on his studio recordings than many of his contemporaries. While Bob Dylan’s outtakes and demos would keep trickling out on bootlegs for years, the “unofficial” Bowie releases, 1976-2016, with some exceptions (see below), are greatly confined to concert tapes.
David Bowie :: Sense of Doubt / The Illustrated History
Rare footage from the unreleased “Sense of Doubt” video in 1977 directed by Stanley Dorfman and reworked by Peter Wachsman. Today Voyageur Press released Bowie: The Illustrated History , an in-depth look at the […]
Unwashed And Somewhat Slightly Dazed: David Bowie 1966-2016
Folk / glitter / spaceman / plastic soul / mainstream pop icon and beyond, David Bowie transcended – no matter the genre or medium. The following collage is comprised of an […]
On Bowie :: By Rob Sheffield
Rob Sheffield’s On Bowie begins plainly: “Planet Earth is a lot bluer without David Bowie , the greatest rock star who ever fell to this or any other world.” I read those words early Wednesday […]
Cracked Actors: A Look Through The Bowie Cover Catalog
David Bowie had a habit of covering the songs of other artists, sometimes sublimely, sometimes woefully. In turn, covers of Bowie songs range from the “why?” (see Barbra Streisand’s “Life On Mars?”; […]
David Bowie :: Two Hour DJ Set / BBC Radio One – May 20, 1979
On May 20, 1979 – two days after the release of Lodger – David Bowie, along with a pile of his favorite records, took the reins at BBC Radio One. […]
David Bowie :: Heroes (French Version – 1977)
Héros. French single release, 1977. Repose en paix, David Bowie. David Bowie :: Heroes (French Version . . . Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming […]
David Bowie :: Blackstar
New Bowie. There is only one. Via Blackstar , out January 2016 . . . Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and […]
The Unofficial Bowie: A Conversation Piece
For several years now, Chris O’Leary’s Pushing Ahead of the Dame blog has been one of the Greatest Things On The Internet, with O’Leary guiding readers through the endless twists and turns of David Bowie’s […]