Don’t worry, I’m still stuck halfway through my write-up of Hunky Dory. Not felt much in the mood for analysis of late. I’ll do a mega-post at some point that everyone can TLDR.
I’m still listening along, though. This’ll be a rough week, though I have always been one for Sorrow.
This isn’t doing a huge amount for me.
It has made me revisit the John Cale tribute though, love this version of Sorrow
Pin Ups
I have this record but I don’t think I’ve ever listened to it. I don’t recognise it at all!
On the plus side, I like that he’s stuck to a short window of time and it’s kind of a tribute to those bands he was seeing round London during those years. It flows together like a mixtape too and has good energy with more of a Ziggy sound especially for the first few tracks. Overall, the recordings and the versions are better than what I was expecting from the artwork. It’s kind of diminishing returns by the end though. Some of these would make OK b-sides, but you don’t really need 11 of them in a row.
Never heard Pin Ups, and so far the DIS reviews are giving me CBA vibes. Might shirk this one off. See you next week for Diamond Dogs. Never heard that either or Young Americans so plenty to look forward to. It’s easy to tell when I went through my Bowie phase, I was buying albums on reviews read from books in the library or info gleaned from the Melody Maker and NME.
I didn’t mind Pin Ups! Inessential but fun
As I said way back in the midsts of time, when this project came into fruition, I am a total Bowie-apologist. There are albums I listen to less, but I think all of them have some degree of merit, even if that happens to be just a couple of tracks. Pin-Ups is fine. There is nothing inherently bad about it. It’s definitely tossed-off and inessential, but I still get a kick out of it when I (very) occasionally play it.
At least the debut holds some interest and novelty
It’s growing on me a bit as the week goes on tbf. It’s miles away from being essential at all, but that’s fine.
What I will say is that there should be a universal rule regarding covers albums where you can’t cover more than one song by the same artist, it’s cheating.
I think the Yardbirds songs are both covers of them covering someone else, or at least one is?
Hmm yes, not great this. it would be one thing if he was phoning it in as a contractual obligation, but clearly a lot of thought and effort has been put into these lacklustre covers, none of which improve on the originals. pretty embarassing for the lad.
interesting to see the instincts and weird flourishes which served him so well on his own material fall completely flat here. although i guess it served as a sandbox to try out stuff for future personas (i.e. the weird pitchshifted vocals on “See Emily Play” are very proto-“Scary Monsters”), so it isn’t a total loss. and “Sorrow” is a banger…
My mum’s a Bowie fan, she used to have a few old records behind the sofa at home from her youth and there was always a Bowie one, when I started getting more interested in him around his death I misremembered the record cover behind the sofa as being Aladdin Sane and thought I might dig it out.
Later went to check and realised it had just been Pin Ups all along. Decided to put it back and never listen to it.
Tending to agree with this but also thing The Byrds may have had more than one Dylan cover on the same album. However a) it’s not a covers album, and b) Dylan covers usually are better than the originals so they get a pass.
I nave nothing to add about this album that I’ll once again never listen to ever again unless I participate in another Bowie listening club. Boring and pointless
take it to the David Bowie Not Listening Club thread
Pin Ups.
The sound of contractual obligations.
Diamond Dogs is so good though so hang in there lads.
I owe this one a revisit but we’re definitely in a slump here.
