Promo film created by the BBC to go with the "The Laughing Gnome", when it was rereleased in 1973, without David Bowie's consent, and became a #6 UK hit.
The video uses an animation technique known as pixilation - I wonder if that came through associative-drift (gnome, pixie)
The belated success of "Laughing Gnome" is a bit like "Being Boiled" finally making the charts after The Human League's breakthrough. Or Adam and the Ants early tune "Young Parisians" going Top Ten after "Dog Eat Dog / Ant Music / Kings of the Wild Frontier".
There is so much to enjoy about the fact that the first-time-around flop became a post-Ziggy smash.
First, it must have infuriated and embarrassed the newly supercool star, having his naff past dredged up.
Second, because it's a deliciously silly single.
It slots into that category of novelty hits that you only ever get in the U.K. Less like something originally made by a would-be pop star and more like a single done by a famous TV comedian (Charlie Drake's "Puckwudgie" immediately springs to mind - indeed it was a near-hit the previous year).
Here's an opportunity to wheel out a cherished eccentric opinion: the first self-titled David Bowie is one of his most enjoyable records. It failed to achieve the goal of making him a star... but on its own terms, it's a complete success.
It's certainly much better than the second David Bowie album that followed two years later in 1969.
So what are the best Bowie albums IMHO?
1/ Low
2/ Hunky Dory
3/ Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)
4/ Lodger
5/ David Bowie (1967)
I won't volunteer my thoughts on the worst Bowie albums - too many to choose from!
But what are the most overrated? The ones that don't quite add up, or that have a few stunning things on them (often the singles), but are otherwise patchy or pretentious (but crucially, failed pretension)
1/ Station to Station
2/ "Heroes"
3/ Diamond Dogs
4/Young Americans
5/ The Man Who Sold The World
6/ Let's Dance
7/ David Bowie (1969)
Here "overrated" refers specifically to the size of the gap between the reputation and the reality. As opposed to an actual judgement on the overall quality and where the record might finally stand in a peak-to-puke descending list of his works.
(Acknowledging of course the sublime perfection within those albums, songs it would be impossible to overrate: "Golden Years", "'Heroes'", "Secret Life of Arabia", "Rebel Rebel", "Fame", "The Width of A Circle", "The Man Who Sold The World", "The Supermen", "Let's Dance", "Space Oddity" obviously...)
("Dodo" if we are counting the anniversary expanded edition of Diamond Dogs which we probably shouldn't)
As for those not mentioned in either chart....
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars is, I s'pose, objectively one of his best albums. But I've never really felt a feeling from it, as such. Apart from the title track. I mean, "Suffragette City" is a great tune but I don't have any sense of what it's about - what it's for. And there's a bit too much musical theater influence strewn through the album for my taste.
Aladdin Sane is an odd one - I've never really connected with it. The three-song run of title track / Drive-In / Panic is pretty darn exciting. "The Jean Genie" is a thrilling rip-off of the Yardbirds - sonically, a throwback to Happenings Eight Years Time Ago. But it's beaten at its own game by The Sweet's "Blockbuster", which has more or less the same riff.
Blackstar felt heroically daring and fearless and consummate at the time, but even then I suspected its stature would dim a bit in time... and the only thing that really lives with me is the title track, where he already sounds like a ghost.
The Next Day - again, the temptation at the time to overestimate was overwhelming... but it's not lingered.
Pin-Ups is the definition of a curio, a curate's egg... compelling wrong in its over-mannered reiterations of the too-recent past, perhaps. I cannot imagine the circumstances in which I would want to play it from start to finish.
The remainder?
Outside gets points for effort, if that ever cut any ice with listeners, which it doesn't.
I do genuinely love "Little Wonder" - just for his earnest attempt to keep up with the cutting edge, the effort he made to make a decent fist of the junglizm. But the rest of Earthling... And then there's his image at that time.
Actually, in the video, he looks like... not a gnome, but a goblin.
Funny thing, I never noticed there's a reference to "gnomes" in the opening verse:
Stinky weather fat, shaky hands
Dopey morning doc, grumpy gnomes
To get some perspective, I bought Johnny Cash's autobiography ina charity shop today. The blub on the back said he released over 1500 LPs. I presume, and hope, that was a misprint for songs.
ReplyDeleteIt took me ages to appreciate Station to Station. When the totality finally clicked for me, rather than just the opener, the effort, or perhaps maturity, required made me appreciate the album more than it warrants. I accept it's a transitional work, but it still has real significance for me, partly due to the bloody legwork I put in. Regardless, I don't think that's just an example of the sunk cost fallacy.
Bowie's mot overrated album is surely Diamond Dogs? The sludginess of the production just makes it an uninteresting mess.
I am happily on record here as proclaiming Let's Dance as Bowie's most underrated record. What was a more postmodern move than selling out? It's not as if Bowie was resistant to capitalism. Not his best album, sure, but definitely something to be proud of, and the actual last album of his totemic streak.
Re. The Laughing Gnome: what are the songs you liked as a child that you subsequently discovered to be highly credible? My prepubescent pick: Ace of Spades.
To me it's the opener that is the puzzler - like, why do people rave about it? What does it actually mean to them? What feelings does it give them? It seems to be a completely shut-off solipsistic document of a state of mind near to insanity - but not compellingly so. The groove is stilted. Whereas "Golden Years", which is probably equally cocaine-conjured, is sublime.
DeleteTo your question about a song that turned out to be credible... I can't think of any good examples...
ReplyDeleteI mean there's the Beatles things like "Strawberry Fields Forever", "Penny Lane", "I Am the Walrus", "Come Together" - but the Beatles are in a whole different category, credibility seems too trifling a term to use in their regard. The love for the Beatles went way beyond the usual confines of pop music, to regions of the population would normally pay attention to that area. I've always had this sense of them - and it's never really been shaken - that they existed in this category beyond pop - there was pop music, and then there was the Beatles. Possibly this effect created by the films, seeing them on TV, and thinking they actually lived like in Help - in a long terraced house with the walls in between knocked down.
I did like "Space Oddity" as a child. The way he sung "mos t-peculiar way", the strange detonation of the bass, the way it floats off into the ether.
It's easier to think of songs that I loved that don't seem to have acquired any subsequent cred - the Hollies "Air That I Breathe" and Bachman-Turner Overdrive "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet".
ReplyDeleteI had my elder brother being 14 years older than me, and he picked up a load of punk albums in his adolescence (which was about 7 years after punk died; he eventually settled on the standard Who/Clash/Springsteen/Oasis template). One of my elder sisters was into Nirvana at their peak, and she dug out my brother's old albums and played them to me, along with Appetite for Destruction and Nevermind. I remember being 9 years old, coming back from mass and immediately putting on God Save the Queen.
ReplyDeleteI didn't realise it at the time, but I was a very cool 9-yr-old.
I'd reverse the order of the two at the very top of your best, but I can't get with Lodger - even though it's the first album I ever bought: a cassette copy for £1.19 out of a bargain bin in the Harrow branch of Debenhams in early 1980. I played it to death of course until I bought my second album, Hawkwind's 'Astounding Sounds, Amazing Music' (the common factor between the two being Simon House on violin). I do however think the opening track of Station To Station is great - real blood-pumping stuff & great mellotron!
ReplyDeleteIn a way, early exposure to 'Low' (by end of 1980) is why I'm currently listening to 1951 recordings by Shorty Rogers & His Giants: the ceaseless search for new (to me) sonic kicks.
ReplyDeleteI personally think Station to Station, Heroes and Let's Dance are three of his best. I'm more into the sound of Bowie records and not the songs, and those three are nice and chunky.
ReplyDeleteThe two I can't get on with are Young Americans, which is just thin and tepid, shampoo sax-y, and Scary Monsters, although I do owe that one another listen in fairness.
But Bowie is, like, my 68th favourite pop act or something, so these aren't the views of a dedicated fan.