Ashes to Ashes - David Bowie - Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) - 1980

For the record, my own St. Patrick's Day celebration went quite swimmingly and I woke up relatively hang over free...though I was hungry as a mofo.

So anyway, to get back to the trip (I can't believe this shit has taken me nearly a month to write, but hey...I got other things going on too...and I'm almost finished...and honestly, the end is the best part, so stick with me...if you're still here). We woke up the next day fairly late, as this was one of the few days that we didn't have to travel. By the time we were all cleaned up and ready to roll it was nearly 1PM.

Incidentally, it was also my birthday...despite my protestations that the trip itself was my birthday party and that as my birthday was on a Monday, no special treatment was required, the guys had already started throwing shots at me the night before. They insisted on "celebrating" my birthday from midnight Scotland time through to midnight of the following day NYC time...so I essentially had 29 hours of birthday shots. Ugh.

We took the day to do some touristy site seeing. We started off by heading up Buchannan St. which appears to be their mini-version of NYC's Broadway, or Grafton St. in Dublin...basically just a long street with lots of clothing stores and restaurants. We were there for coffee.

After getting appropriately caffeinated we headed over to Glasgow Cathedral and The Necropolis. As I stated earlier, I'm a history nerd and love old shit. The Cathedral was especially interesting for being a Roman Catholic church that had survived the pretty thorough reformation of Scotland. As such the basement level had at one point actually been converted into two protestant church until the late 19th century, leading to a large cathedral with two small churches in the basement.

The Necropolis was the real site though, a giant old cemetery built spiraling upwards on a tall hill. The highest grave at the top of the hill was reserved for the monument to the man who had brought the reformation to Scotland. From that high point you could see most of the city before you. It was one of the most touching sites I saw on the whole trip, and probably my favorite thing I saw that was not in Berlin.

Scary Monsters and Super Creeps more less marks the rather radical change between late 1970's ultra-arty, Berlin and Eno-loving Bowie and the white suited pop dork we all know and love from the "Dancing in the Streets" video. I will always have the utmost respect for Bowie, and I like the way he's managed to retain some dignity with age that his "Dancing in the Streets" co-star has not...but the 80's pretty much end my interest in his music.

Art Decade - David Bowie - Low - 1977

Ahhh, very appropriate, a bit of Bowie's Berlin period to go along with my tale of debauchery in Berlin. Arty, instrumental, and super cool...it is the Bowie/Eno combo at it's best/worst.

After we managed to ditch the Icelanders and took a moment to compose ourselves we tried to find another bar on my itinerary. Two separate people had recommended this bar to me. You simply entered, paid 1 euro to "rent" a glass and then drank as much as wine as you wanted. At the end of the night, you paid what you thought was fair for what you drank (again, the Berliners seem to be very big on the honor system) but by the time we got there it was well after midnight and quite closed. We ended up drunkenly attempting to photograph a beautiful, snow covered church at night with mixed results.

We finally ended up in some bar called The King Kong lounge where we stayed till about 330. The King Kong Lounge was the kind of bar that would have looked in no way out of place on Ave B. It was a faux dive done in red light, with old time American movie posters on the wall, and Cronenburg's Crash (as opposed to the Oscar winning crap from a few years ago) being projected on a back wall. We sat on one of the couch, nursed some beers and took in the talent before finally calling it a night.

Wow...and this was all day one...sheesh.

Andy Warhol - David Bowie - Hunky Dory - 1971

Speaking as I was of artist that I appreciate more than I enjoy, there's always Andy Warhol. It's easy to see him as ridiculous symbol of Boomer Cool. A weird dude with crazy hair, and odd mannerisms, with art that at first seems fairly banal, he is the kind of artist that needs to be taken in context. On one hand, it's really easy to look at his stuff and say "It's a fucking soup can"...but then we tend to think of a can of soup as being a thing that just exists, like a rock or a tree...but at some point, in our culture's past, someone engineered that can. They figured out the design on the label, the red banner over white, the script, the little circle emblem...all of that is design that we take for granted, and it is useful that someone drew attention to that.

Beyond that his ideas on pop culture are what lead us as a culture to believe that there is art to be found in what we consider disposable entertainment. Without Warhol (or someone like him) it's doubtful that we'd ever consider things like The Beatles, The Godfather, Motown, Star Wars, etc, etc to be art. He presented the idea that pop culture was something to be observed.

Now Bowie, on the other hand, is an artist that I immensely appreciate AND enjoy...though I could do without the 52 seconds of studio chatter about how you pronounce Warhol's last name. But whatever, daring artist have some licence to fuck up from time to time.

Always Crashing The Same Car - David Bowie - Low - 1977

For my most recent birthday I made a mix with one song from each year I had been alive. I started the mix with this song (the mix was not chronological).

Between the ages of 16-24 I managed to have 4 moderately serious car accidents. I drive too fast and usually with the radio on too loud, and when you are young and think you are indestructible, this is a bad idea.

The first one was literally my first day out driving by myself, I changed lanes without checking my blindspot and a pick up truck barrelled into the passenger side.

The second I was driving home in the rain, and a bunny jumped out in front of me. Rather than simply saying "tough luck Buggs" I swerved to miss him and fish tailed right into a mail box.

The third is the only one I will debate my guilt in. I made a left turn at a yellow light just as a suburban mom gunned it to make the light. She admitted to having taken cough syrup, but she was a mom with a baby in the car and I was 19 and scruffy. This is also the only wreck in which the air bag deployed...dispite the impact occurring at maybe 20 mph. If this has never occured to you, let me tell you...the explosion that causes the air bag to burst through your steering wheel is basically a shot gun shell. If you are gripping the wheel, be preppared to have powder burn on your fingers.

The forth was actually the scariest. I was driving my father's mid life crisis mobile. It was another rainy night and I was driving the notoriously hilly and windy streets of Cincinnati on balding tires. I took a curve WAY TO FAST and the luxury sedan fishtailed. The entire car swung around and smashed into a telephone poll. When it was over, I put my hand behind my head and felt a telephone poll in the back seat, as if it were the driver's side passenger. As it stood I got away with a broken rib, some cuts from the broken glass, and a yelling at by my father...but another foot further down the hill and I don't know that I'd be blogging right now.

I haven't had a wreck since. Granted, I now rely almost exclusively on public transportation, and have been doing for the past 8 years, but also anytime I have been behind the wheel, I have been very aware of the potential dangers of a car.

Anyway, that was the humor of me starting the mix out with this song.

Oh shit...I've already written about this:
http://ocdipod.blogspot.com/2008/04/airbag-radiohead-ok-computer-1997.html

Oh well...

All the Madmen - David Bowie - Man Who Sold The World - 1970

Man this is just first class, grade A, batshit-crazy early Bowie. This is the genesis of Labyrinth Bowie. Okay, lets tick off the items to support my thesis:
* - Strummed acoustic beginning a la Space Oddity - check
* - Distopyian lyrics ("The thin men stalk the streets/while the sane stay underground...the far side of town/where it's pointless to be high/cause it's such a long way down...day after day/they take my brain away/then ask me how I feel) - check
* - Searing Mick Ronson guitar solo that comes in after the first verse - check
* - Flute part that would clearly have been done on a synth if this album was created 3-4 years later. - Check
* - Spoken word bit...let me repeat that SPOKEN WORD BIT - check
* - Prog rock synth riffs - check
* - Hand claps - check

Really you just can't pay for this kind of wackiness...

All Saints - David Bowie - Low - 1977

Ok this little bit of Bowie weirdness isn't much fun to listen to more than once, but if nothing else, you really should just marvel at how far ahead of their time Bowie and Eno were at crafting soundscapes. When the track first hit my headphones, I honesty thought it was going to be turn of the millenium turntable stuff, only to check the pod and determine that it was actually late 70's Bowie. Amazing sounds, even if there isn't much to the actual song.

After All - David Bowie - The Man Who Sold The World - 1970

With all due respect afforded to Mr. Bowie...and believe me I have mountains of respect for the man, I can't listen to this song without thinking of Spinal Tap. Somewhere midget druids are dancing.