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September 7th, 2008 by admin | Filed under Berlin Wall of Sound.Who am I to criticise Bowie? Someone who has bought Tonight, Never Let me Down, and pre-Space Oddity compilations featuring numbers as poor as When I’m Five, and Love you till Tuesday. Anyone who has endured the anti-climatic Black Tie/White Noise and the half-arsed covers on Pin Ups, has a near-constitutional right to have his/her tuppence’ worth. Therefore…
The first halves of the albums Low and “Heroes” are truly magnificent; the second halves are a dreary, ambient drone. Imagine if you will, a single entity containing such classics as Breaking Glass, Sound and Vision, V-2 Schneider, “Heroes”, Speed of Life, Be my Wife, Beauty and the Beast, Blackout, and Always Crashing in the Same Car. Now consider over half an hour of grinding, funeral parlour music (albeit technically competent) including such plodding examples as Moss Garden, and that one about Warsaw, that starts off dull, then rapidly turns silly, with tribal chantings and the like.
Am I alone in my sense of doubt? Please feel free to leave a comment:
Tags: "Heroes", Album of two halves, Be my Wife, Berlin, Berlin Divided, Berlin Wall of Sound, Bowie discussion, Low, Prussia, Sense of Doubt, V-2 Schneider
V-2 is actually on the second half of heroes, but I take your point. Love the song, and it has to be played loud, which means you always get that awful ‘doom-doom-doom’ bit of that next song loudly, before you can switch it off. I also like Secret Life of Arabia, which is the last song on the second half. But yes his ambient music is not very easy to listen to.
I appreciate all the work done in Berlin, but I do think it would’ve been so much better if it was recorded in Paris!
I don’t agree.
How many timnes have you listened to the second half of Low? I think, Stewart Steak, that you’ve just got a child’s taste in music. You don’t bother listening because it’s easier just to listen to nice, easy songs with a traditional ‘tune’ and lyrics. You need Bowie to hold your hand, and lead you through his music. You don’t understand him, and you never will. Low is the greeatest album ever recorded.
Only exceptionally pretenious, or exceptionally deluded people think that the ambient stuff on Low is better than the proper songs.
I happen to think the “ambient” tunes on those recordings are just beautiful, although I am slightly more partial to those tunes where The Gentleman (capital T, capital G, that’s how I sometimes refer to Bowie) lends his golden pipes.
But I loooove the ambient pieces! esp SUBTERRANEANS
Stewart, As the man who introduced you to Bowie I feel a sense of pride as I navigate around your wonderful site. However, that does not make you immune from criticism and it is clear that on this issue you are talking tosh. The Low ambient music is quite clearly fantastic.
You have been criticised above for having “a childs taste in music”. Not surprising considering you have the mind of a child. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, for it gives you a boyish charm, but sadly there are downsides…as exhibited here.
Your homework is to review your Eno collection and then revisit Low. I think that you will find that the Low stuff sounds much better then (because it’s better than a lot of Eno’s stuff, and he made a career out of noise).
On the other hand I will concede that I often skip the Heroes ambient tracks…
Cheers mate, and as Abba would say ‘Thank you for the Music’.
I think that the ‘ambient’ Berlin songs are good but I don’t really listen to them, if you know what I mean. If Bowie had recorded low in say 1993 instead of doing Black Tie, added some heavy bass lines -not everyones cup of tea I know- then the ambient tunes would have a bit more kick to them.
I’ve stumbled across your crappy website - how dare you criticise an artist such as Bowie and offer up such drivel yourself? You’e ’so simple-minded you can’t drive your mudule’ as the great man says.
I refer you to the opening paragraph of this article.
I know what climatic means but I wonder if you do - not sure what you meant by ‘anti-climatic Black Tie, White Noise’. From the tone of your piece, obviously something negative. Shame, because it’s a good album.
Zig the Wonder Kid (sad name btw), I’m afraid that you’ve missed the point entirely.
Firstly, on the point of ‘Black Tie…’, I can’t help but agree with Stewart. I too wanted to love this album (and did for a while). This was the first ‘proper’ Bowie offering since ‘Scary monsters…’. I will even state that it has a few good tracks. But it doesn’t stand up to the earlier stuff, nor indeed the later albums ‘Outside’, ‘Heathen’ or ‘Reality’. I’m grateful for it as it signalled something of a return to form and clearly did him so good (as did Tin Machine), but a good ‘album’ it is not. There were great expectations at the time and I remain fond of it, but am not deluded by it’s relative quality.
But the real point you’ve missed is that Bowie is an eclectic soul. His music is built on the notion that nothing is dismissed out of hand and has its own merit (and can be recycled)! The fact that you disagree with Stewart and have chosen to dismiss his views so swiftly demonstrate a mind that fails to grasp this notion and cannot be relied upon to put it in the context of the produciton of the music. Bowie is a great artist, but he has clearly not always produced great work. If you believe ‘Black Tie…’ to be great, quantify your statement and join the grown up discussion.
I also fear that this site contains a humour slightly out of your grasp…