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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.