For our final scheduled show, Cristy and William explore the discontinuous topic of great closing tracks on great albums. Except for “Hang Loose,” which we forgot, which Cristy is still mad about, even though she wouldn’t even let William consider including any They Might Be Giants songs. So we’re burying the hatchet right between your ears.
Download Closing Tracks or listen below
Into the sunset, radio on.
Cristy, William, Heather Rose, & Tony Money gather to present and discuss some of the greatest songs recorded by nonexistent bands, from Ruben and the Jets to Spinal Tap to the Dukes of Stratosphear. Although we overflow the hour, we can’t get to everything, nor would we want to, so we also present a Rock and Roll Imaginary Hall of Fame. Of sorts. Great fun. Listen here.
APPA
For our new niece Emilie, songs about babies. In two years, we would be bringing one to the station.
Rare picture sleeve.
To give the listener a unique trip, Honcho and William may have neglected album tracks which cannot, in most cases, be improved upon by David Bowie or by anybody else. Still, with nearly half a century of solid material to edit into two hours, something had to get neglected. We present David Bowie in roughly chronologic order, from 1967 through the turn of the millennium. Commentary aplenty, including a withering dissection of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s latest round of draft picks. Another collaboration, with William and Cristy handling matters through the Ziggy Stardust era, and Honcho blazing on to the present.
Listen to a unique cross-section of this amazing performer.
WILLIAM’S INTRODUCTION
After “Join the Gang:” And I quote: “Crazy clothes and acid full of soul and crazy hip.” In swinging 1967 London, the 20-year-old David Bowie is trying to get caught up.
David Bowie (formerly David Jones) from 1967 through 1969 recorded a great many songs that fall somewhere between psychedelic imagination and vaudeville novelty. The composer of music is following the writer of lyrics. The music is imaginative, at times campy, and also at times startlingly sweet.
During the next decade, David Bowie’s brutal record contract required him to release two albums a year. Given both the demands of this schedule, and the fact that we’re talking about the 1970s, when the forces of bad taste conspired against rock music, this body of work stands as a remarkable, multi-faceted achievement.
Due to the depth and complexity of Bowie’s catalog, it is possible for two fans to be in love with what seem like two different musicians.
This phase of Bowie’s recording career starts in 1969, with the album Man of Words/Man of Music (later reissued as Space Oddity). This record, while retaining strong lyric writing, sense of narrative, distinct and distinct songs, feels in its arrangement more like folk than rock.
This was followed by the moody hard rock of The Man Who Sold the World, then followed by a retreat into the more sincere and orchestral piano-folk sound of Hunky Dory, and then one final advance into electric-guitar-dominated stage rock from which he would not retreat. The road from folk to glam was apparently tortuous.
I am especially fond of the Bowie before 1973. The 1972 landmark classic Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars to me marks the moment David Bowie stopped writing about his feelings and friends.
As the fans in the song “killed the man and crushed his sweet hands,” David Bowie assassinated himself, erased himself from his own work, adopting to the alienation of fame by making himself a fiction. His lyrics, remaining smart and surreal, faded from the extravagant poetry of “Quicksand” to a vernacular. While “Join the Gang” seems to mock the times, the nazz with God-given ass seems very much of their period.
Not until 1980’s “Ashes to Ashes” would Bowie write another song I can identify as autobiographical or vulnerable.
As Ziggy Stardust, Bowie became guarded, impersonal and insincere. Alienated and alien. Full of cold sex and devoid of warmth or love. He had removed himself and his friends from his writing and instead populated his stage with a series of fashion poses, for example the Thin White Duke.
He adapted, and while I haven’t found much to hook me recorded after 1980, he perseveres. But as “David Bowie,” as an ever-expanding Russian doll of poses.
Is it a sign that a band has lost its way when they record a song about how rock and roll is totally kick-ass? I mean, how many putrid examples can you think of? The Stones, Bob Seger, Huey Lewis, Kiss… Ew ew ew. Hurting for ideas? Or do they really think those songs are a contribution?
It’s a problem. Well, one we couldn’t resist exacerbating. Here’s a couple hours of preaching to the converted.
I take my card and I stand in line… Sonny, is this where the bingo tournament is?
Songs for, about, and sung by kids. Yes! Especially rock songs with children vocalists or choirs. And happy birthday to Abbey Road.
1. I was born in a cross-fire hurricane.
2. If I were a swan, I’d be gone.
3. I wish I were a Kellogg’s cornflake. I’d rather be a hammer than a nail.
4. I need a dumptruck to unload my head.
5. Superman or Green Lantern ain’t got nothing on me.
6. I’m gonna fly my freak flag high.
7. I’m a snow-covered mountain in an empty room.
8. I should pour through the keyhole or evaporate completely.
9. I have tried marijuana. I get nervous every time: There will come a knocking at the door.
10. I am a man who will fight for your honor.
11. I’d like to be under the sea.
12. When I was an astronaut, an asteroid ht the earth and prematurely ended my career.
13. My tissue is rotting where the rats chew my bones. My eye socket’s empty. I’m a space invader, I’ll be a rock-and-rolling bitch for you. This film is a saddening bore, because I wrote it ten times or more. I’d like to be a gallery and put you all inside my show.
14. I live above a grocer’s store owned by an Austrian. He often calls me down for tea. He jokes about his broken English, tries to be a friend to me. But for all my years of reading conversation, I stand without a word to say.
15. My death waits there among the leaves.
16. I’ve got an electric guitar and half a bottle of warm beer. I’ve got some funny ideas about what sounds good.
17. I may be hungry but I sure ain’t weird.
18. Eight miles out of Memphis and I got no spare.
19. I’ve got a crystal ball, a divining rod, a magnifying glass and a pack of dogs.
20. The north side of my town faced east, and the east was facing south.
21. Memories of it still keep calling and calling, but forget it all, I know I will.
22. My wheels never touched the road.
23. It’s awfully considerate of you to think of me here, and I’m much obliged to you for making it clear that I’m not here. I’ve been looking all over the place for a place for me, but it ain’t anywhere. It just ain’t anywhere.
24. I’m a Citizens for Boysenberry Jam fan.
25. If I were a better man, I’d understand the spaces between friends.
