Hoping a few Bowie fans will come out of the woodwork to chime in.
My pick would be Diamond Dogs. The lyrics on the title track create very fun images (the track reminds me a little of the 1st and 2nd track on Genesis’ The Lamb, with the colorful description of city-dwelling characters.) Sweet Thing/Candidate is a great sequence, very passionate and energetic. Rebel Rebel is pretty much a classic rock anthem. Rock n’ Roll With Me is a great Ziggy-esque tune on par with Lady Stardust.
And the Rykodisc release of this one has by far the best unreleased tracks. It’s absolutely amazing that Dodo was somehow cut, it’s a solid thematic fit and a catchy tune. And the demo version of Candidate, with a totally different sound than the one that made the album, is possibly amongst my all time favorite Bowie songs.
I’d probably round out the top 5 with Ziggy, Hunky Dory, Space Oddity, Man who Sold the World.
Low is my #1. Naturally, I also like its companion album, “Heroes”, and I’m also especially fond of some of the early albums, like The Man Who Sold The World and Hunky Dory. Ziggy’s cool too, of course.
Me too. And seeing that band was my only experience of seeing Bowie live…and in a mid-sized theater, no less. Too bad they didn’t do any of Bowie’s old repertoire, though.
Oh man. Man Who Sold the World. Heroes. Scary Monsters. Station to Station. Pinups. Diamond Dogs. Aladdin Sane. I love his first album. Basically everything through Scary Monsters. I listened to a lot of Bowie when I was young and on drugs.
The Rykodisc extras on Space Oddity (aka Man of Words, Man of Music) were also quite good. I would number Conversation Piece amongst my favorite Bowie songs, in part for the lyrics (all his stuff from that era is a little overly romantic, like Wild-Eyed Boy from Freecloud, I find it interesting that Conversation Piece is like romanticized loneliness and depression.) And the alt-version of Memory of a Free Festival Part Two on the Rykodisc extras is alot fuller sounding, and IMHO much more enjoyable, than the one that made the original release. Back when I got the disc, I recorded it to tape for my car with the alt-version in place of the original. (Of course, I always thought I knew better than the studio what order the songs should be in…I swapped the order of Levee and Stairway when I recorded Zeppelin IV.)
Well, pretty much anything he did between Hunky Dory and Scary Monsters would get my vote (except perhaps Young Americans - not enough fuzzy guitar on that one for my taste).
Thanks for the heads-up on the re-release of Diamond Dogs - think I’ll exit stage left, bound for my local music shop, immediately.