One thing I like about the whole Tin Machine project was that it gave me the opportunity to see Bowie, not in a stadium or a sports arena, but in a theater, like an ordinary mortal. 
The downside was that they played only Tin Machine material, no previous Bowie stuff.
“Heroes” has always been a moving song for me, a wistful (and yes, chugging) song played over Robert Fripp’s brilliantly pitched feedback. Listening to it now, just lovely.
Like so much of Bowie’s work Heroes has a rare (often unique) theme and sentiment. It’s just one that resonates with the mainstream.
For me, perhaps for tenuous reasons, it’s a real working class anthem - you don’t have to be the facebook guy to do good things. Also, every time I hear it it reminds me he quite properly turned down Queenie’s knighthood.
I’d never heard that one before - thank you!
I massively (and unexpectedly) welled up during the opening ceremony of London 2012 when Team GB walked into the stadium and - just coincidentally 
- Heroes started playing. It was a perfect moment, I think.
He was asked of course - Danny Boyle asked him repeatedly.
That would have been something. Chris Hoye was even wearing wings.
I think Bowie’s idea was a Year Zero approach, that he would distance himself from the bloated excess of his last couple of albums by not touching his previous material. They did tackle a couple of covers: here they take Working Class Hero outside for a thunderous kicking, and Roxy Music’s If There Is Something gets a good shoeing as well.
Width of a Circle
Sweet Thing/ Candidate/ Sweet Thing Reprise
Station to Station
The Bewley Brothers
Breaking Glass
Buddha of Suburbia
Drive In Saturday
All the Madmen
Soul Love
Lady Stardust
His version of See Emily Play
Big Brother
Fantastic Voyage
Move On
Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud/ All the Young Dudes/ Oh! You Pretty Things medley from Hammersmith Odeon Ziggy show
Subject to change daily…
KNON’s “Spreadin’ the Jam” show was playing a set of live Bowie tonight. At the end, they played a few songs that were recorded at rehearsal sessions when Stevie Ray Vaughn was considering joining his band. There’s a few clams, as would be expected at a rehearsal, but it’s already a damn good sounding band. The version of “The Jean Genie” from it is currently my favorite version of the song.
I still don’t think Stevie Ray Vaughan’s guitar suited Bowie, but I love the jazzy into to that track.
If you’re an idiot, so am I. I have exactly the same reaction to Let’s Dance. It’s a fine song, sure. But one of his most popular ? I don’t get it. And as you say, it’s not even his most danceable. Off the top of my head, Young Americans is much more sexy-dancey. Yet, when a Bowie song is on the radio, 50% of the times, it’s Let’s Dance.
While I’m at it, I’ll add that Heroes is not in my top 10. I like it but from a distance. Maybe it’s because I clearly gravitate towards Low when it comes to the Berlin Trilogy. Same thing with The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. It’s one of my favourite albums but I’m way more fond of Hunky Dory.
Right now the one I would like to hear is Little China Girl.
I have the same reaction to that whole album. It has some good singles, but for the first time in Bowie’s career {or at least the first time since the late 60s when he was still finding himself} it doesn’t sound like a coherent album. Prior to Let’s Dance he’d been best known as an album artist, each with a particular sound, image and persona. Ironically for an artist with such a killer "Greatest Hits"catalogue, his singles almost seemed like an accident, a byproduct. Then suddenly his image was no more complex than “tanned blonde grinning rock star in nice suit”, and his album was a product, a bunch of very clever, very catchy singles and an equal amount of filler: nobody ever needs to hear “Criminal World” or “Shake It” again. He’d starting selling millions of albums, but the overall sound was of a man losing his creative rudder. Listen to Young Americans instead.
That’s an spot-on assessment. China Girl is an excellent pop song, Let’s Dance and Modern Love are good but the rest of the album is pretty much forgettable. Except that…
…I happen to really, really like Criminal World :o.
I think the first Bowie song that I was at an age to appreciate and enjoy was This Is Not America. It’s a gentle and simple song that washed over me successfully.
I’ve liked his songs before and after, but just as part of the music landscape. When he did his “Let’s Dance” album was when I really noticed him, so songs like China Girl and Modern Love feature strongly in my memory of him, and the duet with Jagger for “Live Aid” Dancing In The Street. Then I started to realise he was the one who sang things like Space Oddity and Fashion, somehow I hadn’t made the association before, and I appreciated him a bit more. I was around 14yrs old. Then when I was 16 he did Labyrinth, which I love!
I wouldn’t say I am a Bowie fan, but I do like a lot of his songs. He faded away a bit from my notice after that, and things he’s done since the 90s, like when he did “Tin Machine”, haven’t made much impact on me.
This is a bit like reducing Picasso to ‘your favourite’. It’s entertaining but kind of misses the point of how a great artist changes the way we look at us, and the world.
Of all people, I thought Madonna really nailed it this week.
Been listening to Bowie during my commutes all week and expect it will take the rest of the month to go through what I have which may only be a third or less of what he put out. My answer is identical to this and what I was about to post. I’m a generation behind Bowie so didn’t start listening to him until the late 80s and didn’t pick up Low until probably close to '90 but it remains my favourite.
Noting **Mr. Dribble’s **mention of Laughing Gnome some of early Deram songs I quite like but can probably only handle a listen of Laughing Gnome less than once a year and have trouble making it through to the end.
I’m just picturing someone putting the record on and listening for 1 minute and 30 seconds and then grabbing the needle off and running from the room, and then marking the calendar.
Anyone mention “Can’t help thinkin about me” yet?
It does have a good vocal, so I’ll give it a pass. But “Shake It” is is the sound of Bowie about to spend the next 5 years sucking thick lumps through a thin straw.
For some reason, i cannot find Bowie’s “Blue Jean” video…where they go to false/negative colors. It’s the best dance he ever did.