Day: January 8, 2007

1) Panic in Detroit (from Aladdin Sane)-“looks a lot like Che Guevera”. Great background singing.
2) Under Pressure (with Queen)-with a bass line so good, even Vanilla Ice sounded (relatively) good.
3) Star (from Ziggy Stardust)-I did so much hard dancing to this song in my dorm room, I was grateful to the slowdown at the end.
4) Golden Years (from Station to Station)-I saw Bowie do this on Soul Train. The kids didn’t know what to make of the Thin White Duke, but they liked the song.
5) Fame (from Young Americans)-the original, not the inferior Fame ’90 remix that I have on the Pretty Woman soundtrack. Co-written by John Lennon. LOVE the scales of “fame, fame, fame, fame…”
6) Young Americans (from YA)- also on Soul Train. “Do you remember your President Nixon“, whose birthday, BTW, is tomorrow.
7) TVC15 (from STS)-because I like the beat.
8) Changes (from Hunky Dory)- from the first Bowie album I owned.
9) Fashion (from Scary Monsters)-I was at Fred Hembeck’s house this summer, and Fred, his daughter Julie and I were watching Bowie videos. Boy, is the video of this one of its time.
10) DJ (from Lodger)-Reminds of the day when “I am the DJ, I am what I play” applied to many disc jockeys, not just a relatively few.

I must make special mention of David Bowie’s duet with Bing Crosby, “Peace on Earth”/”Little Drummer Boy”, and the strange story behind it: Bowie’s hatred of “Drummer Boy”, the quick rewrite, Crosby’s death before the special aired in 1977. I watched it (and you can, here or here) when it was originally broadcast and saw the bizarre banter about John Lennon and Harry Nilsson, then this duet, which, improbably, really worked. I STILL want to know: did Bing really know who Bowie was?