David Bowie - Rebel Rebel

My second and last Las Vegas-related post. There was a very nice girl named Sophie who went by the nom de plume "Rebel" and we were all pretty sure she was named after a gas station.

Lou Reed - Perfect Day

One everybody knows. And Eric may have indirectly started a theme for this week.

I was trying to compile a list of the most depressing songs that have ever tickled my eardrums. And amidst this, a genius of a friend made the glorious observation:

"Beez, you listen to some really depressing shit."

I asked the question for him, basically... "How do you bottle up these negative emotions you draw from this music and project such a sunny disposition?"

Easy... I'm saving it all for the best time to let it go. God help the world.

Thought you all might enjoy the Boyzone cameo.



P.S. - I found Emmylou Harris astonishingly hot in this video. Holy shit.

David Bowie - Cat People (Putting Out Fire)

This is a few weeks late in light of our discussion on the boards, but oh well. The version that Bowie recorded for the Let's Dance album is complete shit, but the original Moroder-produced version is totally on-point. Anyone ever seen the Schrader movie? I'm fairly certain the poster is the best part (it is, in its defense, a pretty kick-ass poster.)

David Bowie - Space Oddity (1980 version)

This outtake from Scary Monsters (the one with Ashes to Ashes) is one of my favorites. It's a sparser self-cover with more feeling, and I like it better than the original.

Sergei Prokofiev, Peter and Wolf

Another famous piece meant to help children learn about orchestral music, here is Peter and the Wolf narrated by David Bowie.

James Brown - Nature Boy

I went over to youtube to look for Nature Boy - the song's always fascinated me since I heard it on a Nat King Cole box and half remembered it from Moulin Rouge. I was all set to put up the Nat King Cole version (after avoiding the bombastic, crooner-Bowie version, and not finding the Big Star one) when I found this run-through, with faux-Morricone production.

James Brown.

David Bowie - Life on Mars?

No, I'm not exactly breaking virgin territory here, but the not-nearly-good-enough American version of "Life on Mars" just ended with an all-time, epic fail of a finale, and it deserves to be ridiculed to the sound of its classic namesake.

I only watched the first couple of episodes with anything more than a modicum of interest (the on-the-nose dialogue really started to wear on my nerves, and the show just seemed to be focus-grouped down to a nub) but the original series was most famous for its ending, so I watched the American finale to see what they did with it. Sam Tyler, it turned out, didn't come from 1973 or 2008. He was a motherhumping astronaut. From the future. Traveling to Mars with all of his fictitious cop buddies, running a fucking simulated program to keep his mind active or some bullshit. And Gene Hunt, the cop boss? That was the mission they were on - a gene hunt. They were searching for fucking life on Mars. Like the song!

The human race probably doesn't deserve to survive. If there is a just God, he will wipe this experiment out.