David Bowie—Scary Monsters

David Bowie—Scary Monsters (1980)

Scary Monsters—Among David Bowie's most celebrated albums—Ziggy Stardust (1972), Low (1977), et al.—Scary Monsters is the most commonly forgotten. It's considered to be roughly on the same plane as the others, but possibly due to its more extreme nature, it's often left off such lists. Unlike the more moderate persona of its predecessor Lodger (1979), Scary Monsters is painted with Bowie as a sinister Pierrot; likewise, the songs and Bowie's vocals are confrontational and disquieting compared to Lodger's impartial croon, sometimes drone.

Although it follows mostly logically from his previous three albums, and foreshadows the electronic direction of his later albums, Scary Monsters is something of an anomaly. Bowie is unusually direct throughout much of the album, with some pointed criticisms of his peers surfacing here and there, and it's one of his most overwhelmingly guitar-oriented albums. In the hair-raising opener, "It's No Game (No. 1)," Bowie's verses are preceded by singer Michi Hirota's (of Stomu Yamashta's Red Buddha Theatre) Japanese variations. Bowie explained, "I wanted to break down a particular type of sexist attitude about women. I thought the [idea of] the 'Japanese girl' typifies it, where everyone pictures them as a geisha girl, very sweet, demure and non-thinking, when in fact that's the absolute opposite of what women are like. They think an awful lot, with quite as much strength as any man. I wanted to caricature that attitude by having a very forceful Japanese voice on it. So I had [Hirota] come out with a very samurai kind of thing" (Strange Fascination—David Bowie: The Definitive Story, David Buckley, 1999). At the time, Bowie also had recently appeared in a Japanese commercial for Crystal Jun Rock sake for which he recorded the instrumental "Crystal Japan." That later became the B-side to "Up the Hill Backwards," his acoustic-electric tribute to Marcel Duchamp—"Sneakers fall apart"—who sculpted Not a Shoe and was once quoted as saying, "If it is shoes that you want, I'll give you shoes that you will admire to such an extent that you will lame yourselves trying to walk in them" (Surrealism, Julien Levy, 1995).

"Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)" is predictably the most overtly insane cut, with Bowie's chorus descending further into voltaic madness as the song wears on. "Space Oddity" sequel "Ashes to Ashes" is a candidate for Bowie's best song ever, an extraordinary self-referential journey that sounds like nothing else before or since—a swirling revelation of multi-tracked vocals, otherworldly synthesizer, and a jaw-dropping, deceptively simple refrain to close it out. "Fashion" is an apocalyptic funk ride that recalls Young Americans (1975) and Station to Station (1976). Centerpiece "Teenage Wildlife" attacks "new wave boys"; seeing as Bowie drew heavy inspiration from Krautrock for his late '70s work, he probably saw new wave artists like Gary Numan as less imaginative and driving than they should have been. "Scream Like a Baby," a holdover from aborted project People from Bad Homes (itself a line that was reused for "Fashion") that was originally called "I Am a Laser" and featured entirely different lyrics, is a carnivalesque song about unfairly-persecuted Sam of vague origins. "Kingdom Come," from Tom Verlaine's solo career, is well-produced but ultimately inferior to the original. "Because You're Young," with guest guitarist Pete Townshend, is a less prominent but satisfying offering coated with Halloween-evoking synthesizer. Flip-side reprise "It's No Game (No. 2)" ramps down the album steeply with a resigned tone, with Bowie inserting a couple new jarring lines into the mix ("Children 'round the world/Put camel shit on the walls").

Scary Monsters is pretty much universally considered the end of Bowie's classic period. In retrospect, he still had good, even great albums ahead of him, such as his final three (Reality [2003], The Next Day [2013], and Blackstar [2016]), but Bowie never assembled quite as good of a band as he did on Scary Monsters. It's an album that's hard to pull into its discrete parts in discussions, and at times it almost feels like a Greatest Hits album because of its career-to-date-encompassing subject matter. Taken on its own, however, it's one of Bowie's most original, galvanizing, and uniformly excellent albums, and it can go toe-to-toe with anything in his canon.

More David Bowie reviews by The Old Noise:

David Bowie (1967)
David Bowie (1969)
The Man Who Sold the World (1970)
Hunky Dory (1971)
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972)
Aladdin Sane (1973)
Pin Ups (1973)
Diamond Dogs (1974)
Young Americans (1975)
Station to Station (1976)
Low (1977)
"Heroes" (1977)
Lodger (1979)
Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980)
Let's Dance (1983)
Tonight (1984)
Never Let Me Down (1987)
Black Tie White Noise (1993)
The Buddha of Suburbia (1993)
Outside (1995)
Earthling (1997)
'Hours...' (1999)
Heathen (2002)
Reality (2003)
The Next Day (2013)
Blackstar (2016)

Cat Stevens—Numbers

Cat Stevens—Numbers (1975)

Numbers—Cat Stevens had a run of albums from 1970–1977 that resulted in four Platinum records (two 3x Platinum) and another four Gold. Calling him a hit-maker is an understatement—he had a string of eleven U.S. Top 40 hits during that same period that are still ingrained in public consciousness, mainly thanks to muzak. Every LP he put out in the wake of Tea for the Tillerman 1970) and Teaser and the Firecat (1971) had at least one notable hit that kept it from obscurity; it could be said that Stevens' business model was top-notch, if it's examined coldly. However, Stevens was more sensitive than that; he seemed to believe in his ideals, at least to some extent, and he was artful. Following Buddha and the Chocolate Box (1974), he tried something completely different.

Numbers
A Pythagorean Theory Tale

Further away from our Earth than it is possible to imagine, there was a galaxy. And almost in the center of the galaxy was a little planet called Polygor.
Polygor existed to give numbers to the universe. Number 1, number 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9. Each day millions and billions and zillions of numbers were distributed to every world that needed them [...]

Numbers is Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam's only clear concept album, and while it seems arcane, the story is fairly basic: Nine beings called Polygons each named after digits live in the Palace of Polygor, where a huge machine makes all the numbers of the universe. This persisted in stasis for an indeterminable length of time until the arrival of the prophet Jzero, who inflicted some vague truth on the Polygons that changed their lives. Stevens came up with the idea after reading a book on Pythagoras while in Australia. "At first I couldn't see the point of making numbers any more important than what you use them for ... [then I] realized that I’d always known the importance of numbers without really being aware of it—like all songs have a natural 'three' element, three being the strongest number of all ... Then you start finding out that Pythagoras developed the Western musical scale. Then, thinking about it, you discover that the law of music is the same law that applies to nature as a whole, that your life has octaves in the same way as the musical scale does." (Cat Stevens Talks to Mick Brown, Sounds, December 13th, 1975)

The whimsical opening instrumental "Whistlestar" seems to have no overarching significance in the story except that maybe the "Whistlestar" is part of the "cluster of burning stars" that illuminates the Numbers galaxy. Reportedly, when Stevens played the song live, he would pop out of a box after a magician performed tricks over the course of the song. The dirge "Novim's Nightmare" chronicles Novim's (number nine) experience being revitalized following the arrival of Jzero. Stevens explained, "Yes, its a vision I have often in dreams. There's something so strong about that guillotine. The moment you're born, and through the whole of your life, there's a guillotine waiting ... The centre to the story of Numbers is that really you're in a place where everything seems immortal, eternal and everlasting. And suddenly along comes this question of death, which has never entered before. And then you start to question everything." (Cat Stevens—Life, Love and Death, Melody Maker, November 15th, 1975)

The slick "Majik of Majiks" is about "the power of zero [...] when you think you're smart and you've got it planned and then along comes this silly little accident and you're put back to square one [...] the ego having to face death finally." A Polygon (presumably still Novim, who now sees himself as an outcast) sings about the shocking revelation of Jzero, who "[has] the key to any door." The knowingly gospel-inflected "Drywood" continues these themes with a more uplifting tone, urging the Polygons or the listener to "Kick out your dull padded life" and begin anew.

The strange, jangling "Banapple Gas," which was the one minor hit from Numbers, seems to represent the change in routine that was occurring on Polygor. "Land o' Free Love and Goodbye" seems to be a more traditional song about the time Stevens lived in, mentioning God by name rather than an allegorical character. On the theme song "Jzero," the titular character speaks equivocally about his purpose, saying he only came to the palace for work and little food. The Polygons note that "He says he hasn't got nothing/But he seems to possess less," seeming to allude to religious concepts of material possession and elevating Jzero to a holy figure of sorts. The yearning "Home" describes a kind of utopia "where all mums can sing/Back where the children don't cry/Home where you never ask why and/Everybody has enough," but also bizarrely "you don't have to put on clothes/Nobody has to hide 'cause everyone already knows," which either means Stevens was singing generally again or that the Polygons ultimately decided to get nude with the townsfolk. In the closing "Monad's Anthem," Monad (number one), the Emperor, bellows about "one" as a female chorus echoes him, seemingly in glorification of Polygor.

Although very little of Numbers was that far removed from Stevens' usual musical fare—it featured his usual band, and only the uncharacteristic instrumental "Whistlestar" and obscure paean "Monad's Anthem" were new ground for him—its off-kilter qualities seemed to be too much for the public. The album began a downtown for him commercially, although it and the following Itizso (1977) still went Gold. There are some heavier introspective themes on it, especially on the first side with songs like "Novim's Nightmare," but in the end people only remembered the fanciful "Banapple Gas" if they held on to anything at all. Numbers, which are represented in modern times by Arabic numerals, were adumbrating subject matter for Cat Stevens; he did not convert to Islam until late 1977, so it's tough to assert that Jzero is analogous to Mohammed, though perhaps he is an amalgam of Mohammed and other figures such as Christ.

Overall, it can't definitively be said that Numbers is as musically satisfying as the rest of Cat Stevens' oeuvre. There's no "The Hurt" or "Father and Son" to anchor it, though the album as a whole is melodically satisfying, with just the right amount of intricacy here and there. Perhaps the public should have heeded the warning in the liner notes which read, "This album is not to be taken 2 seriously," though the intellectual parts of Numbers are actually rewarding. It's a minor gem from an artist that rarely went against the grain, and it didn't deserve the treatment it got.

Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians—Fegmania!

Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians—Fegmania! (1985)

Fegmania!—The Soft Boys broke up sometime in early 1981, leaving Robyn Hitchcock to pursue an equally odd solo career and Kimberley Rew to move toward the mainstream with Katrina and the Waves. It's peculiar that Rew went on to write most of that band's material, including the hit "Walking on Sunshine," considering Hitchcock wrote almost everything for the Soft Boys. Rew was hardly disposable as a Soft Boy; the dynamics of his and Hitchcock's guitar playing had a quality that neither party ever quite replicated. Still, the Soft Boys were definitely Hitchcock's band, as evidenced by the split, and his Black Snake Dîamond Röle (1981), Groovy Decay (1982), and I Often Dream of Trains (1984) were natural extensions of the Soft Boys' run. Upon hearing a re-released version of the EP Give It to the Soft Boys, Hitchcock decided to get back with that rhythm section (drummer Morris Windsor and bassist/keyboardist Andy Metcalfe, plus newcomer Roger Jackson, also on keyboards), and thus the Soft Boys were reborn as the Egyptians.

"What is Fegmania? It has come for your sister. Also for your husband, that kindly man with something poking out of his head. It has come for your arms, and it will change your concept of hygiene. It may be the sound of a plane crash-landing in a ploughed field, or salad cream being tipped out of an attic window. There are stars, minds and judges—people in scarlet rags that pull frogs out of each other's mouths. FEGMANIA RISES! Light pulsing from a bruised sun that eats into tired rugs. Light coursing from a swarming moon that careens in frozen ecstasy across the sky—naked people oozing on warm mud with the radio tuned to Venus. Here is music to implode by. Here is FEGMANIA! A turnip in a sliver box. A dromedary lurching through the House of Commons. A bank manager shooting himself in the navel with a water-pistol. A Royal baby with permanent amnesia. A vampire at the Cenotaph. Respectable people with uncontrollable urges, freed only by the disconnection of their hands. A nun writing her name in marmalade on a soldier's leg. One word." —Liner notes to Fegmania!

Fegmania! sounds like an anomaly, but it was actually Hitchcock's most straightforward music to date, less introspective, all arranged the same way. It is led by "Egyptian Cream," the new band's de facto theme song, a surrealistic, almost Biblical tale of hormone-altering topical cream. "Another Bubble" expresses feelings of isolation in relationships that ultimately lead to rifts. The psychedelic "I'm Only You" is a paradoxical ego-fantasy reminiscent of Revolver. The funny, sad, hypnagogic "My Wife and My Dead Wife," cleverly backed with theremin and percussion idiophones, is an emotionally mixed account of not being able or willing to chase the ghost of a loved one. "Goodnight I Say" is a characteristic stream-of-consciousness Hitchcock composition.

"The Man with the Lightbulb Head," which is something like the title cut (the album cover is taken from the song's video, a home movie directed by Hitchcock), is heavy-handed and silly ("I'm the man with the light-bulb head/I turn myself on in the dark"), but delivered earnestly enough to succeed. "Insect Mother," an I Often Dream of Trains holdover, is a Tim Burton-esque love nightmare. The bright, infectious "Strawberry Mind" was a sign that the Egyptians were ready for college radio prime-time. "Glass" is a sort of vague statement on transparency, and "The Fly" is some quasi-progressive mood piece. The uplifting "Heaven," one of his greatest songs ever, is based around a classic half-real, half-imaginary Hitchcock story he once spun thus:

"This is the floating Cathedral [of the] Prairie's song... it used to be sung by the old prospectors when they were waiting for the Cathedral to arrive. Back in the '20s when the Bechtel Corporation used to take cheap labor out into the desert to complete its massive projects—big dams and so forth—the men weren't paid very much, and they couldn't get any liquor, so they used to sit outside in groups in circles, and they'd wait for the Cathedral to come by: big, floating, transparent glass cathedral lit by columns of light from underneath. And when it came by, they'd all stiffen and howl: 'You've got heaven...'" —Intro to "Heaven," live, date unknown, as heard on the CD reissue of Fegmania!

Fegmania! kick-started a new part of Robyn Hitchcock's career that resulted in five more albums with the Egyptians, which ran concurrently with his solo albums. Although there is a sense that Hitchcock was just settling back into the groove of things, with some of its songs being a tad slight, Fegmania! is nonetheless a career highlight and a record of inspiration.

The Beatles—Please Please Me

The Beatles—Please Please Me

Please Please Me—The farther you get back in the Beatles' discography, the less likely people are to remember it. That's not to say any Beatles album, single, or even outtake can be considered obscure, but while Revolver (1966) Sgt. Pepper (1967) are household names, the pre-Rubber Soul (1965) albums are often considered at least partially inessential. Please Please Me was their first one ever (Introducing... the Beatles and Meet the Beatles! [1964] were the first ones to hit the United States), coming on the heels of the "Please Please Me" and "Love Me Do" singles.

Paul McCartney's dissonant rocker "I Saw Her Standing There" opens the album on a high note, importantly showing early on that the band could write a classic all their own. "Misery," written originally for Helen Shapiro, is one of the greatest sub-two-minute pop songs ever. John Lennon's rendition of Arthur Alexander's "Anna (Go to Him)" and George Harrison's of the Cookies' "Chains" (Goffin/King) are somewhat pointless, but Ringo Starr's of the Shirelles' "Boys" is strangely effective. Lennon offers the album's best token cloying-nonsense number in "Ask Me Why" in spite of that being McCartney's reputation.

"Please Please Me," which Lennon wrote inspired by Roy Orbison and Bing Crosby, and McCartney's "Love Me Do" showcase the two men's early vocal harmonies at their best. "P.S. I Love You," the first in a series of postal Beatles songs that would be continued by their cover of "Please Mr. Postman" and "Paperback Writer," is lovably banal. Bacharach/David/Williams' "Baby It's You" was not the best choice for a Lennon vocal, while the dopey "Do You Want to Know a Secret?" and corny theater piece "A Taste of Honey" weren't good choices for anyone. "There's a Place" features Lennon and McCartney in a pleasing baritone range. Only on "Twist and Shout" does Lennon do a cover justice, mostly thanks to his famously pained delivery from a marathon recording session.

That doesn't sound like a wholly impressive set, and for the most part it's not—"Please Please Me" and "Love Me Do" and their respective b-sides "Ask Me Why" and "P.S. I Love You" were hardly vital parts of the package, having likely already been sought by every patron in England in single form. The remaining ten songs, only four of which were originals, were recorded in a single session, live in studio, and while only maybe half those cuts are notable in most any way, the band's restless drive shines through on the finished record. On the whole, Please Please Me is something of a classic, if an odd one, and it's amazing to think that even in their nascent stages as hitmakers the Beatles were this tight as a band, producer George Martin included.

Talk Talk—Spirit of Eden

Talk Talk—Spirit of Eden

Spirit of Eden—Though U2's similar Eno-infused rock soundscapes came years prior, Talk Talk's shift from synthpop to art music was surprising. Almost no artist in that vein headed for the ditch—Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, Eurythmics—and others simply made compromises, such as the jagged-yet-accessible stylings of Devo or Gary Numan. Talk Talk was more primed for that shift, considering singer Mark Hollis was more thoughtful and sensitive than his contemporaries. The songs on The Party's Over (1982), It's My Life (1984), and The Colour of Spring (1986) were far from banal, even in the earliest stages—cheaply done perhaps, but the craft just kept getting keener and tighter. Producer Tim Friese-Greene's occasional songwriting input blossomed into a full-blown symbiosis with Hollis, which sharpened Hollis' vision, resulting in more adventurous micromanagement; as a result, The Colour of Spring utilized twice as many session musicians as any other Talk Talk album.

It didn't so much sound like radical change was taking place, but Talk Talk was growing, and Colour of Spring's sales (their best-selling album), along with hit single "Life's What You Make It," gave them more freedom for the follow-up, Spirit of Eden. Hollis said, "Spirit of Eden—I kind of think that was very much, in a way, where all those earlier albums were trying to get to" (1998 TV interview, Okay Tone), and that was shrewd introspection; Eden's personnel—that is to say the band's discrete number of instruments—were pared down from Colour of Spring's line-up, though thanks to shrewd editing and a wider variety of sounds, it doesn't at all seem so. Hollis and Friese-Greene took the resulting recordings and played with each bit of tape until the album's six extended cuts were complete—Hollis being a proponent of first takes: "If you demo a track, no matter how badly you tried to demo it, there will always be a quality within it that you subsequently would try to recreate, which you shouldn't be."

As a result of this holistic approach, Spirit of Eden feels very cohesive, and in fact the first three songs form their own suite, led by the sparkling "The Rainbow," where Hollis sings of justice. The music evokes the intermittently pleasant uncertainty of a circadian rhythm, with certain segments alternating in intensity and length, and how nature and emotion are constantly at odds. The bittersweet "Eden" alternates between promise and mourning—the aural manifestation of a letdown. "Desire," the most rock-oriented tune, fittingly mimics an oncoming storm, yet is defiant; without cracking a smile, Hollis quips, "That ain't me, babe/I'm just content to relax/Than drown within myself," highlighting the sad pointlessness of obsession.

The dirge "Inheritance" exposes the excesses of humanity: "Don't you know where life has gone/Burying progress in the clouds" He subtly digs at faith-based living ("Expecting the dour/To redress with open arms/Ascension in incentive end"), calling the collective "Nature's son," implying accountability and a misguided need for what he describes as "Desperately befriending the crowd/To incessantly drive on/Dress in gold's surrendering gown." The achingly beautiful "I Believe in You" is an uncharacteristically explicit anti-heroin song completed just before Hollis' brother Ed's death by overdose: wondrously dissonant, with the chorus hitting C♯ being one of the most satisfying moments in popular music. The closing hymn "Wealth" is a sentimental resignation to fate which posits that ultimately, Hollis' misgivings about life in general are tempered by his acceptance of powerlessness.

Spirit of Eden didn't showcase anything particularly groundbreaking—the jazz tones and meticulous editing recall Miles Davis' Bitches Brew and Soft Machine's Third—but rather than embracing an experimental bent, Talk Talk polished their recordings to create something not only challenging but profoundly, undeniably gorgeous from start to finish. It stands as not only their high-water mark, but a dazzling achievement in music.

Rockpile—Live at Montreux 1980

Rockpile—Live at Montreux 1980

Live at Montreux 1980—Rockpile was a band that was legendarily heralded for its live performances. It's difficult to find a review on Nick Lowe, Dave Edmunds, or Rockpile itself without the author mentioning something like that "I Knew the Bride" was butchered on record, but there was rarely any commercial recourse for the average fan to know the difference. Rockpile almost didn't have an album of its own, period—due to contract trifles, Rockpile (Lowe, Edmunds, Billy Bremner, Terry Williams) were forbidden from recording as they were. Instead, the band put out material on the individual albums of Lowe, the principal songwriter, and Edmunds, who favored rock and roll covers. However, this meant the two could not sing on each other's albums, and Bremner, the band's tertiary singer, rarely sung at all. This changed with Seconds of Pleasure (1980), which was a fine effort, but some complained that it ineffectively bottled the Rockpile sound.

As late as the 2000s, there were still few attainable Rockpile discs; the CD reissue of Seconds added the whole of the Nick Lowe & Dave Edmunds Sing the Everly Brothers EP and three live cuts, and at least five notable bootlegs appeared from 1979–1991. There also existed an Elvis cover performed with Robert Plant, oddly (see Concerts for the People of Kampuchea [1981]). Finally, in 2011, Eagle Records mercifully released Live at Montreux 1980—a full concert.

This particular show features a plurality of eight Edmunds selections (insofar that he sings them): Hank DeVito's "Sweet Little Lisa" and "Queen of Hearts" (later popularized by Juice Newton), friend Elvis Costello's "Girls Talk," Don Covay's "Three Time Loser," Graham Parker's "Crawlin' from the Wreckage," Chuck Berry's "Let It Rock," Dave Bartholomew's "I Hear You Knocking," and Otis Blackwell's "Let's Talk about Us," most of which take off in the live setting and are benefited by Bremner's friendly snarl. Bremner himself sings his own "Trouble Boys" and the Louisiana jaunt "You Ain't Nothing but Fine" (Semien/Soileau), and Lowe sings the remainder: his own "So It Goes," "I Knew the Bride," and "They Called It Rock," Pickett/Phillips' "Teacher Teacher," and Mickey Jupp's "Switchboard Susan." All three sing a great rendition of Jim Ford's "Ju Ju Man."

Unfortunately for Lowe fans, his moments are largely lackluster, though this is often because of poor sound recording; Lowe seems not to have been mic'd up correctly at times, mostly at the beginning of "So It Goes" and parts of "Teacher Teacher." The former also doesn't benefit from Edmunds' refrain, which highlights the somewhat perplexing nature of Lowe's difficult-to-replicate studio tricks. The saving grace is that "Switchboard Susan" is presented in probably its best incarnation anywhere—where Jupp's original and Lowe's Labour of Lust (1979) recording lacked a certain facility, it soars here. In truth, however, it's probably fortunate that the band left out lighter numbers like "(I Love the Sound of) Breaking Glass," "Heart," "When I Write the Book," and "Cruel to Be Kind," which didn't always flourish on stage.

Predictably, Live at Montreux 1980 feels slightly excessive, especially during long sections of Edmunds' vestigial rock-around-the-clock fantasies, but taken for what it is, it's a mostly great show. The set might have been better with "Born Fighter," "Heart of the City," or "Love So Fine" in the places of others, but as it is, it's a package that was worth the wait.