best of bowie Review
by Wayne Wong

     David Bowie is not as well known these days as, say, Britney or the Backstreet Boys. Maybe some people think he covered a Nirvana song called The Man Who Sold The World. Actually, the song is Mr. Bowie's, originally released in 1971, and Nirvana were the ones doing the covering, thank you very much. From this example, one might conclude that perhaps Bowie is a classic rock dinosaur who's history by now. Wrong again. Even in his 50s, with musical accomplishments that most musicians could only dream of as well as a long trail of trends & performers he has influenced behind him, David Bowie is still considered by many to be way cool right here, right now, and he's still making good music.

     What accounts for his ongoing success and relevance? It's obvious to many that he's very intelligent, talented and creative - that all helps. I think there's something else going on as well, though. Along with other artists like U2, The Beatles, Prince, etc., instead of just being content to be the pop flavour-of-the-week, Bowie has dug more deeply to explore spiritual themes in his music. Not that he overtly promotes any form of organized religion, but rather, as he said in one interview, "Basically, all my life, every album I've made, whatever it seemed ostensibly about, under all of those things there was always a certain angle: How do I locate my spirituality? What is it?" He has also said, "All art really does is keep you focused on questions of humanity and it really is about how do we get on with our maker." While his own road has taken him through the "sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll" thing, he has apparently moved on from that, while retaining his creative edge better than some who seem to have stayed in that kind of lifestyle. This is clear evidence I think that artistic relevance and creativity don't depend on immorality or self-destruction, but instead are hindered by them - the thing that really separates the great artists and musicians from the not-so-great ones, the men from the boys, to paraphrase Bono of U2, is actually some spirituality.
 
     A great way to sample and explore the various stages and phases of Bowie's career is to get the recently released 2-CD best of bowie. While I personally don't like some of the songs and the phases of Bowie's career they represent, there are many excellent songs here, from his first big hit, Space Oddity ("Ground control to Major Tom..."), to Slow Burn, a great song off his latest album. In between are such classics as the above-mentioned The Man Who Sold The World, Changes, Fame, "Heroes", China Girl, and many others.

     Commenting on typical audiences these days, Bowie said, 'People are so ... dumb now ... They don't read ... They have all the depth of a glass of water.' If you went, "Yeah! Right on!" just now, if you're bored of bubblegum, don't see the point of rap or metal, and like some intellectual, emotional, and artistic content along with your catchy tunes, check out best of bowie.


Wayne Wong
2002-12-10


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Links

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00006JYI7/qid=1039514887/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/104-6040510-4451949 - best of bowie cover art, song list, audio samples, etc.
http://www.davidbowie.com/ - David Bowie's official web site
http://www.illustrated-db-discography.nl/ - A very comprehensive discography, with lyrics being just the start
http://www.algonet.se/~bassman/ - Bassman's David Bowie page; a book that turned into a web site