Lodger At 40

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Today is the 40th anniversary of the release of the Lodger album by David Bowie. A rather jumbled up travelogue of an album. The travel theme running heavily through side A of the album with: Fantastic Voyage, African Night Flight, Move On, Yassassin (Turkish for Long Live) and Red Sails.

Side B’s theme alters and shifts back to menial points of life, work, home, family…death, mental illness, domestic violence – the only slight thorn in the side is Boys Keep Swinging as it seems more tongue-in-cheek with its theme. Well, DJ is to a degree too. But there are darker themes explored in Look Back In Anger (mental illness/death) and Repetition (domestic violence).

It sadly ends with a rather inferior version of Iggy Pop’s sublime Sister Midnight in Red Money. Compared to Sister Midnight, Red Money feels derivative. I never used to mind it much. I wasn’t aware and got into Iggy until after I heavily got into David. As the years have passed, I am always far more appreciative of Iggy’s side of the Bowie/Pop collaborations, it somewhat pains me to say.

Although seen as being part of the “Berlin trilogy”, it was actually recorded in Montreux, Switzerland and mixed in New York. I always found it curious it was put in a trio with Low and Heroes. I have always felt the trio SHOULD be, at least more musically, Station To Station-Low-Heroes.

Here’s to Lodger! “The hinterland. The hinterland. We’re gonna sail to the hinterland!”

Staring At (Photos Of) The Rude Boys – New Ruts Photobook

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There’s a new Hanging Around book release featuring the photography of Virginia Turbett. The book in question features photos of The Ruts (aka Ruts DC – as they are known these days).

The book called “South Of Babylon: The Ruts 1978-1979” is available to pre-order through the Hanging Around Books site and is released on May 27th. Click here to order your copy.

Really looking forward to this one.

We Jumped The Gun – Again – Still Not LIAD Anniversary, YET!

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Yesterday I was out-anoraked.

Jim had posted about it being the anniversary of Life In A Day and smuggins here felt a little bit pleased with herself that he was acknowledging the correct date of release. Well, so I had deluded myself. (And obviously he had thought so too…)

The holy bible that is Dream Giver Redux had a Zoom press release from the time showing that the album had been set for release for April 13th. Well, obviously Bruce and Brian had done what I did months back investing in my Mott The Hoople ticket, and neglected to take in that it was Easter weekend.

And as my anorak friend had pointed out on SMO FB, it was indeed Easter weekend on April 13th, 1979. He had said in his comment that in the New Gold Dream tour program it showed the release date to be 20/4/1979. I admit to looking at my scanned copy of my signed version of the program, and there it was! He also said he had seen a subsequent Zoom press release showing the revised date.

I am happy to declare I have been well and truly outdone in the anorak stakes. Lol

Similarities In ‘79

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I was preparing a post for the blog that will be posted inline with a anniversary date in the near future.

In doing so, I was reminded of this song by this band. Thanks to my older brothers (one of them in particular), I feel I had pretty good taste in music for a nine year old girl. And I actually thought the singer was pretty dishy too. At nine! Lol. Was I like?!

Insatiable!

“I Rehearse Going For The Bus” – Mick’s Hurrah’s Memories

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Listening in to Mick MacNeil’s show on Thursday night on Indy Live, I loved hearing him talk about SM’s gig in New York at Hurrah’s – so much so that I took this audio snippet out of it to share here.

 

Of course, you can listen in to Mick’s show on Thursday evenings at 9pm GMT on Indy Live. Just click the link HERE to go the website.

Where Did The Fool Go?

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It’s a strange thing, research. You can be looking for one thing and will unearth something else entirely!

Take a song like Here Comes The Fool, for example. It makes its first known live appearance shortly after the release of Life In A Day and is played at gigs in the summer.


Here Comes The Fool – June 1979

Late summer, off they go into the Monmouthshire countryside to record Real To Real Cacophony – and hang out with Bowie, Iggy, appear as guest artist on Iggy’s Soldier album (on the track Play It Safe) and have fun with mushrooms, minxes and manchego…


Here Comes The Fool – Aug ’79

By October they are back on the road and Here Comes the Fool is a regular on the set. The musicality of it is well developed and strong. Jim has played with the lyrics…they now seem fairly well scripted and fairly different to how they appeared early in the summer.


Here Comes The Fool – Nov. ’79

It remains a staple in the set until the spring of 1980 when we start to see compositions that come into the set that are then on the Empires And Dance album.


Here Comes The Fool – Jan 1980

So, a curious being is Here Comes The Fool. It starts tentatively…quickly makes itself a band and crowd favourite – yet never makes it to get a studio recording for Real To Real Cacophony – or even to appear on a B side. I am a strange one in that I defend Veldt when many other SM fans don’t have much time for it. But given that…it seems to me that THAT could have been the place for Here Comes The Fool on R2RC – to have replaced Veldt with it (as much as that pains me to say that).

What do you guys think? Do you think that should have been the case?

Answers in the comments, if you wanna…

One of “…Fool’s” very final outings from March 23rd, 1980.

I added the different versions of the song because it seemed a good thing to be able to hear its progression and subtle change – esp. with the lyrics. Jim was a devil for it then – but he was free to keep morphing it as it was never captured in the studio, hence he felt free to keep medling (I’m assuming?). Ultimately, it didn’t deviate a lot, and it seems a shame now to be consigned to history. Still, it sounds as if Jim grew tired of “taking his hand” (The Fool’s hand, I mean – Lyric alteration over time from “Well here comes the fool – you can take his hand” to “Here comes the fool – don’t wanna take his hand”).

Poor “Fool”.