Scary Monsters

Holy Toledo Mrs. Wilson, What A Scorcher! This gem capped Bowie's decade. From 1969 to the present you can follow each Bowie album like postcards from home, his personal development and metamorphosis documented each year. This is where Bowie took off the gloves for a bare-knuckle bout, going face to face with the demons he'd been struggling with through each preceding album.

And what songs! Ashes to Ashes drives right to the core of Bowie, and we're not talking about staged outrage or other gimmicks. Scary Monsters, featuring the growling guitar of Robert Fripp, is an incredible multitracked nightmare breaking down your bedroom door and clawing at your feet as you lie in the darkness shaking in a cold sweat.

Fashion, a nice play on words, skewers the fascism of fashion, the in crowd, the out crowd and anybody else desperately dancing to the music of those who would manipulate belongingness. Bowie again touches on this theme in Scream Like A Baby, trying his best to spit out the words, "and I'm learning to be a part of socie-societ- ...." (Indeed, what society should a person have with society if belongingness means destroying anything that threatens as being "not us"?)

Man is an obstacle, sad as the clown

It's No Game (part one) features lyrics in both English and Japanese. This wrenching album-opener contrasts with the resolution or perhaps resignation of the sedated version that closes the album. John Lennon's Well Well Well has got nothin' on this opening slab of raw. This album is a masterpiece.

 
 

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