2. Type O Negative: %u2018The Origin%u2019 %u2013 Brooklyn band Type O Negative were forced to change their album artwork to a green and black image of dancing skeletons after the close-up of a sphincter, reportedly that of lead singer Peter Steele, unsurprisingly caused controversy. (We%u2019ve tastefully edited out the offending arsehole.)
David Bowie Diamond Dogs Full Album Zip
"Hopefully there is a sense of that on the album. It's not 'woe is me', it's not a Diamond Dogs. I want the ultimate feeling after hearing it to be a good feeling. That there is something to be said for our future and it will be a good future.
LOS ANGELES - in his floral-patterned velvet midi-gown and cosmetically enhanced eyes, in his fine chest-length blonde hair and mod nutty engineer's cap that he bought in the ladies' hat section of the City of Paris department store in San Francisco, he is ravishing, almost disconcertingly reminiscent of Lauren Bacall, although he would prefer to be regarded as the latter-day Garbo. In the studios of San Francisco's KSAN-FM, he assures an incredulous DJ that his last album was, very simply, a collection of reminiscences about his experiences as a shaven-headed transvestite. In Hollywood, at a party staged in his honour, he blows the minds of arriving hot-panted honeys with Edy Williams hair, welcoming them lispily in his gorgeous gown before excusing himself so he can watch Ultra Violet give interviews from a milk bath at a party held a few blocks away in her honour. Although he is the creator of one of the year's most interesting albums, The Man Who Sold The World, he remains mostly unfamiliar. But perhaps not for long. The 24-year-old songwriter/singer/theatrician/magnificent outrage from London will undertake his first performing tour of this country (due to visa difficulties he was not allowed to play in public during his February visit) in April. "I refuse to be thought of as mediocre," Bowie asserts blithely. "If I am mediocre, I'll get out of the business. There's enough fog around. That's why the idea of performance-as-spectacle is so important to me." He plans to appear on stage decked out rather like Cleopatra, in the appropriate heavy make-up and in costumes that will hopefully recall those designed in the thirties by Erté. He says he will also interpret his own works through mime, a form in which he's been involved at several points in his career, most notably when he wrote for, acted in, and helped produce the Lindsay Kemp Mime Company of London: "I'd like to bring mime into a traditional Western setting, to focus the attention of the audience with a very stylized, a very Japanese style of movement." Bowie assures us that he has already put that idea into practice with gratifying results: "About three years ago, at the Festival Hall in London, I did a solo performance of a twenty-minute play with song that I wrote called Yet-San and the Eagle,[sic Jetsun and the Eagle] which is about a boy trying to find his way in Tibet, within himself, under the pressured of the Communist Chinese oppression. I might bring it over to some of the bigger places I work in America. It was very successful - everybody seemed to understand and enjoy it." He is not overly concerned with American audiences' lesser experience with and consequent less receptivity to theatrically-enhanced musical performances: "Should anyone think that these things are merely distractions or gimmicks intended to obscure the music's shortcomings, he mustn't come to my concerts. He must come on my terms or not at all. "My performances have got to be theatrical experiences for me as well as for the audience. I don't want to climb out of my fantasies in order to go up on stage - I want to take them on stage with me." Bowie contends that rock in particular and pop in general should not be taken as seriously as is currently the fashion: "What the music says may be serious, but as a medium it should not be questioned, analysed, or taken so seriously. I think it should be tarted up, made into a prostitute, a parody of itself. It should be the clown, the Pierrot medium. The music is the mask the message wears - music is the Pierrot and I, the performer, am the message. "Tell your readers that they can make up their minds about me when I begin getting adverse publicity: when I'm found in bed with Raquel Welch's husband."
At this point the tension suddenly broke. David and everyone in the room broke into laughter at the seriousness with which a rock and roll star and some acquaintances of one evening were presuming to figure out the way the world ran. Everyone lightened up, and David put on tapes of the new album on an elaborate studio tape deck that RCA had delivered to his suite. Ava Cherry sang her parts, and David sang his, along with the tape, which was full of exciting soul type music, taking David a step farther in the direction he started on the "David Live" album.
Just then the clomp of someone coming up the stairs caused a few silent seconds as well waited to see who it was. Pat Gibbons, one of David's management team, greeted everyone with a smile on his face and an advanced copy of David's new album under his arm. Everyone gathered round to see. David looked pleased, he liked it. And so did everyone else. "The only thing is why does it open like this - this is bad," he showed Pat the wavy edges of the cover where the sides gaped open instead of fitting snugly together to give the album some protection. Pat assured him that it was only because this copy had been rushed through for David to see and it would not be like that for the actual album. David nodded and was happy. He looked back at me and asked if I'd heard the tracks for Young Americans... this was some weeks before the album was released and until that moment only David and the people closest to him had heard his final choice of tracks. So I knew how special that offer was. As I said I really would love to hear it, he jumped up, found the one-and-only-copy and turned the volume full on. Then, as I sat and listened, he started wandering again, giving me the occasional glance to see if my expression reflected any thoughts on what I was hearing. I was beaming...
The news here is that he's managed to get that sensibility down on vinyl, not with an attempt at pseudo-visualism (which, as Mr. Cooper has shown, just doesn't cut it), but through employment of broadly mannered styles and deliveries, a boggling variety of vocal nuances that provide the program with the necessary depth, a verbal acumen that is now more economic and no longer clouded by storms of psychotic, frenzied music, and, finally, a thorough command of the elements of rock & roll. It emerges as a series of concise vignettes designed strictly for the ear. Side two is the soul of the album, a kind of psychological equivalent of Lola vs. Powerman that delves deep into a matter close to David's heart: What's it all about to be a rock & roll star? It begins with a slow, fluid "Lady Stardust", a song in which currents of frustration and triumph merge in an overriding desolation. For though "He was alright, the band was altogether" (sic), still "People stared at the makeup on his face/Laughed at his long black hair, his animal grace". The pervading bittersweet melancholy that wells out of the contradictions and that Bowie beautifully captures with one of the album's more direct vocals conjures the picture of a painted harlequin under the spotlight of a deserted theater in the darkest hour of the night.
"Star" springs along handsomely as he confidently tells us that "I could make it all worthwhile as a rock & roll star". Here Bowie outlines the dazzling side of the coin: "So inviting - so enticing to play the part." His singing is a delight, full of mocking intonations and backed way down in the mix with excessive, marvellously designed "Ooooohh la la la"'s and such that are both a joy to listen to and part of the parodic undercurrent that runs through the entire album.
The appeal to an afterlife, or its equivalent, which is implied in this song, using the theater as its metaphor, is further clarified in 'Lady Grinning Soul'. The song is beautifully arranged; Ronson's guitar, both six-string and twelve, elsewhere so muscular, is here, except for some faulty intonation on the acoustic solo, very poetic. Bowie, a ballad singer at heart, which lends his rock singing its special edge, gives 'Lady Grinning Soul' the album's most expansive and sincere vocal.
The reason is Bowie's new album Hunky Dory, which combines a gift for irresistible melody lines with lyrics that work on several levels - as straightforward narrative, philosophy or allegory, depending how deep you wish to plumb the depths. He has a knack of suffusing strong, simple pop melodies with words and arrangements full of mystery and darkling hints.
How does dear Alice go down with him, I asked, and he shook his head disdainfully: "Not at all. I bought his first album, but it didn't excite me or shock me. I think he's trying to be outrageous. You can see him, poor dear, with his red eyes sticking out and his temples straining. He tries so hard. That bit he does with the boa constrictor, a friend of mine, Rudi Valentino, was doing ages before. The next thing I see is Miss C. With her boa. I find him very demeaning. It's very premeditated, but quite fitting with our era. He's probably more successful then I am at present, but I've invented a new category of artist, with my chiffon and raff. They call it pantomime rock in the States."
Originally, Jon Bon Jovi didn't think that "Livin' on a Prayer" was up to the same standard as the rest of the band's work, and intended to leave the track off of their third album "Slippery When Wet." Thankfully, the group convinced him to include it in the end, and it became the group's signature song (as well as the unofficial anthem of New Jersey). In 2013, the track was certified by the RIAA as three-times multi-platinum. 2ff7e9595c
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