The Museum of Modern Art and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore celebrated the 40-some years of music video innovation from chameleon David Bowie on Monday night in New York. We had it on our calendar and missed it. The Village Voice has a good report, noting that Moore admitted to never having seen ‘Labyrinth’ “until his young daughter forced him to watch it obsessively.” When we think of David Bowie and video in the same sentence the first think that strikes us immediately is the video for “Ashes to Ashes” from 1980s Scary Monsters. There’s something about that sad clown visage and the negative, inverted look that has always haunted us and stuck with us. Especially when the clowns come out of the water. Or wait, did we dream that? It’s probably a good reason why hands down this has always been our favorite Bowie track.
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His vocals are great on this track.
The talking part in the middle eight where he echoes and speaks out what he’s singing, “I never did anything out of the blue, woh-o-oh,” is so droll, so amazing. I could prolly write an entire essay on this song, alone.
In many ways i feel like its the modern sequel to “Space Odyssey.”
I also had a friend break down to this in a serious drug haze and I think that story makes it all the more potent to me.
I agree about “Ashes to Ashes” being a haunting video. Something about early 80s video effects makes them feel so cold and eerie sometimes.
Also, and not to be a jerk, but isn’t “Ashes to Ashes” supposed to be something of a sequel to “Space Odyssey”? Major Tom’s referenced in the chorus, after all.
(I hope I’m not missing this as a reference to some film I should’ve seen by now.)
Yeah, didn’t I write that about the sequel?
I think you misunderstood the previous poster. He was just pointing out that your feeling of it being a sequel song was obvious and understood by everyone already, so it wasn’t much of a keen observation.
But back to the vocals….Bowie is the King of transforming his voice into, well, different voices. In fact, each record he makes usually contains an entirely different style of singing from Hunky Dory, to Aladdin Sane and Young Americans (my favorite style). And on Ashes to Ashes, he seems to mix them all together. Not only that, but Bowie’s also the King of double and triple and quadrupling his vocal tracks on his songs. Even his first hit, Space Odessey, features this as the two Bowie’s sing the song together, one slightly higher than the other. I love switching from my left and right speakers while listening to this song, as each one is contained to their own side. So while one Bowie is falsettoing above the rest, another will be deep talking right under it, and yet another will be right in the middle belting out the chorus. He’s quite the amazing guy. Yes yes.
Sometimes this circusfolk dude sounds like he’s commenting in a self-absorbed vacuum to no one but himself.