PopMusik: Spock by Rich Flood

Theres a famous quote by John Lennon saying that when he made ‘Double Fantasy’ he wanted to "do something as good as 'Heroes'”

PopMusik: Lion-O by Rich Flood

Coke was the big, new awesome in the seventies. Nobody really knew how badly it can fuck your priorities up until they were already pink-eyed dope wraiths, which is where Bowie found himself in the latter half of the decade.

Being inspired by the electronic music of the day, he moved out to Berlin to kick blow and reinvent the weirdness. The result was the ‘Berlin Trilogy’, three super experimental records that popped many a ear cherry to the art-rock sound. The first of which, 1977’s ‘Low’, was followed by ‘Heroes’ and ‘Lodger’.

These three albums directly influenced New Wave, Industrial and Post Punk (or early alternative, depending on your labeling). If you came up musically in the late eighties-early nineties, you can hear the provenance of everything you thought was cool here.

PopMusik: Darth Vader by Rich Flood

1984’s ‘Tonight’ was maybe the second step down towards a long ‘creative valley’ in the Bowie catalogue. It’s mostly covers, many of which songs he originally wrote with (or for) Iggy Pop. As such, it had pretty lazy writing but really slick 80’s studio production. Taken by itself (apart from anything pre-‘Scary Monsters’) it’s actually a pretty good listen, though definitely a lesser entry in the Bowie oeuvre.