A Sense of Doubt blog post #3997 - "To Be Insulted by these Fascists is so Degrading" - It's No Game - David Bowie Month - Music Monday 2601.26

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3997 - "To Be Insulted by these Fascists is so Degrading" - It's No Game - David Bowie Month - Music Monday 2601.26 (and Scary Monsters and Super Creeps  album recap) (and a DAILY BOWIE)

Image above taken from: 

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/25/magazine/minneapolis-trump-ice-protests-minnesota.html

Originally, I had scheduled a post on BOWIE COVERS that I have postponed many times. It's postponed again (next Monday, possibly).

However, given what is happening in Minneapolis, it was time for Bowie's response to fascism.

"To Be Insulted by these Fascists is so Degrading"

Truth.

I am sick, sad, enraged, terrified, and many more feelings about TWO people being MURDERED in Minnesota this month.

Only THREE people have been killed in Minneapolis since the new year, and two of them at the hands of Federal ICE agents.

The policies of this government and the actions of these ICE gestapo are fascism plain and simple. All fueled by hateful racism and yet the two murdered people were both white.

More tomorrow.

Content below (as usual) from the great site PUSHING AHEAD OF THE DAME and a Bowie word press blog with which I do not entirely agree.

Today, the RAGE and anger spewing forth from the first version of Bowie's "It's No Game, pt.1."

I disagree with these lyrics.

He never vocalizes "three." He starts the song 1, 2, 2, 2, 2. It's pretty clear if you listen.


Thanks for tuning in.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_No_Game


[Intro]
"1, 2, 1-2-3"

[Verse 1: Michi Hirota]
シルエットや影が革命を見てる
もう天国の自由の階段はない

Shirueto ya kage ga kakumei o miteiru

Mo tengoku no giu no kaidan wa nai

[Verse 2: David Bowie]
Silhouettes and shadows
Watch the revolution
No more free steps to heaven!

[Chorus: David Bowie]
It's no game

[Verse 3: Michi Hirota]
俺、現実から締め出され
何が起こっているのかわからない
どこに教訓はあるのか
人々は指を折られている
こんな独裁者に戒められるのは悲しい

Ore genjitsu kara shime dasare

Nani ga okkote iru ka wakara nai

Doko ni kyokun wa aruka

Hitobito wa yabi oorareteiru

Konna dokusaishani igashima rareru nowa kanashi

[Verse 4: David Bowie]
I am barred from the event
I really don't understand the situation!

[Chorus: David Bowie]
And it's no game

[Bridge: David Bowie]
Documentaries on refugees
Couples 'gainst the target
You throw a rock against the road
And it breaks into pieces
Draw the blinds on yesterday
And it's all so much scarier
Put a bullet in my brain
And it makes all the papers (新聞は書きたてるぞ!)

[Verse 5: Michi Hirota]
難民の記録映画
標的を背にした恋人達
道に石を投げれば
粉々に砕け
昨日に蓋をすれば
恐怖は増す
俺の頭に弾をぶち込めば
新聞は書きたてる

Nammino kiroku eiga

Hioteki o se ni shita koibi to tach

Michi ni ishi o nage reba

Konago na mi kudake

Kino ni hutao sureba

Kyohu wa masu

Ore no atama ni tama o buchi kome ba

Shinbun wa kaki tateru

[Verse 6: David Bowie]
So where's the moral
When people have their fingers broken?
To be insulted by these fascists
It's so degrading

[Chorus: David Bowie]
And it's no game

[Outro: David Bowie]
Shut up!
Shut u...

lyrics from - https://genius.com/David-bowie-its-no-game-part-1-lyrics

translations from - https://www.streetdirectory.com/lyricadvisor/song/aefop/its_no_game_part_i/

It's No Game (Pt. 1) (2017 Remaster)

It's No Game (Pt. 2) (2017 Remaster)

https://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/2011/08/08/its-no-game-pts-1-2/

It’s No Game (Pts. 1 & 2)

It’s No Game (Part 2) (early vocal, rough mix).
It’s No Game (Part 2).
It’s No Game (Part 1).

There are an awful lot of mistakes on that album that I went with, rather than cut them out. One tries as much as possible to put oneself on the line artistically. But after the Dadaists, who pronounced that art is dead…Once you’ve said art is dead, it’s very hard to get more radical than that. Since 1924 art’s been dead, so what the hell can we do with it from there on? One tries to at least keep readdressing the thing…

David Bowie, promo disc for Scary Monsters, 1980.

Scary Monsters,* the last consensus “great” Bowie album, is Bowie and Tony Visconti bent on correcting the flaws of Lodger. Visconti wanted a better sound and mix, using the just-opened Power Station in New York for rhythm tracks and his own Good Earth Studios in London for vocals and overdubs. Bowie cut back on the vocal-booth improvisation and took time to actually write; once the backing tracks were down, Bowie spent two months working on top melodies and lyrics.

So Bowie and Visconti honed Scary Monsters to an edge: a joke song about Jamaica turned into an indictment of fashion; something called “People Are Turning to Gold” became the return of Major Tom and a career summary/epitaph. Regardless of what Bowie said about Scary Monsters being full of “mistakes,” the record was his most commercially-minded album since Young Americans. Chuck Hammer, recruited from Lou Reed’s band for guitar/synth overdubs, recalled an intense mood in the studio, with Visconti charting the record’s progress as though he was running a lunar survey. (Scary Monsters was “Bowie’s decision to take his work in rock & roll seriously,” Robert Fripp said at the time. “Anyone who goes to New York takes his work seriously—the city certainly has that effect.“)

It worked, mostly. Monsters restored Bowie’s fortunes in the UK, where he got a #1 and two other hit singles from it (it didn’t do much in the US, which had only taken to disco Bowie). Monsters has a more unified, more clarified sound: there’s an exuberant anger in its tight performances and a dedication to rhythm not seen since Station to Station. If a bit front-loaded (Side A >> Side B), it’s weathered the past thirty years as well as anything of its time has—Monsters still sounds like Bowie’s “modern” record. Unfairly or no, it became the watermark: everything Bowie’s made since has been measured against it.

Lodger was Bowie processing himself as an influence. Scary Monsters went further: it’s a rummaging through an overgrown estate. Three of its ten tracks recycle Bowie outtakes of the early ’70s, other songs call back to everything from “Heroes” to “Laughing Gnome” to “Rupert the Riley,” and course, the lead single is a sequel to “Space Oddity.” Even the LP sleeve is retrospective, with the return of “Berlin” Bowie’s various emblems—Low‘s Man Who Fell to Earth, the Roquairol tribute of “Heroes” and the mugging victim from Lodger (attached to Aladdin Sane’s body)—now smeared, shrunken and distorted. It’s a touring company disbanding. Even Bowie’s latest incarnation as a grim clown was a nod to the past, to Bowie’s time with Lindsay Kemp in the late ’60s (“The Mime Songs”), when, as he recalled, Bowie had “joined the circus.” But there are two clowns on the cover: the somber, dignified one who looks straight out at you and the disheveled one hiding behind, casting a shadow that fills half of the frame.

Monsters, intended to establish Bowie as an Eighties artist, seemed equally like a closing statement, sampling, mocking and mourning the Sixties and Seventies, with guests ranging from Pete Townshend to old hands like Roy Bittan and Robert Fripp to (relative) newcomers like Tom Verlaine. The record also marks a casting change, with Monsters being the last round for various supporting players. Fripp would never work with Bowie again; it’s the last time Bowie would ever record with his brilliant rhythm section, George Murray and Dennis Davis; it’s the last Visconti-produced Bowie album until Bush the Younger’s administration.

Versions of “It’s No Game” open and close Scary Monsters, and the two tracks in turn are framed by the stereo-miked sounds of Visconti’s Lyrec 24-track tape deck. The first sound heard on the record is Visconti rewinding the deck and pressing “play”; the last is the tape spooling out.

“Part 2,” confusingly, was the first version of “It’s No Game,” the only track completed during the Power Station sessions in February 1980. The song’s chronology recalled John Lennon’s “Revolution,” recorded first as a mid-tempo, acoustic guitar-based track (the White Album version) and then reconstituted a month later as a compressed, sped-up electric rocker for the single. Lennon, who Bowie saw often during the Monsters sessions, inspired the sound of “Game,” as Bowie later admitted—the shrieked, bellowed lines in “Pt. 1” was Bowie’s attempt at the righteous zeal of “Instant Karma,” the catharsis of Plastic Ono Band. It’s no coincidence that “Pt. 1” is sung by an Englishman and a Japanese woman.

“It’s No Game” is the latest development in Bowie’s taste for protest songs, an angrier “Fantastic Voyage,” a broader “Repetition.” A man is woken up by a noise in the street. He sits, flicking through TV channels, disgusted and bewildered by what he’s seeing—the latest set of brownshirts, protesters clubbed on the streets, old dictators, new presidents (he turns from a documentary on refugees to a dish-soap advertisement). The world is reduced to flickering images, silhouettes and shadow, but as awful as the world is, the singer’s still in exile from it. “I am barred from the event,” he starts screaming. “I really don’t understand the situation.” One verse ends with a line seemingly out of Noel Coward: “To be insulted by these fascists—it’s so degrading.”

The two “It’s No Games” also are parodies of protest songs (Bowie can’t resist throwing in some wordplay either, with a pun on Eddie Cochran’s “Three Steps to Heaven”). “Game Pt. 2,” the elder of the pair, is a worn-out rant. As Bowie said in 1980: What happens when a protest or angry statement is thrown against the wall (like “camel shit,” apparently) so many times is that the speaker finds that he has no energy to give any impact anymore. It comes over in that very lilting, very melodic kind of superficial level [of “Part 2”]. The sentiment is exactly the same as in the first part but the ambiance has changed, with a gentle, almost nostalgic quality to it, rather than being an angry vehement statement.

“Game Pt. 2,” with its measured, restrained vocal, its precise guitars (Carlos Alomar playing three miniature riffs at various points in the verses) and steady rhythms, seems like a sanctioned protest, a nostalgic fit of controlled anger. Fittingly, the chorus and bridge rework Bowie’s “Tired of My Life,” a maudlin, self-pitying song dating back to Bowie’s teens; the singer’s wearied by life in the way only a barely-grown man would be. Bowie had cut a demo of it around the time of the Hunky Dory sessions with Mick Ronson on harmonies (it’s sadly in debt to Crosby, Stills & Nash), but had set it aside.

The reused pieces of “Tired of My Life” add to the lassitude of “Game Pt. 2,” the former’s wordless chorus melody taken up by the soaring backing vocals (Bowie and Visconti, with Visconti singing the higher notes). A key change to E major comes before Carlos Alomar’s solo (like “Look Back in Anger,” it’s a neat little rhythm guitar run, with as much empty space as notes), then a fall back to D major for the last verse. The track closes neatly and resoundingly, with nothing changed; the tape runs out, the record sticks in its groove, the disc turns off, another MP3 starts.

A world, or at least a side, away is the manic revision of “Game,” its cracked remix, the sinister clown to “Pt. 2″‘s somber one. “Game Pt. 1,” once the tape starts rolling, jump cuts to Dennis Davis waving a soccer ratchet over his head while he counts the band in. For the first time since Low, Visconti used the 910 Harmonizer in force (it’s even applied to the ratchet). The new ingredient is the Power Station, whose room ambiance, mikes and consoles would create the ’80s gated drum sound. If Visconti and Davis arguably pioneered that sound on Low, their work on Monsters seems a blueprint designed for common use.

The first voice on the track is the Japanese actress Michi Hirota (she’s on the cover of Sparks’ Kimono My House), snapping “Shirueto ya kagega!” (“silhouettes and shadows,” full translation here). Hirota originally was to coach Bowie in voicing the Japanese translation (by the professor Hisahi Miura). But as the translation was literal, it was hard for Hirota to make the lines fit the vocal melody—there were just too many syllables. The obstacle became an inspiration: Bowie asked Hirota to recite the lyric herself, but in an aggressive “masculine” manner, shouting and barking out the words.

The Japanese language has a sharply defined gender separation, with men and women (and older men/younger men, etc.) using different words, tenses and phrasings. If a woman was to speak the way Hirota does on “Game,” it would still be startling in today’s Japan; more than that, it just wouldn’t be done. For example, Hirota says “ore,” the pronoun for “I” which only an older Japanese man would use; she also uses more direct verb endings than a woman typically would. Her whole delivery is an aggressive, exaggerated masculine tone (it’s basically how a Japanese teenage boy would speak).

So Bowie intended Hirota to be the song’s secret revolutionary: I wanted to break down a particular type of sexist attitude about women. I thought the [idea of] the “Japanese girl” typifies it, where everyone pictures them as a geisha girl, very sweet, demure and non-thinking, when in fact that’s the absolute opposite of what women are like. They think an awful lot!, with quite as much strength as any man. I wanted to caricature that attitude by having a very forceful Japanese voice on it. So I had [Hirota] come out with a very samurai kind of thing.

Hirota’s first barrage of words triggers Bowie, whose voice seems blown out by rage, to a disturbing and eventually comic extent. Bowie’s voice strangles on the octave leaps and falls of “GAME!!” while he seems to tear his vocal chords with his long screams on “HEAVVVEN” or “SIT-u-a-SHUUUUUUN”. The “Tired of My Life” vocal harmonies, when they arrive, serve as an island of stability for the ear. Bowie’s performance is both acting out the “Western” equivalent to Hirota’s aggressive performance, and also mocking the high-octane rants of the punks. More sound, more fury, ending the same way.

Into all this barges Robert Fripp, asked by Bowie to imagine trying to outplay B.B. King in a guitar duel. Along with his stunning work on Another Green World, Scary Monsters is Fripp’s peak: he never quite sounded as good as this again, whether it was due to Visconti’s use of room mikes, Harmonizers and other tools, or Fripp’s frame of mind, or the material he had to work with. Fripp’s eight-bar solo in “Game,” fired by the key change after the “makes all the papers” line, is as simple as it’s craftily melodic: it suggests the track’s on the verge of moving somewhere unintended, until Davis’ thudding fills yoke it back. Fripp gets off another round in the coda (where the time shifts to 3/4),  spiraling and spiraling until Bowie howls at him to shut up.

“Put a bullet in my brain, and it makes all the papers.” It’s one of the oldest lines in the song, written for “Tired of My Life” at a time when Bowie was still living in Beckenham, walking the streets unnoticed, his name only his name. In “Pt 2” Bowie sings the line as a melancholy descending phrase; in “Pt. 1” Bowie (who’s double-tracked with himself) sneers the line out, biting on the “s” in “papers,” and a beat later Hirota spikes in with “shinbun wa kakitateru!!, lacerating her last vowels.

On December 8, 1980, Bowie was performing The Elephant Man at the Booth Theatre, 20 or so blocks away from the Dakota on 72nd Street where, arriving home around 11, John Lennon was shot three times. He died in the ambulance that came for him. His killer reportedly had attended an Elephant Man show a few days before. Bowie found his way to May Pang’s apartment and kept screaming “what the fuck is going on in this world!!” Then he sat and watched television coverage of the Lennon killing until dawn.

Many thanks to Stephen Ryan for his translation and various insights, as well as my favorite globetrotter Sarah.

Recorded February 1980 at the Power Station, NYC and (for Pt. 1) April 1980 at Good Earth Studios, London. On Scary Monsters. Bonus: an interesting (if muddy) fan remix of the two, “It’s No Game (Pt. 3).”

* Utter minutia: the album is sometimes referred to as Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) but it’s only identified as Scary Monsters on the LP spine and disc label (though “Super Creeps” is on the back cover).

Top: Steve Lubetkin, “Democratic National Convention,” New York, 1980; Monsters; Bowie as early incarnation of Shakes the Clown; onna-bugeisha; “Ys Boutique, Tokyo,” 1980 (Mafia-Hunt); Scary.

https://davidbowiewordpresscom.wordpress.com/2020/05/12/4-scary-monsters-and-super-creeps/

4. Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)

Posted on May 12, 2020 by Richard Foote

“Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)” is David Bowie’s 14th studio album, originally released on 12th September 1980.

By the start of 1980 and the new millennium, Bowie was artistically on top of the world. He had just completed his massively influential and critically acclaimed “Berlin Trilogy” and spent much of 1978 on his hugely successful Isolar II world tour. There were very few artists that dominated the 1970’s as much as David Bowie, with a collection of 11 studio albums that continue to inspire artists to this day.

So Bowie approached making a new album at start of 1980 with lots of confidence and excitement, keen to continue his musical successes. After working with Brian Eno on his last 3 albums, Bowie decided to approach this album with a more commercial focus and with less emphasis on the experimental. Bowie was keen to record a killer album.

So out was Eno from his recent previous albums, but he retained his ever faithful and reliable MOR rhythm section in George Murray, Carlos Alomar and Dennis Davis. From his recent past, he also recruited the excellent Robert Fripp on guitar who made such a valuable contribution on the “Heroes” album and who’s distinctive guitar sounds gives this album much of its magical edge. Also from his past Bowie brought in Roy Bittan who previously appeared on “Station To Station“. Into the mix Bowie also added Chuck Hammer on guitar synthesizer, Andy Clark on synthesizer and Pete Townsend (yes, that Pete from The Who) on guitar on the track “Because You’re Young“.

In the Producer’s chair sitting next to Bowie was the ever reliable Tony Visconti again, who had worked on and off with Bowie for much of the previous decade. Visconti would contribute acoustic guitar and backing vocals as well as adding his usual magic to the overall album production.

Recorded between February and April 1980 primarily at The Power Station studios in New York, Bowie would make a monster album that was hugely influential in the upcoming “New Romantics” movement in the UK and that many consider to be the last great album of his “Golden” period. It’s an album in which Bowie first began to look back at what has been as much as he looked forward. A number of the tracks had its origins in earlier pieces (such as “It’s No Game” and “Scream Like A Baby“) or simply had the past very much in mind such as in “Ashes To Ashes“. But any earlier references or reminisces were very much framed in music that was either current at worst or ground breaking at best…

Things kick-off with some weird studio noises as Visconti rewinds a tape before hitting the play button, followed by a countdown before “It’s No Game (No. 1)” jumps out at us. With panicked Japanese vocals first making an appearance (courtesy of Michi Hirota), Bowie does not sound happy at all as he enters the scene and literally screams at us the English translation of the lyrics that indeed life is no game (“So where’s the moral, When people have their fingers broken, To be insulted by these fascists, It’s so degrading, And it’s no game“). The music is brutal and thumping and with Fripp’s manic guitar, it’s the heaviest Bowie has sounded in years. Bowie doesn’t really do protest songs as such, but here Bowie is clearly stating his anger at the current state of things. The track ends brilliantly with some playful Fripp guitar sounds as Bowie screams for him to just “SHUT UP, SHUT UP” !! Bowie hasn’t sounded quite this anguished since “Five Years“. The track had its origins, especially lyrically, in a much older unreleased song called “Tired Of My Life” that goes back to the pre-Ziggy days (available though on many bootlegs). A track that I don’t think Bowie has ever performed live.

Things mellow slightly with “Up the Hill Backwards“, with Visconti’s acoustic guitar starting things off before the catchy melody and chant like vocals of Bowie/Visconti/others in unison kicking in. The MOR rhythm section sound great here as does Fripp’s guitar that makes an appearance between verses, but really shines during the outro. Bowie is typically cryptic with lines such as “The vacuum created by the arrival of freedom, And the possibilities it seems to offer” again suggesting that politically things need to be reassessed. It’s a track I’ve always enjoyed in that it doesn’t really sound like anything he’s quite done before or since. It was released as the 4th single off the album but as almost everyone who would be interested already owned the album, it flopped and only reached No. 36 in the UK. It was backed by the previously unreleased “Crystal Japan” which is but one reason why it’s in my collection (the other being I bought anything that had Bowie’s name on it). A track Bowie rarely performed live although it did make an early appearance in the “Glass Spider’s” tour set-list.

 

 

Next comes the superb title track in “Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)” and we’re back in disturbed territory again. With themes of insanity and murder, the track is one Bowie’s very best “hard rock” pieces with again both the MOR rhythm section and Fripp’s amazing guitar work really shining here. Visconti also deserves much credit, with a wonderfully atmospheric dense vibe and crunching bassline sounding both threatening and catchy at the same time. The lyrics tell of a mentally unwell girl who has suffered at the hands of the protagonist “She asked me to stay and I stole her room, She asked for my love and I gave her a dangerous mind, Now she’s stupid in the street and she can’t socialise“. It’s such a great song and one that Bowie has performed live on numerous tours. Released as the 3rd single off the album, it wasn’t the monster hit of its two predecessors and managed to only reach No. 20 in the UK.

 

“Ashes to Ashes” is THE killer track off the album and in my estimation, one of the top 3 songs Bowie has ever recorded. It’s a song that is so unique in its sound and atmospherics that it’s hard to imagine anyone other than Bowie (and Vistonti’s production) able to create such a piece. Famously referencing again Major Tom from “Space Oddity“, things have gone from bad to worse for our wayward astronaut as it turns out the reason for his disappearance and erratic behaviour is that “We know Major Tom’s a junkie“. Musically, this has everything. A wonderful central rhythm section with treated bassline, beautiful synthesizer atmospherics, a brilliant lyric and accompanying vocal performance and a simply gorgeous nursery rhyme outro (“My mother said, to get things done, You’d better not mess with Major Tom“) with Chuck Hammer’s beautiful guitar synthesizer refrain the perfect way to finish the piece. It’s THE perfect combination of pop meeting avant-garde. Released as the first single off the album prior to the album release, it became Bowie’s only second visit to the No. 1 position in the UK single’s chart (with coincidentally the re-released “Space Oddity” being his first No. 1 in 1975). Interestingly, it flopped in the US, where only Bowie’s disco period had really charted well prior to the “Let’s Dance” juggernaut to come. The success of the single certainly wasn’t hurt with the wonderful accompanying video, which remains my favourite Bowie video. Based very much on Bowie’s appearance on the “Kenny Everett Video Show” (watch performance here) with his 1979 “Space Oddity” remake (discussed later), it features the 3 key characters (the Clown/Pierrot, the Madman and the astronaut/Major Tom) in a surreal, dreamlike world. Directed by David Mallet (who Bowie met on the Kenny Everett show), it still holds today as a masterpiece in the music video genre. Just to be absolutely certain the single would sell well, RCA released it with 3 different covers that in turn each had 4 different sets of Bowie “stamps” along the border. So that’s potentially 12 different covers for the Bowie completionist to collect. Being literally a penniless student at the time, I had to settle for just the one copy of the single. Watch the stunning video here.

Side 1 finishes with the other monster hit off the album, “Fashion“. Although Bowie was always at the head of any fashion trend, here the topic of fashion was more centred around politics and how being left or right minded politically was often a question of fashion for many, especially the young. But the line “We are the goon squad and we’re coming to town, Beep-beep” is one of my all-time favourites and makes me smile every time I hear it. Musically, everything again centers around the solid MOR rhythm section and Fripp’s amazing blasts of guitar, this possibly being Fripp’s best performance on the album. The track is that rare mixture of rock anthem and catchy pop, disco groove that is almost impossible to resist. Released as the 2nd single off the album, it reached No. 5 in the UK charts. At least there was only the one cover to collect this time. Watch the music video here.

Side 2 begins with the epic “Teenage Wildlife“, as Bowie reflects somewhat sombrely on the current grim state of affairs and likely not so rosy future with a younger self (think any number of those within New Romantics movement). Bowie seems both frustrated that he’s seen as some kind of prophet “”Well, David, what shall I do?, They wait for me in the hallway”, I’ll say, “Don’t ask me, I don’t know any hallways“” and at their overly naive and unoriginal outlook “A broken-nosed mogul are you, One of the new-wave boys, Same old thing in brand new drag, Comes sweeping into view“. It’s Bowie at his most reflective and cynical as he produces one of his very best vocal performances. Musically, Fripp is the star here with his guitar work the centerpiece of the whole thing and not unlike his work on the song “Heroes”. I’ve always loved this song and all the pity that he’s not performed this live to my knowledge.

The superb “Scream Like a Baby” is however THE star of side 2. The track is musically based on a old piece called “I Am A Lazer” he wrote for a group he put together in the mid 70’s called “The Astronettes” that featured his girlfriend at the time Ava Cherry. Musically, it’s very similar with a wonderfully powerful drum beat by Davis, an Alomor guitar riff that drives the whole piece along and with all sorts of musical flourishes creating a dark atmosphere. Lyrically it’s totally different and one of his more chilling as Bowie recounts how he and “Sam”, society misfits due to their sexuality (“Well, they came down hard on the faggots, And they came down hard on the street“) are taken by the authorities, tortured and brainwashed with drugs to conform, else face the finality of the furnace (“Blindfolded, chains, and they stomped on us, And took away our clothes and things, And pumped us full of strange drugs“). Bowie’s anguished vocals are again brilliant, especially when he can’t quiet get the word society out “Now I’m learning to be a part of socie-soc-soci-tsociety“. But the highlight is the bridge where the vocals are split into two tracks, one in each speaker with one speeding up while the other slows down as Bowie laments “No athletic program, no discipline, no book, He just sat in the backseat swearing he’d seek revenge, But he jumped into the furnace singing old songs we loved“. It reminds me of the schizophrenic hell of “All The Madmen” and leaves us thinking that Bowie is perhaps Sam all along. It’s a Bowie gem that has sadly never graced the live stage.

“Kingdom Come” is the obligatory cover, although it’s actually the first one to appear on a studio album since “Wild Is The Wind” on “Station to Station” (there would be many many to come in Bowie’s upcoming 80’s albums). By Tom Verlaine (of “Television” fame), it’s my personal low-point of the album although it does fit the overall dark themes of Side 2 and quite nicely flows on from the previous track. Telling the experiences of being in prison (perhaps the madmen from the previous “Scream Like A Baby“), “Well I’ll be breaking these rocks, And cutting this hay“, Bowie just wants one day where he can be free before his inevitable end “Sun keeps beating down on me, wall’s a mile high, Up in the tower they’re watching me hoping I’m gonna die“. It’s a depressing piece that lacks the musical adventurism of most of the album. The track was actually released as a limited edition white vinyl single many many moons later in 2015 as part of the always exciting Record Store Day promotion.

 

“Because You’re Young” features the great Pete Townsend (if you say Who, I’ll laugh) on guitar and is kinda special on that basis alone. As one would expect, Townsend’s distinctive guitar is the feature of the track although the bass line throughout is rather nice as well. Coming back perhaps to the troubled girl from the title track, here Bowie describes people he cares about having a troubled relationship, due in part perhaps because they’re so young “He punishes hard, Was loving her such a crime?, She took back everything she said, Left him nearly out of his mind“. It’s another track that Bowie would discard and never perform live.

The album comes full circle and ends as it began with “It’s No Game (No. 2)“. Unlike the frantic start, here the music is much slowed down with Bowie singing this time with a sad, resigned tone rather than the anger at the start. It’s almost as if after all we’ve been through in the album, Bowie has now simply given up on everything. Only the 3rd verse differs from No. 1 “Children round the world, Put camel shit on the walls, They’re making carpets on treadmills, Or garbage sorting“. Life is no game indeed as things end with the end of the tape reel flapping around in the player…

This really is an amazing album, with Bowie at the height of his powers and one which I continue to enjoy playing from start to finish. Bowie has taken much of the originality and experimentalism of his Berlin Trilogy and polished it up with a slightly more commercial edge and reflective set of lyrics. The final result is a Bowie masterpiece which set the high standard by which he was to be subsequently measured.

The album cover is one of my favourites that took as its base a photo of Bowie by Brian Duffy in Pierrot costume, only for it to be cutup (to Brian’s annoyance) and made into a part real, part cartoon collage by Edward Bell. The final effect is I think fantastic (the wonderful “David Bowie Is” exhibition had a large display of how this was all created).

There have been a number of re-releases of the album over the years, but at this stage no major box set or special anniversary edition. Hopefully that might change with it being this year 40 years since it was released (oh my God, I’m getting soooo old).

RCA released this on CD in 1983 (and is one of the very few RCA CDs I don’t actually own) but the most significant re-release was the excellent Rykodisc CD release in 1992 that featured the following bonus tracks:

“Alabama Song” written by Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weill was first made popular in a rock context by The Doors. David Bowie included this as part of his set during the 1978 Isolar II world tour (which kinda fitted in with his “German/Berlin” period songs) and recorded it as a single in 1980. The result is somewhat bizarre, odd sounding experience with Bowie’s vocals never quite matching the key and pace of the backing band. Having said that, I love this interpretation although Alomar has described it as his least favourite Bowie recording experience. The single was a minor hit in the UK, reaching No. 23.

The “Alabama Song” single was backed with a newly recorded acoustic version of “Space Oddity“. After initially rejecting the opportunity to produce the original track back in 1969, Visconti didn’t miss the chance to finally produce this iconic song. Whereas the original “Space Oddity” was a massive production piece, here everything has been stripped back to a bare minimum, which just a basic drum and acoustic guitar arrangement. Even the “take-off” sequence has been reduced to just 10 seconds of silence. It’s interesting but a mere shadow of the original masterpiece. Bowie performed this on the Kenny Everett Show where the ground work for the “Ashes To Ashes” video was laid. Watch it here.

“Panic in Detroit” is a drastically re-worked version from 1979. Whereas the original “Aladdin Sane” version had a menacing edge to it all, Bowie here seems to be just taking the piss, with the way he sings the “Panic in Detroit” line simply hilarious. It’s a fun listen but ultimately dispensable.

“Crystal Japan” is a slow, synthesizer-based instrumental that was released in Japan as a single (instead of “Alabama Song” which was its b-side). Recorded during the Scary Monsters sessions, it was ultimately scrapped when Bowie decided he didn’t want Low/Heroes type instrumentals to impact the album’s commercial appeal. Bowie was fascinated with Japan, with Japan a key influence in the album, not only here but with the Japanese vocals on “It’s No Game (No 1)” and the key line in “Ashes To Ashes” (“Pictures of Jap girls in synthesis“). It’s a very nice, moody piece that would have fitted in rather well on the “Heroes” album next to “Moss Garden“.

“Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)” also featured on the rather excellent “A New Career In A New Town” 1977-1982 Box Set. If you ever want to explore Bowie’s last collection of albums with RCA, this is the best place to start.

 

Bowie would in the end not tour the album. Initially, he was already committed for the remainder of 1980/early 1981 in playing his acclaimed role as deformed John Merrick in the Broadway version of “The Elephant Man“. But any plans of touring the album in 1981 were dashed when on 8 December 1980, Bowie’s friend John Lennon was so tragically murdered. Bowie had no stomach for any subsequent touring and live performances and we had to wait until 1983’s “Serious Moonlight” tour to see him on the concert arena again.

“Scary Monster (and Super Creeps)” marks the end of an era on numerous fronts.

He would never record again with his MOR rhythm section who have collectively worked with Bowie since the “Station To Station” tour in 1976. Although Carlos Alomar would work with Bowie again on numerous projects, neither Dennis Davis or George Murray worked with Bowie again.

He would also end his partnership with Tony Visconti. Although Visconti would produce the “Baal” EP in 1981, Visconti would not produce another Bowie studio album for over 20 years, until “Heathen” in 2002. I can’t help thinking many of Bowie’s subsequent albums suffered and really missed the master in the producer’s chair.

Bowie also formally ended his management commitments with his previous manager Tony Defries. After being ripped off by Defries for years, Scary Monsters marked the last album in which Bowie had to make royalty payments to Defries (and a reason why we had to wait until 1983 until his next album). In some ways, this actually helped Bowie in that he wasn’t primarily focused on just making money, knowing the more successful the album, the more Defries benefited. If Bowie recorded an experimental commercial flop, at least it meant Defries also financially suffered. This “constraint” was gone post 1982 and I’m not sure having a more commercial focus helped Bowie in the long run.

Finally, it marked the end of his relationship with his label RCA and so ended Bowie’s so-called “Golden Era” that started way back in 1971 with “Hunky Dory“. Although RCA were always a little questionable in their promotion of Bowie and in their handling of his catalog (the debacle that was the “Bowie Rare” album springs to mind), they at least supported Bowie (more or less) during all his various ch-ch-changes throughout the 70’s. Scary Monsters marks the last studio album with RCA, subsequently signing with EMI for a monster fee to record the subsequent commercial monsters that were Bowie’s 80’s albums. But with big money comes big responsibilities and Bowie struggled to record albums that were artistically satisfying while ensuring EMI got the commercial success such a massive sign-on fee demands. RCA for all their dysfunction at least provided an environment by which Bowie could record albums as diverse and remarkable as “Ziggy Stardust” to “Diamond Dogs” to “Young Americans” to “Low” and finally all the way through to “Scary Monsters”.

“Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)” would be the standard and the extremely high bar set for which all subsequent Bowie albums would be measured. Although Bowie would sometimes come close (“The Next Day” was close, “1. Outside” was ever closer), it was a standard by which Bowie would never quite reach again.

As much as I love this album, there are still 3 other albums from his RCA era that I rank higher. But that’s a story for another day…

Best Tracks: “Ashes to Ashes“, “Fashion“, “Scream Like a Baby“

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2601.26 - 10:10

- Days ago: MOM =  3860 days ago & DAD = 515 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.