Lazer Guided Melody – Tangents From Listening To Too Many Records
Tangents From Listening To Too Many Records
2016. Not so much a year as a treatise on attrition. Bowie. Brexit. Prince. Trump. And that’s just a taster (I may have had a little cry when Jo Cox was murdered in the street by a neo-Nazi. And a bigger one when a national newspaper insinuated that it was kind of her own fault). … Continue reading LGM’s Favourite Albums of 2016, #10 – #2
Welcome to the annual run-down of the years’ favourite albums, as voted for by readers of Lazer Guided Melody, the popkids of Twitter (both discerning and drunk), and that guy who lives in the park and swears at ducks. “You fucking stupid mallards,” he barks. “Your cunting feathers look like they were glued on by … Continue reading Your Favourite Albums of 2016 – The Results
Bowie. And as mentioned, it’s fandom as complex construct (part one, featuring tracks #10 to #6, being here). For reasons never fully understood, I’ve a track record of surrounding myself with those who view Let’s Dance as the high tide mark. The point where dispensing with all that outsider art-rock freed him up … Continue reading LGM’s Bowie Top Ten – Part Two
No-one ever said it was gonna be easy. Selecting a Bowie top ten has a ring of impossibility about it. Something to encourage fickle mood and the knowledge that any list of favourite tracks will be completely different on any other occasion. A Bowie top ten, you say? Hell, I’d struggle to identify … Continue reading LGM’s Bowie Top Ten – Part One
Records as opening point. As gateway; the route straight through. Beneath mould-coloured skies and the bricolage of teenhood, back when no-one cared for vinyl and Camus was read in his native tongue – each word understood, the sentiment less so. The devils were busy downgrading to compact disc, their LPs dumped like never-loved puppies; these … Continue reading The Twisted Name On Garbo’s Eyes: LGM on Bowie’s Hunky Dory
From time to time – usually when I’m at work – I like to listen to the equivalent music chart from a random year whilst scratching ill-informed comments in my notebook. This week, the UK Top Ten from 2 July, 1983. There were a handful of rather fine records floating around outside this decalogue. The … Continue reading Loitering About The Singles Chart: 2 July 1983, Reviewed
Forthcoming attractions: tomorrow, I’ll finish the Sandie Shaw piece that’s been brewing for a day after two. After that: The Most Significant Albums Of 2002 – which may include analysis of jaw-droppingly beautiful records, if the rumours are to be believed. And in the meantime: I don’t know how to begin describing The King’s Singers … Continue reading Bowie’s Life On Mars, As Not Heard Before
When I was fourteen or fifteen I picked up a copy of Bowie’s Pin Ups. I was going through a frenzy of music discovery at the time; with no cool older relative to guide my listening experience – my parents owned the grand total of around ten LPs, and I sure wasn’t going to grow … Continue reading Reporting From The Front-line Of An Album’s Worth Of Covers
“Rumour” has it there may be a new Bowie album on the near horizon. Something we’re only vaguely conscious of thanks to the blanket coverage and fussy excitement afforded by mainstream media, alternative media, social media, random dog-walkers and (no doubt) a bi-plane trailing a big, long banner, the news printed in massive block capitals, … Continue reading David Bowie: After The Norma Desmond Years
Should any Significant Albums series be looking at the 1970’s, Bowie’s constantly-shifting silhouette would be tagged across the walls of that decade as if the ubiquitous spray-painted logo of a particularly hip and pernicious underground movement. As it is, anything post-1980’s Scary Monsters has to be questioned against a whole range of musical and thematic criteria – from fandom’s … Continue reading Gigawatts And Fuzzy Logic: The Most Significant Albums Of 1995, Part One
1980, and I wasn’t buying records. Sure, there would be the occasional, possibly vociferous, predominately unsuccessful cooing and cajoling noises thrown in parental directions, as if they genuinely knew their way around a record store (one day I’ll forgive them for not furnishing me with that ‘Wuthering Heights’ 7”, whose importance at the time was … Continue reading From Moscow To Pared-Back, Retro-Futurism: The Most Significant Albums Of 1980
Loud and dumb and celebratory and Swedish and dated and fun. Or: “Crikey, have I not heard this since some transient, half-cut mid-nineties dusk?” and “Crikey, there’s a reason why I haven’t heard this since some transient, half-cut mid-nineties dusk”, and “I’ll just stick this here, out-of-the-way, the online equivalent of out by the bins … Continue reading Songs For The Liquor Cabinet
Notes on Bowie – part two (part one: here), and to me it’s the momentum that’s the killer. Potency of lyric, guitar licks that zap and pow, stylistic dexterity – Ziggy as poster boy for the disenfranchised – all remain significant elements of the Bowie allure, but it’s the constant compulsion to reach forward that … Continue reading FuckedUpFestiveFifty #3: David Bowie
Notes on Bowie. As a musical constituency, it’s difficult subject to tackle without breeching some 10,000 word barrier. Mass is a factor – the significantly weighty impact of both quantity and quality – but it goes beyond even that; Bowie has always been a moving target – a Spring-Heeled Jack, fleet of foot and fast … Continue reading Bowie Weekender
Lazer Guided Melody - Tangents From Listening To Too Many Records 