4/1/22 - Who can I be now?

I don't read enough, I don't watch enough films, I don't play guitar for as long as I should or would want, there are massive holes in my viewing of what we now regard as essential TV - I'm still two episodes into the first season of Better Call Saul, and have been for a while - there simply aren't enough hours in the day for the things I need to do (despite being a self employed writer and time being my own); shall I give myself something else to do?

Might as well.

Look, last year was a write off in loads of ways, so many ways; I can look at what I wrote in the original 2020 lockdown and see a body of work. For 2021 I can't say the same. The energy went for long stretches.

Think of this as a way of getting the energy back. Exercising the muscle. Which, after all, is exactly what the original Mumbling Into The Void blog was intended for - and it worked brilliantly. I became a playwright. 

So, half an hour a day of doing this can't hurt, can it? It's a discipline and I've decided discipline is necessary, exercising the muscle, having a distraction is necessary. And this is a more useful distraction than staring at twitter and wondering why we're not changing the world with an echo chamber.

There are people to blame for me being back here. In no particular order they are:

 Simon George, who's returned to his 'tune a day for a year' mission on Facebook (I'm currently already three days behind on my listening, need to rectify that)

A bloke on the Word podcast that I listened to own this morning's run who'd decided last year that he should listen to 1000 LPs before the end of the year. And did. Three a day, doesn't sound much but it's a commitment.

J - because I'd decided on Sunday that I was going to join in with the idea of watching (rewatching, obviously) The Beatles' Get Back on a day by day basis, correlating to the day that the lads did the work - starting on January 2nd, going through to the rooftop gig. "Are you going to write about it each day?" she asked. No, I'm just going to watch it for the hell of it. I'll do something with the watching at some point, I'm sure, but for now. Just watching. I got twenty minutes in, realised I needed to get to the Aldi before it shut at 4pm (it was Sunday) and then the rest of the day was watching Liverpool possibly conceding the title to City in a thoroughly mad game against Chelsea. 

And -

David Bowie.

Because the Bowie organisation sold the rights to his work to Warners last night. For $250m. Initial reports made that seem quite low, in comparison to Springsteen's $500m deal, though this seems to be licensing rather than selling and relates to his post 1999 material - which most people haven't realised the actual worth of yet, so may actually be an amazing deal.

So, I listened to 'The Gouster', which is the unreleased original version of Young Americans which only appears on the Who Can I Be Now box set, but is available to those of us without a fortune to spend on a box to get one album we don't already own through the joys of Apple Music. Other sites are available but that's the one I use.

Why that album? 

Because, now, maybe just maybe, we might see an individual release for what may well be one of Bowie's finest albums. 

And the first listen, starting with 'John, I'm Only Dancing (Again)' made me realise what I needed.

An album a day, listen to it, talk about it, see what it makes me think about, see where we go.

I bought Young Americans in 1980. It was five years old. It was the summer of Ashes to Ashes, the summer where I really got into Bowie. 16 years old. I knew the obvious stuff already - knew Life On Mars and Jean Genie and Heroes (and V2 Schneider because Billy Butler played it on his Merseyside show which was a brilliantly weird choice) and I knew Space Oddity and Sorrow and the utter utter unearthly genius of Drive In Saturday, but 1980 was a deep dive. It was a deep dive into all of Ziggy, all of Aladdin Sane the two albums on one C90, then the buying of everything else I could get hold of. 

All bought in Ali Baba records in Walton Vale, money provided by a part time job stacking shelves in Kwik Save. Paid in a brown envelope Friday night, head to either Ali Baba or Tudor (two ends of the same short road, both excellent) and spend those wages. Ali Baba for older stuff, Tudor for newer.

I bought Young Americans, vaguely knowing the title track and being aware of Fame (possibly through Duran Duran's B-side cover of it?)

I wasn't a soul boy, disco meant nothing to me but this album?

Loved it from day one. We're in 1975 - so only five years previous to my buying it - and Bowie's spent 74 touring the Diamond Dogs album (chronology may be wooly here, I'm seriously doing no research on this, this is all memory and instinct, it's the details I've accumulated over the decades and mixed up in my mind) - halfway through the American leg of the tour he decides he's bored of glam rock and he's heading back to the soul he loved in the sixties and the version that's grow from that - specifically the Philly (Philadelphia) Soul of Gamble and Huff.

Obviously I had no idea of knowing that at the time. In the same way that I had no idea that the vocals I was listening to sitting behind Dave belonged to Luther Vandross who I seriously wasn't a fan of. Luther's material seemed trivial, Bowie's important. You learn as you go along. Sometimes it takes a while.

The original Young Americans contained songs that have gone on to be some of my favourites in the Bowie canon - Win, Fascination, Right, Somebody Up There Likes Me. Only those last two were in the original 'Gouster' recordings, the others appeared as part of the new version alongside Fame and the cover of The Beatles' 'Across The Universe' - which was always fine by me but many seem to detest for its slightly overwrought nature. I like overwrought.

The Gouster's better though. (I could explain the title but I'd have to google it and I frankly can't be bothered, you all know how google works). Some of the strings have been removed, some of the kore syrupy elements have gone, it feels... graceful. There's a lightness and joy to it that possibly comes from the freshness of the idea. It hasn't been worked on, hasn't been polished, commerce hasn't been taken into account. Which can be a fine thing.

And I've grown in the intervening years. I've heard more of the material that influenced the sound than was even vaguely possible in 1980. I have pretty much every sound that's ever been made available to me at the click of a key. Sometimes that devalues. There are albums released in the last few years by artists whose work I love which have received no more than two listens because they didn't engage immediately. They may be better albums but I don't love them in the same way because the ownership isn't there, the object isn't there; the work becomes vague, ephemeral. I think that probably says more about me than about the work.

The Gouster then, specifically The Gouster, the Bowie album we never thought we'd hear. I can listen to it now in the only way that's currently easily available - as a digital file on the mac through a set of speakers on my desk. It's marvellous. But seriously, give me a 12" piece of plastic with a nice cover and I'll worship the thing.

And those are the thoughts on that album. Tomorrow there'll be something else. Other thoughts on a different set of songs. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow...

Mumbling Into The Void started nine years ago, at the point that I could see my fiftieth looming, a mere ten months away. It's 2022, next year I'm sixty. This might all run for a while.

Or it might not. Who knows?

(Footnote: I took a break a couple of minutes ago. In the last hour I've written  random blog about a version of an album I bought 42 years ago; J's put new flooring down in the bathroom. One of us is more useful than the other ;) )