Hippies vs. Punks: David Bowie's Low (1977)

We are approaching the heart of the matter with Hippies vs. Punks. At the heart of the matter -- which you will recall are the years 1975 to 1979, years when Punks appear on the scene to wipe out the last vestiges of the Hippies from the avant-garde -- are David Bowie and Brian Eno.

David Bowie and Brian Eno have more to do with the destruction of the Hippies than the Ramones, Sex Pistols and Patti Smith combined. First, as progenitors of the "Glam/Glitter Thermidor" and then New Wave.

Low (1977) is the first installment of the "Berlin Trilogy" -- followed by "Heroes" (1977) and Lodger (1979) -- hugely influential collaborations between Bowie and Eno which establish a new sonic paradigm as the decade draws to a close.

This week I decided to immerse myself in Low, listening basically non-stop from Monday morning until last night on the train home, after watching a documentary on Brian Eno -- Brian Eno: 1971-1977 - The Man Who Fell to Earth (2012) -- and learning that Eno was really the driving force behind Low and the key track on the album, "Warszawa." It is "Warszawa" that gives Joy Division its first name, Warsaw (which the band changed to Joy Division upon realizing that there was a London Punk group called Warsaw Pakt). Interestingly, the album that Ian Curtis listened to the night of his suicide is Iggy Pop's The Idiot (1977), an album that was released after Low but was actually recorded prior to it and is generally considered the opening salvo of the Berlin Trilogy since David Bowie produced it for his RCA label and has been quoted saying that he used Pop as a guinea pig for the development of a new sound.

So obviously the work that Bowie did at Château d'Hérouville in 1976 looms large in Hippies vs. Punks given that both The Idiot and Low were recorded there and those two albums provide bookends to one of the most important Post-Punk bands, Joy Division. (We'll return to Château d'Hérouville in a future Hippies vs. Punks post. It was there that Elton John produced Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (1973), another hugely devastating album for the Hippies.)

The story of Low is well known. Bowie, trying to rid himself of a cocaine addiction, abandoned Los Angeles, where he had recorded the extremely successful Station to Station (1976) in a drug-induced haze, and retreated to Europe. 

When Bowie hit a brick wall in production he called Brian Eno, whose Discreet Music (1975) was a personal favorite, and Eno arrived on the Continent with his EMS suitcase AKS synthesizer and worked his magic.

Immersed in the album all week there is of course the obvious. The first side is composed of pop songs ("Be My Wife" is the best of the bunch) with a New Wave vibe, something that must have sounded unique in January 1977 but today strikes one as fashionably au courant, and a second side of what Christgau derisively referred to as movie music. "Warszawa" does seem like a futuristic avant-garde musical interlude played during the intermission of Hollywood feature in the heyday of the studio system.

But my favorite track is the final one, "Subterraneans" which Bowie recorded as part of the soundtrack for the Nicolas Roeg film he starred in, The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), but which Roeg spiked in favor of a score written by "Papa" John Phillips, a Hippie founding father.

Hippies vs. Punks: Velvet Underground's Loaded (1970)

Recently I watched a documentary, The Sacred Triangle: Bowie, Iggy & Lou 1971-1973, about David Bowie's Glam/Glitter zenith during his Ziggy Stardust (1972) period and the influence he had (or lack thereof) on the careers of Lou Reed and Iggy Pop.

Several things struck me in watching the documentary, one of which was how totally Lou Reed had surrendered after leaving the Velvet Underground in August 1970. He had gone back home to live with his parents on Long Island, and he was working as a typist at his father's tax accounting company.

It made me want to go back and listen to the last Velvet's album, Loaded.

Reed leaves the band right after recording Loaded the summer of 1970. The album is released November of that year; by that time I imagine Reed is already sleeping in his boyhood bed.

Loaded was one of the first albums I acquired in college after I purchased a new Marantz stereo system. My friend and musical mentor Oliver no doubt insisted that I have a copy. Oliver was a champion of "Sweet Jane"; he thought it was one of the most perfect rock 'n' roll songs ever recorded. I was in agreement. I turned my buddies onto it. They were still in high school back in Southern Oregon. They became mesmerized; taught themselves how to play guitar by listening to it; and eventually formed their own band while still in high school, going so far as warming up for Shockabilly when they rolled through town.

Velvet Underground had been purged by MGM Records after The Velvet Underground (1969). Atlantic Records signed the band to its Cotillion subsidiary with the directive that the Velvets produce a record "loaded with hits"; hence, the satirical title and album cover. But, based on the impact that Loaded had on me and my friends, I would have to say it is an accurate title.

What I have always felt is amazing about the record is that there are all these powerful, flawlessly constructed songs that make up an album that is shot through with a fin de siècle sadness and failure, the sadness of a consciousness standing outside of and commenting on its own corporeal husk.

Just listen to "I Found a Reason" or "Oh! Sweet Nuthin'." Time has run its course on the Hippies 1960s social revolution. With Loaded's repeated send up of country rock ("Lonesome Cowboy Bill," "Train Round the Bend"), Reed saw the end of the Hippie dream several years before the Hippies began filling stadiums to see Lynyrd Skynyrd. The target might not have been Southern Man rock, more likely the San Francisco Sound of the Grateful Dead. But when you hear Doug Yule beautifully sing "Oh! Sweet Nuthin'/You Ain't Got Nuthin' At All" you know the end has come.

Iggy at Crosley Field

The House of the Rising Punk is a documentary that appeared on German television; directed by Christopher Dreher, it was produced in 1998, and it tells the story of the early days of the New York Punk scene at CBGBs. Part of the documentary has a segment devoted to proto-Punk bands like the New York Dolls and The Stooges. For some reason I have been mesmerized by the old video footage of Iggy Pop's performance of "T.V. Eye" at the Cincinnati Summer Pop Festival in June of 1970. It's common footage; I've seen snippets of it before. The festival took place at Crosley Field right before the Reds moved to Riverfront Stadium. Traffic headlined. Twenty-four thousand concertgoers attended; it concluded with a rock-and-bottle melee and 74 arrests. This is Vietnam-War-Hippie-era America. And it's got an edge:

The Colt 45 Chronicle #6

As I completed the Lake Union Loop this morning, the sun punching through the chilly fog, Femi Kuti's "Beng Beng Beng" shuffled on my iPod:

Fitting since the letter below, number six taken from a packet of epistles pried out of storage during the second half of the Seahawks-Falcons playoff game last month, is a paean to music and sex.

Stacey was my last Berkeley girlfriend prior to my marriage (in Reno on our way across the country to New York City and the married student housing located at 60 Haven Avenue). I conceived of the idea of a Reno marriage thanks to a trip I had taken there with Stacey, at her suggestion, a couple months before; in fact, we flirted with idea of getting married there ourselves (I remember being more up for it than Stacey). We got a room at Circus Circus; made love fully clothed on top of the bed; showered; saw a real life dog and pony show in the theater downstairs; walked the main drag downtown; watched people gamble; bought some drinks at a bar that had a wonderful old mural and a Dallas Mavericks playoff game on a TV mounted high up on the wall. We returned to our room early after Stacey started to feel sick. She woke up a couple of times during the night to go to the bathroom and puke. She communicated to me the next morning that she was upset that I had slept through her illness and hadn't got up with her. I apologized. We drove back to Berkeley a roundabout way that took us through Carson City.

I had met Stacey the previous winter at a hipster hang out in the Lower Haight one night on the town with the boys. It was a Saturday and everyone was drunk. The guys danced with each other and the girls did likewise, but we all were really dancing together. It was one of those rare perfect evenings. I drank with Stacey at the bar until last call when she wrote her telephone number with lipstick on a cocktail napkin and gave it to me.

I never called, but I did run into Stacey walking her ten-speed bike one afternoon a month or two later near the Class of 1914 Fountain. I had been working on my honors thesis on the analytic a posteriori (which now describes this blog). I was jittery from too much espresso and too little to eat. We decided to go to "Cafe Be Seen" on the corner of College and Bancroft; I called her many times after that. Our spring romance had begun.

Stacey was the apotheosis of undergraduate cool -- an art history major who had been a drummer in a short-lived garage band; an aspiring writer (now published with a couple books under her belt) who had transferred from Wesleyan. Our romance was leavened by Stacey's concern that she might be HIV-positive due to the obligatory hipster ritual of shooting smack (which she blamed on the influence of her last boyfriend). I loved Stacey (part of the reason I decided to get with my last girlfriend, the predator, was she was named Stacy -- without the "e"). One of the best things I ever did was to wrap up my university career by being Stacey's lover. She didn't want me to leave. But I left. I had to get to the metropolis.

This letter is addressed to my friend Oliver, who was not only a partner in 49ers fandom but a music aficionado who taught me a lot about listening to bands.

Summer 1989

Get this Oliver -- I too am now a proofreader at a law office. And you know what? It's the best job I've had since I've been in New York. My supervisor, who is twenty-six year old paralegal, is a true music "liver" (we exchanged MEAT PUPPETS II quotes my first day: mine was: "Holy ghosts and talkshow hosts lie planted in the sand"; but the deal is, now that I look it up at this very moment, the deal is that it is not "lie" but "are," and I kinda secretly suspected this, or some such aberration, the whole time; his was: "And an illustrated book about birds" -- from the same tune; and even though mine is embellished and therefore fucked up and his is A-1 absolutely correct, I still think mine is tastier than his, but probably and only because I snatched thebest one first). Anyway, he was shocked that I didn't know The Stooges. So he lent me two of their albums for the weekend, along€ with HUEVOS, which is one of those Meat Puppett albums we never bought. The "Dog" song -- "I'll be your Dog" or "I Wanna be Your Dog" -- on the first album, THE STOOGES, is truly great, and side two is also very good -- Iggy sounds a lot like Jonathan Richman; but I don't like the second one that much, FUN HOUSE -- they're trying to be The Doors, too muddled long and boring; as for the Meat Puppets, well, that's why I gave up on them after UP ON THE SUN -- no three-cup-of-coffee burn, none of those long & waving & scratchy licks, just that burbling Chick Korea jazz-fusion guitar and that jig step drum beat, boring -- it misses the mark; you know, and I know, that Curt Kirkwood is an asshole; oh hell, it happens everywhere, 3-WAY TIE (FOR LAST) was a piece of shit too.

But the reason why I write this now is something that doesn't have a whole helluva lot to do with that preceding paragraph other than that tonight was the night that I made my supervisor (the aforementioned) a tape. He wanted GENERIC FLIPPER (by all means an excellent album), and after I finished that I had a whole B side of quality Maxell left to fill. I ran out of the Coors and headed into the Gordon's gin. The gin was warm and tasted like puke but it was all there was in the apartment. Anyway, the song I finished the tape with was a song I heard over at a girlfriend's apartment (the girlfriend who wasn't Maura) one morning when the Oakland sun came powering its way through a second-story kitchen window on 63rd Street (I always used to say to myself  when I was over there, "My, how close I am to Oliver and Lyn's"), and I was just rising from sordid beermares. She had one those Murphy beds, those beds that collapse back into a closet, except this one didn't collapse because she had it nailed to her wall. The bed itself was nothing but a bunch of metal coils. So I got up and trotted into the living room and she was already up and sitting on the couch in one of those 1940's housewife flower-patterned dresses. She was drinking a mug of coffee and was smiling big and heavy. On the stereo she had this song -- "Start The Clock" by the Silos -- and though it couldn't've been past Eight in the morning the stereo was blasting like I was at a DAY ON THE GREEN back when who knows what. I was still dizzy from the previous night's beer and pussy eating, and I said: "This is a great morning song." And she replied, with a cherished beauty, "You're right, it is." I sat down and listened, right next to her. And I wrapped my arm around her hip -- a waist as soft and as warm and well-slept as a favorite bedtime pillow -- and I smelled flapjacks with syrup and clean sheets after a hot shower. Oh God, the sun was pouring through the window and Ashley was alone somewhere and I was in love and dizzy hungover and the music was so fine. And tonight brought it all back.

There was a time when Bob Dylan and the Minutemen solved all my problems and I was on track. -- Thanks for listening Oliver, you're the only one who could.