Picking up the shattered remnants of my ears (Hunky Dory - David Bowie)

Member Name: mjtodd

Product:	Hunky Dory - David Bowie
Date:	10/07/02 (122 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great vocals, Great lyrics, It rocks

Disadvantages: They don't make them like it anymore

The first time I came across Hunky Dory, I was 16 years old. The guy I fancied in the sixth form had rated it as one of his all time favourite albums. Little impressionable me, like your typical teenager girl,wanted to copy the hormone stirrer two years above me. Also, little impressionable me was something of a huge music fan. Having spent most of my early teens listening to The Beatles, it was inevitable that I?d check out other musical legends. By that point, Dylan had came and has since gone. Donovan hung healthily in there. The Stones were sinking their drug addled bluesiness into my psyche. Now it was Bowies turn. I had heard his music before, but had never really taken it seriously. Now I was getting interested (and there was also the issue of a cute sixth former to consider). This took me on one of my regular forages through my step-dads vinyl collection. Several dusty Bob Dylan records later (yes, that one was my step-dads doing)there it was. A slightly worn copy of Hunky Dory. So what did I do? Did I leap and yip with glee and race to my parents dodgy record player to be enthralled with those live changing sounds? No. I put it back after some screwed up face consideration and shut the cupboard door.

So that brings us up to this week. Sitting around bored and aimlessly flicking through my small stash of cds, all that remain as the rest of my collection lies in storage, I decided enough was enough and had a rake through my boyfriends mp3 collection. At first I wanted to listen to Radiohead, but then I recalled with a shudder how much they drag me down to the depths of utter misery. I saw the folder marked Hunky Dory. Happily, I clicked open and played. What very wise move that I do not regret.

Opening with the marvellous Changes, I fell under the albums spell. Who cared if it was 31 years old? It rocked and certainly sounded a lot better than those pallid excuses of bands NME tout as being the future of music. Little chance of them of the
m coming up with the refrain, 'Time may change me, but I can't change time.'

The magic doesn't stop there. It rolls on with Oh! You Pretty Things, Eight Line Poem, Queen Bitch, all making you wanting to stop the track and want to listen to it again. Again. And. Again. All capable of completely blowing the uninitiated Dory listener away.

That certainly happened to me. The song that made me feel like I'd been punched in the musical guts was Life On Mars, which I had previously mistaken as an Elton John song. Forgive me. It was the piano that did it guv! Yes I had heard it before, but I hadn't actually LISTENED to it before. The first verse is very understated but with a great lyric: "It's a god awful small affair/To the girl with the mousy hair/But her mummy is yelling no/And her daddy has told her to go.." From there, it builds up into a brilliant chorus that wraps itself around your memory for days. It's my favourite song at the moment.

And keeping up the hyperbole rut I seem to have got myself stuck in, on to the other highlights of an all round great record. Life On Mars is followed up by Kooks, a gentle, happy tune about a bunch of wacky people inviting you to join them, warning you about people picking on you because 'if you stay with us, you'll be kooky too'. Andy Warhol takes a tongue-in-cheek poke at the late,bizarre,blond bombshell artist. It has a simpler sound in comparision to the rest of the album, with it's Spanish guitar, handclaps and nasal vocals.

Song For Bob Dylan sees Bowie sound strangely like John Lennon as he tries to mimic the gravelly throated one. Perhaps that stands as a testimony to whom Lennon pinched his vocal style from! It's hard to gauge what this song is trying to say about Dylan; a few close listens might pin point that one. Certainly it does reference to Dylans bizarre word play and imagery, with 'Painted Lady' and portraying D
ylan like a character from one of his own songs.

Clearly, this album showcases the talent that Dylan was to zap music fans with in the 70s. The guitar solos are to die for and make guitar playing seem ridiculously easy. The lyrics are typical of the singer - songwriter lyrics of that time, but Bowie keeps it to his own style, rather than mimicking others. This is one album that will be keeping me going for the next few weeks and maybe more.

Summary: