Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. DXII--David Bowie: Space Oddity

While this one is more than a week late, pretty sure licking your wounds is a pretty good excuse....

Sometime during the pandemic, I forced my youngest son to watch David Bowie:  Finding Fame on Showtime one night, and it turned out to be quite good.  It took a look at Bowie's early years (no one worked harder to become a rock star than David Bowie--no one), and during the course of said watching, this week's tune played a prominent role (it was his first hit single).  Though I'd been familiar with the song before watching the documentary, it took on a new life and sent me on a Bowie binge that lasted for several months.  It was a good ride....

I wrote about David Bowie in Jukebox Vol.CCCXXV, and while I wrote that it would be impossible to write a bio paragraph about him, I still managed to do a half-assed one.  Alas, this time there's nothing more to add as his 2016 death pretty much precludes much in the way of new information.

"Space Oddity" was the first single from Bowie's oh so cleverly named second album, David Bowie.  The single would hit #5 in the U.K., but only #124 (with a weak ass bullet) in the U.S.  The album charted in neither.  After Bowie's Ziggy Stardust success in the early seventies, both the album and the song were re-released, and the song would hit #15 (now that's a bullet!) in America in 1973, and number one in the U.K. in 1975 (leave it to the music industry to cash in on a good thing...).  The album would hit #16 in the U.S. and #17 in Great Britain. The album also went through some name changes, but this paragraph has already reached short story level....

Fun Fact:  The song has been said to have been heavily influenced by early Bee Gees music (which has been described as psychedelic folk), and as it was being recorded, Bowie himself said as much.  

The musical and technical complexity (not to mention its multi-layered production) does not lend itself to a single paragraph review, especially to an amateur reviewer such as myself.  In a word?  Otherworldly.  The story of an astronaut lost in space has been given many interpretations, but the one I'd like to share is from James E. Perone, who said that Major Tom was a metaphor for "individuals who are unaware of, or do not make an effort to learn, what the world is."   It seems like that interpretation makes it an apt song for what we witnessed this past Tuesday, with the legions of fools who voted for Donald Trump without any idea of what they've unleashed.  May they, like Major Tom, end up floating far from the world, and away from those of us who did not put selfishness before the rights and dignity of our fellow Americans.

Lyric Sheet:  "For here, am I sitting in a tin can/Far from the world/Planet Earth is blue/And there's nothing I can do..."

Enjoy:

R.I.P. America

Peace,

emaycee

Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CCCXV--Bee Gees: I Started a Joke

This week I could easily have picked any of seven or eight different songs by the featured band, though after doing my weekly half-assed research I was glad I picked this one for what will be seen as a not particularly good reason to anyone other than me....

Like a number of other music artists featured here on Friday Night Jukebox, the Bee Gees are larger than life and their success is much too great to be summed up in a single paragraph.  Their history has been chronicled by writers much better than I and I will leave it to you, dear reader, if you're truly interested to check the link to Wikipedia above.  That being said, the Brothers Gibb for me personally are much like Rod Stewart (though I liked Stewart's early work much better than the Bee Gees)--after the mid-seventies their music (the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack changed the trajectory of their career and music both--and neither in a particularly good way) went in a direction that was exceedingly successful commercially...but was most definitely not one in which my aural sensations were even remotely interested.  Despite my lack of interest, though, the Bee Gees will go down in history as the third greatest selling band behind only the Beatles and the Supremes, and the Gibb brothers have been surpassed in songwriting success only by Lennon and McCartney.  Unsurprisingly, the band has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and has won five Grammys.  Their discography shows 22 albums and 83 singles released, but that hardly does justice to their career--they literally had chart success that at times even bettered the Beatles.  But for my money--and here I bolster my old fart cred--the first 20 years of their career was where the best of their talents were shown.  Sadly, only Barry Gibb remains with us today--Maurice passed in 2003 and Robin in 2012.

Fun Fact:  Many people--myself included--though that the letter words Bee Gees stood for the "Brothers Gibb" but they do not.  It actually stands for Bill Goode (with a nod to Barry Gibb who shared his initials), a speedway promoter who gave them a big break very early in their careers and let them play at his racetrack in between races.  They did not have a name for their band so Goode graced them with his initials.

"I Started a Joke" was released as a single in 1969 from their album of the same year Idea.  It would reach #6 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100.  It was not released in their native U.K. (born there, though their career got its start in Australia) so as to try and sell more albums--which worked quite well as the album hit #4 on the U.K. charts but peaked at #17 on the Billboard 200.

The Bee Gees admit that the song has very little meaning--it was written at a time when psychedelia was popular and the brothers put together a few somewhat odd lyrics and listeners found their own meanings in the song (and is my reason for being glad I chose this song as I noted above).  The tune is a good reminder of the music of its era--it's a prime example of sixties pop (reminiscent to me of the Mersey sound), and while a bit on the self-indulgent side, it's a hell of a song.  While Barry's falsetto punctuated much of their late 70's success, in their early days it was Robin's soulful vibrato that carried their music, and he uses it to great effect on "I Started a Joke."  The music is soft and melodic--though multiple instruments are used, the strings lovingly smooth the way for the other instrumentation and Robin's vocals.  All in all, it makes for a song that takes me back to a time when peace, love, and dope seemed to be enough to hope for, and the world seemed still to be ours.  Time and tide may have proven that unattainable...but this week's tune is a nice reminder of when it all still seemed possible.

Lyric Sheet:  "Till I finally died, which started the whole world living/Oh, if I'd only seen that the joke was on me..."

Enjoy:

405,000+ Dead Americans Because of Donald Trump's Incompetence

Certified Tally--Biden:  306 EV's, Trump:  232

emaycee