I'm Seeing Things

Being abroad always makes me see things in a different way, a sort of filofax of the stuff I love that colours what I come across.

With Flash and Buck on my mind, I was chuffed to see a restaurant named Wilma. Wilma Wunder i.e. Wilma Wonder!

 

At first glance. I thought these were cola cans but they're candles. Candles for graves. Keeping relatives graves in decent order for 25 years is mandatory in Germany, so millions of these are sold, especially for feast days and All Hallows.

As everywhere, Wednesday fever is rife and the Adams Family daughter merchandising machine is in full swing now Halloween looms. Here's some Kaugummi or chewing gum.

Somewhere I have the autograph of the original Wednesday from the 1960's on this big Adams game picture card. I got it to spice up my old vintage toy stall.

And as Halloween approaches we all need a quart of Kunst Blut or fake blood. That's a lot of mess right there!

In another shop I clocked these Fooßball players now turned into much less lively fridge magnets. A sort of suspended retirement!

In the same arty shop were these statues. For some reason I immediately thought of David Wies All the Madmen, the line Where the Thin Men Stalk the Streets and the Saints lay Underground coming to life!

Finally in this European medley I saw these small sofas.

. They reminded me of the prop sofa in The Secret Service I saw on an old props site.

http://www.gerryandersonprops.com/models.php

I wonder if the C21 team would have bought one - or all - of these off the shelf jobs and save time?

Bowie's Rosedale Organ

My old plastic Rosedale organ has come out of the loft for the Grandkids.

Famously used by Bowie on his Space Oddity album, I adored this thing as a kid.

It's gaspy sound is capable of really beautiful notes and chords.

Did you have a Rosedale or another keyboard instrument readers? 

DAVID BOWIE'S IMAGES

When I wuz a youngster I was nuts about Bowie.

I had all his albums including this, Images, a double Deram LP of his very early stuff from the Sixties. Like a beefed up and really fab version of rather drab looking The World of David Bowie, which I think was on Decca.

This double had a gatefold sleeve and fantastic little cartoons for each song. Brilliant.

Uncle Arthur was my favourite. He follows Batman! Other lovely tunes included There is a Happy Land, London Boys and Sell Me a Coat.

I adored this record so it still grieves me that I lent it someone along with many others and with the passage of decades and moving countries I never got it back.

That's forty years ago and it would be churlish to go after it now.

One day I may treat myself to another original copy.

Is it one you know?

THE TOMORROW PEOPLE TODAY

 

I have to admit I just don't recall the Tomorrow People on TV at all, but then again I 've decided my memory of my youth is pretty useless, so I may well have seen it.

Seeing this 1974 Piccolo paperback, Three in Three, in a junk shop didn't jog my brain at all either.

I've just read the Wiki entry for the show and can't believe there's a link between it and David Bowie, who I will have been adoring in 1973 when the series aired. Turns out that the series' author talked to Bowie about the Homo Superior, which David then used in his 1971 song Oh You Pretty Things on his fabulous Hunky Dory LP, two years prior to the Tomorrow People airing.

I digress.

Was it an important TV series for you readers, the Tomorrow People?

K WEST

I saw a purse the other day with a metal logo lettered K WEST.

I've no idea what K WEST means on a purse but it immediately took me back to my youth as K. West means something to me from way back when.

Its the illuminated sign in the street above Ziggy's head on the LP cover of Bowie's Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars! I adored this record and still have the very same one! How sad is that!

Small world though eh!

No idea what K. West meant on the LP cover either - a Martian quest maybe? - but I will always remember the name!

Did you have Ziggy Stardust readers?

BOWIE MEMORIES

David Bowie died on this date 5 years ago and I'm still feeling flat in a Bowie-less world.

I thought I'd write about him again to cheer myself up. One day I'll dig out my scrapbook from the Seventies and post a few bits from it but till then...

Space Oddity was the first album of David's that I got. I bought it through a magazine called Disc, who were offering his first three LP's mail order, No idea why I didn't just go to a record shop.

This debut album was full of gems. Some were brilliant, some were just great and some OK. My favourites were Memories of a Free Festival, Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud, Letter to Hermoine [which I could never pronounce] and the epic Cygnet Committee, a personal favourite. Less appealing were Unwashed and Slightly Dazed, Janine and God Knows I'm Good. An Occasional Dream sits between the two somewhere.

The LP contained one of DB's most memorable images for me; the sun machine is coming down and we're gonna have a party, as found on 'Free Festival'. He also used a toy Bontempi organ on the song, a toy organ I had as well! I still have one [may be called a Rosedale].

I was hungry for more and got hold of his next album The Man Who Sold The World. A much rockier darker affair, I adored it with a passion. As with Oddity my preference was for the other tracks on the album rather than the title track and TMWSTW was stuffed with monsters. From the off it's simply a work of genius and the Width of a Circle, like Cygnet Committee, is the album's stand-out song.

A complex, sinewy journey, The Width of a Circle was deeply deep Bowie. I even used it as the basis if a school English essay, comparing it with Robert Browning's long poem Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came! What literary fun I had but i don't think the teacher agreed with me!

The Man Who contains so many other fantastic tunes.

Do you like Bowie?

THERE IS A HAPPY LAND WHERE ONLY CHILDREN PLAY

There's nothing I can say about Bowie that hasn't been said already so I won't try. What I can do is comment on a few things I liked as a young fan.

Christmas and my Birthday, like today, always remind me of Bowie. My Mum and Dad always got me an album for years and I had all his first handful of LP's.

 I was always interested in the more obscure material from Bowie's early output. The Port of Amsterdam was one such brilliant but unusual tune. I had it as a single and adored its maritime imagery of the old port. It was a B-side of the much more famous Sorrow in 1973. I preferred Amsterdam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WCZ1UGVR8E

Round and Round was another B-side, this time to the brilliant Drive-In Saturday. It was a fast rock and roller but it couldn't compete with the celluloid vision of the Drive-In A-side, which I adore. Still, Round and Round is a Bowie track rarely heard nowadays.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDzSys1fPok

John I'm Only Dancing was a 1972 single and I clearly recall this A-side on Top of the Pops. It was a strange video of dancers and I was entranced by the melody. The B-side was Hang on to Yourself, a rocky track that appeared on the Ziggy Stardust LP.

Another song I loved was The Laughing Gnome. I've been singing this since the early Seventies to anyone who'd listen, mostly my young daughter and my grandson! The gnome bits are just class! Hooray!

Some brilliant songs were recorded by Bowie before he was famous. With different bands he created amazing portraits of English life with magical hints of childhood and innocence. Many were captured on two LP's I had in the early Seventies, The Wonderful World of David Bowie and the incredible Images, neither of which I have anymore alas. 

Picking two songs from this period I'm going for There is a Happy Land https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqNHo1gXKlo and Silly Boy Blue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkl1BfO5-1M, which I always liked a lot. There are countless more from this time and You Tube feature true promo videos like Sell Me A Coat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAybnKW1Djk

Moving forward I could pick tons of tracks from his first flush of LP's but I'll go for two of the more obscure ones.

Future Legend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q7ABB8h7KA opened the iconic Diamond Dogs album and I hung onto every dystopian word as a young Bowie fan. It's twisted world of decay appealed to me greatly. It merged into the title track Diamond Dogs perfectly and I can still feel the excitement I felt at the time.

Big Brother is also a track on Diamond Dogs but it's the David Live version, which sticks in my mind, on account of its heavy rock chops. This amazing live piece includes a truly amazing riff and even  the most ardent older-teen rockers who I knew at the time were mesmerised by it. Here's the full track for your personal enjoyment I hope https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsLt0SFrap0

I could write all day about Bowie but I'll leave it there tonight.

What do you think?

THE NAME OF THIS POST IS TALKING HEADS

Besides heavy rock I've always loved the avant-garde.

It started with my beloved Bowie when I was 11, leading to a hugely important Lou Reed and the Velvets, shambling into Iggy and the New York Dolls, happening on the Talking Heads and New Wave and resurging with the Smiths, their 80's indie shoegazing mates and finally maturing with those glorious creeps that were Radiohead.

But here I want to big up the Talking Heads, which I'm currently listening to on my headphones, whilst the Missus catches up on Judge Judy on TV.

The Talking Heads were 70's geeks with guitars. Awkward twitchy rockers, who appealed to my own sense of late teenage geekiness, angst and alienation in a way Bowie and Lou Reed had done earlier. 

I was a gangly emaciated thing in the late Seventies; incredibly long fuzzy hair, a beard, glasses, colourful hippy clothes; a worried, vegetarian, patchouli-wearing Undercurrents-reading weirdo with a penchant for writing poetry, writing songs and head-banging to the heavies of Budgie, Wishbone Ash and Rush. 

Somewhere between the rocks I made a snug place for the Talking Heads and their anxious ilk.

I first heard the Heads at my sister Rene's in the late Seventies. Rene had a huge LP collection lent against the wall, which you could flick through. James Gang, Three Dog Night, Family, her beloved Van Morrison and yes, Talking Heads. I think it was their first album, with Psycho Killer on it. You know, fa fa fa fa fa fa.

As I got deeper into hard rock bands towards the end of the Seventies I forgot the Heads a bit but re-united with them in 1983 with their album Speaking in Tongues, which included the wonderful This Must the Place [Naïve Melody].

Next came Little Creatures in 1985, which I bought with my Missus when we lived in North Wales. More poppy than former Heads, it was the sound of our summer that year. Songs like And She Was and Creatures of Love kept the Heads talking.

But it would be years later when I really found the Heads sound I loved the most. In 1990 we'd had a friend's teenage daughter living with us for a year, Laura. Laura had tons of tapes and when she left they got left behind for me to listen to. 

Among the Stone Temple Pilots and Soundgardens there was a Talking Heads cassette with 2 albums on it, one on each side: Fear of Music and Remain in Light.

Fear of Music had some gems, like heaven and Life During Wartime, but it was the LP Remain in Light that completely redefined what I liked about the Talking Heads. Fusing indie rock with African rhythms, Remain in Light is the most perfect mixing bowl of funk, world and indie rock you will ever hear. I cannot name any songs as it's irrelevant. In Light is all good and if I could dance anymore I would dance to it till I dropped, awkwardly, of course, in true geeky style! Its a brilliant album from a brilliant band.

Do you like the Talking Heads?

STATIC FROM THE ATTIC

 I ventured into our attic today.

Hard to believe this used to be the office for my international power selling ebay toy shop 15 years ago! What a mess!

At least one corner is more or less tidy!

I went up to find a Century 21 Mobile Tank turret that Wotan gave me 12 years ago. As expected I didn't find it but I did unearth lots of old tat toys!

A very tall knockoff [KO] Spidey from a Greek holiday I think.

An old colouring book with a gorgeous space cover, one of the first things I ever found at a car boot sale, maybe 25 years ago.

Old super hero stuff, calender, paper cups and easter egg boxes. I kept everything!

Vintage games including one from Zodiac Toys, my fave toy shop when I was a lad.

Another Mediterranean holiday find from years ago. Mystery Man. I love this Batman KO!

The pose of Mystery Man looks familiar. Ring any bells?

A more recent morsel. Gorilla! Old Kongy has light-up eyes and likes to eat rockets - alas not included - but I did get a plastic palm. From a pound shop about 10 years ago.

Ahh, our old black and white telly! me and the Missus watched everything on it at one time when we were just married paupers in the early 80's. A casualty of the tech wars now. You'd just get static from its analog brain. What would Alexa say?

And even older, a Rosedale electric organ, the very same model I had as a kid in the 60's. I adored this instrument and when I saw one at a car boot about 15 years ago I snapped it up. The reedy misty sound is amazing and even David Bowie thought so too. He used one on his first album Space Oddity on a track called Memory of a Free Festival!

Anything look familiar readers?

david bowie's memory of a free festival and my christmas rosedal organ

One of my most musical Christmas gifts as as a kid in the Sixties was a light blue plastic Rosedale organ.

Here's one I saw on Ebay.

I managed to pick one up at a car boot sale years ago too so its back in my hands.

It produces a sort of church-like sound, which when notes and chords are combined, is quite beautiful. I loved messing with it as a young Rick Wakeman.

Probably its most famous public airing was when David Bowie no less, played it on the song Memory of a Free Festival on his early Space Oddity album. This is the Wikipedia entry about the song.

You can listen to it on You Tube.

Did you have a Rosedale organ?

FRANKIE'S NEHRU JACKET, DAVID BOWIE AND THE BEATLES

My toy Mod Monster Frankie wore a jacket called a Nehru.

The Fab Four did too!

Along with the Nehru jacket my Mod Monster wore a chain...

which did actually form part of the authentic Nehru look!

Even Karloff wore a type of Nehru in Frankenstein

As did David Bowie back in the early Sixties

and Patrick McGoohan in the Prisoner.

Did you have a Nehru jacket readers?

HERE COMES THE NIGHT BY DAVID BOWIE

Here Comes the Night by David Bowie from his glorious album of Sixties garage covers Pin Ups from 1973. The song was originally released by Them in 1965. 10 points for naming the girl on the cover!

ALL THE MAD MEN BY DAVID BOWIE

Starting a series of my favourite tracks to celebrate the late great David Bowie.

This is All the Mad men from his superb Man Who Sold The World album.

LADY STARDUST'S PASSING: THE DEATH OF DAVID BOWIE

Today David Bowie died. That's just four simple words. 

People die every day I know. Each death is a tragedy without doubt. 

But David Bowie's death will not simply touch those closest to him, but also his millions of fans around the world in a way that only super-stardom can do.

I am one of those fans and I am deeply saddened by his passing. I am saddened because he was still so young and had so much still to give to the world but I am also saddened because in many ways it is the end of my childhood. 

My Parents have long since gone, as have many of the cultural icons of 'my' time, not least Gerry Anderson himself. But Bowie was different, he was my teenage idol. I adored him from the off and followed his every move into my mid-teens. It was a burning passion that shaped who I was, what I sang and who I talked to.

David Bowie was a genius. In a world of ubiquitous long hair and loud lead guitars he landed on Earth and made us think. No ampless folkie, Bowie gave us rock for the space-age and characters of such colour and verve that for a time our humdrum lives were brilliantly transformed by his day-glo androgyny and cosmic visions. He carried the news.

I loved all his incarnations and went to see him at Preston Giuldhall in the winter of 1973. I had a Bowie hair cut and large circle painted on my forehead. I was 12 and new every word of every song he had ever made. At the concert I sang with all the other young dudes till our throats were sore. Every one of us there felt sure he had smiled at each of us individually. He was undoubtedly the nazz.

My bedroom wall was plastered with his face and I filled scrapbook's with news and pictures of him. For a time David Bowie consumed me in a way that only a young teenager can allow. No one else came close, not Elton, Roxy Music, Lou Reed, Slade, Zep. No musician meant as much to me nor ever will.

Every album he made painted a new vista of possibilities, a new language we had never heard before and a fresh slew of modern youth. He gave us a glimpse of the future. It was rock voodoo.

My school essays were influenced by his lyrics and I even mimed Ziggy Stardust with a guitar at the High School Talent Show. I didn't win - but for 5 minutes I was David Bowie! I couldn't play guitar but boy, what a feeling.

I still have all his albums. All my original vinyl I started to collect age 10 or 11. My own journey with Bowie spanned every LP from Space Oddity to Diamond Dogs, each a glam new chapter in his early Seventies rise. I digested them so completely I almost ate them.

As I grew more facial hair in my mid to late teens my rising heavy rock sensibilities may have turned me away after Dogs from the Berlin-bound Bowie but I never forgot him nor his fabulous music.

Today for many of us the music will have died. But boy, could he play guitar.

Rest in peace David.

SPACE ODDITY: DAVID BOWIE'S FIRST SPACE FACE

When I was about 10 I loved David Bowie. That would be circa 1970. I followed his every move in all the pop magazines here in the UK. My unerring teenage adoration of Bowie lasted till I discovered heavy rock proper around 1976. I still have my old scrap book of those Bowie clippings.

I also bought my first LP record around 1972 - and it was Space Oddity by, yes, David Bowie. I bought it on offer through a mail order ad in the pop newspaper Disc, which may have been a forerunner of Sounds. Not sure. I still have the mail order offer cut-out!

Space Oddity was Bowie's first proper RCA LP under that name. It had been released earlier in 1969 as simply David Bowie. He had done even earlier stuff, for the Deram label, captured on the Images double album but he was with the Lower Third and others then.

Space Oddity was wrapped around the chart topping single of the same name released in 1969. Such lines as 'Ground Control to Major Tom' have made it famous and a staple of space-related adverts and jingles. 

The song itself was a rather poignant reflection on the rise and death of an astronaut and coincided with the worldwide euphoria after the 1969 moon landing. It was part of the zeitgeist of the time and an obvious nod to Kubrick's cinematic opus, which influenced so many things including our very own Project SWORD Annual.

The album is full of fabulously rich and surreal songs just as Bowie was waking up to his space-age talent and before he became a superstar. For me the stand-out tracks were and still are Letter to Hermione, Wild Eyed Boy from Freecloud and the quite brilliant Memory of a Free Festival and his grand opus, Cygnet Committee.

Cygnet Committee, for me, set the standard on this LP and for all future Bowie albums for his other long complex tracks. On Hunky Dory he did the Bewley Brothers and on Man Who Sold The World we got The Width of a Circle. There isn't really one on Aladdin Sane - maybe Time perhaps or Lady Grinning Soul.

Memory of a Free Festival was personally relevant to me as Bowie used a particular organ on the track, an organ which I had as well as a kid and still have for that matter. It was the electronic Rosedale and mine was lime green like the one below. 

With its distinctive raspy childish church sound you can clearly hear it at the start of and throughout Bowie's Memory of a Free Festival, which you can listen to below. I loved my Rosedale and thought it sounded quite beautiful! Did you have a Rosedale readers? Did you or do you still like Bowie?

The Sun Machine is coming down and we're gonna have a party!

FUTURE LEGEND OF THE DIAMOND DOGS

Listening to Wotan's cool Darkside tale last night, read brilliantly by Dave Carrington on his Squaring The Circle Celtica Radio show, I drifted into a daydream of cosmic alarms, bleeps and boosters. For some reason it called to mind the atmospheric and effects-laden intro to Dave Bowie's Diamond Dogs album, which I listened to ad infinitum when I was a 13. It's called Future Legend and includes the word 'peoploids', which I still love to this day! Listen to it here, followed by the title track Diamond Dogs courtesy of You Tube. Bowie's Major Tom/ Ziggy Stardust starman phase here transformed into a dystopian punk dog nightmare inspired by Orwell. The whole album is brilliantly dark and some tracks were also featured on the seminal David Live album. All are well worth a thorough listening to. Ziggy played guitar.