Bowiesongs (C. O'Leary)
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bowiesongs.bsky.social
Bowiesongs (C. O'Leary)
@bowiesongs.bsky.social
3.8K followers 480 following 5.2K posts
Books (Rebel Rebel; Ashes to Ashes), blogs (64 Quartets; Pushing Ahead of the Dame; Locust St.)
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bowiesongs.bsky.social
Buzzcocks review new singles for Record Mirror, 15 July 1978:
THE WHO: `Had Enough' (Who 1) Pete - I can't figure out what they're trying to ,do. It sounds like just another 'Tommy' overture Maybe In the context of an album it comes across better. Steve - They don't sound frustrated anymore. There's too much dressing on this single with those strings, it's the type of thing you've heard from them before. Paddy - Well produced good sound (he thought a long time before he said that) John - I agree with Pete (he thought for even longer) LOU REED: 'Street Hassle' (Arista ARIST 12198). Pete - Howard Devoto used to sound like that when he was with us. The song sounds like a combination of the two tracks 'I'm Waiting For The Man' and 'Venus In Furs' on the other side, but I can see that opening being used m arty programmes like the 'South Bank Show' Steve - I think ft's a pleasant record. It'll sell with hard core fans burI can't see it getting bigger than that. John - I thought it was boring. Paddy - It's okay I wouldn't buy it 'but I wouldn't mind listening to it on the radio. THE KINKS: 'Live Life' (Arista). Steve - They always get a good guitar sound. Ray davies Is a sincere bloke, but singing about being yourself is a bit boring. Pete - It just becomes another singalong. If this was the strongest cut on the album then the album isn't very good. Paddy - (thinking deeply again) - Don't like it John - I didn't like It. It sounded good at first hut it lost It. ROBERT PALMER: 'Best Of Both Worlds'( Island WIPOMW). Steve - I expected Barry White to start singing at the beginning. It's just another cut in the style of 'Saturday Night Fever.' Pete - It'll get lots of plays on Radio Two. It's Jimmy Young recipe music. JOY DIVISION: 'An Ideal For living' (Enigma PSS 199). Pete - I like the feeling of tension In one of the tracks. I wlsh I'd written a song like that I feel very envious (The rest agreed that the EP was marvellous). CAROL DOUGLAS: 'Night Fever' (Gull GULS eI) Pete - Seems pointless to issue this as enough people must have the Bee Gees version now. Hers isn't as good. Paddy - It lacks the style and subtlety of the Bee Gees. Steve - It's just supermarket music. SILVER BLUE: 'Tennessee Waits' (Pye 7N 2578e). Pete - It's a disco version of 'Duelling Banjos'. I can't really say much else, Paddy - I can see the Eagles getting into this sort of style. It's the next step for them The only way they can move is into disco. Steve: Just sounds like the Three Degrees vocals. It's a cabaret song and it'll sell well in Europe.
December 19, 2025 at 1:06 PM
bowiesongs.bsky.social
Pete Shelley, on the Buzzcocks' "Sixteen" as Star Wars homage: www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZtm...
One night during the recording we had a night off and we went to see Star Wars at the cinema. We’d bought these H&H amps – the special, V-S Musician ones – and they came with a flanger pedal. The way that flanger pedals work nowadays, it’s a separate thing that you plug your guitar into. But this H&H one, it connected to the amp, so there was circuitry inside it so it was more like an effects unit. The next day we were recording the chaotic bit in ‘Sixteen’ and because there’s all the electronic noises in the film, the firing of the ray guns and things like that, we found that if we turned up the amps really loud these effects boxes would start feeding back and making these god-awful noises. So that was our homage to Star Wars. C-3PO and R2D2 dodging blasters in the opening scene of Star Wars
December 18, 2025 at 4:38 PM
bowiesongs.bsky.social
A black and white panel and who drew it.

This is by Michael Cherkas, for The Silent Invasion
Matt Sinkage, snapping his fingers because he thought of cow mutilations for a story angle
December 16, 2025 at 11:43 PM
bowiesongs.bsky.social
one of the best 4-LP runs of the '80s (& 3 of them came out in a roughly 16 month period)
Martha & the Muffins, Metro Music (1980) Martha & the Muffins, Trance and Dance (1980) Martha & the Muffins, This Is the Ice Age (1981) Martha & the Muffins (about to become M+M), Danseparc (1983)
December 16, 2025 at 6:13 PM
bowiesongs.bsky.social
Steve Diggle's memoir is very down on this record; he hates its sound and look, makes the case that Shelley was burned out as a writer, depressed, doing too many drugs. But for me the 2nd side remains an incredible suite of despairing, angry, beautiful songs
Buzzcocks' Different Kind of Tension Side 2, from I Don't Know What to Do with My Life to Radio Nine
December 12, 2025 at 9:57 PM
bowiesongs.bsky.social
A wonderful compilation, and a cover photo that's reminded me of the end of The Shining since I first saw it
Woody Herman's Thundering Herds, which has an Outlook Hotel vibe in its tuxedoed group shot
December 11, 2025 at 11:13 PM
bowiesongs.bsky.social
Kolker's A Cinema of Loneliness
December 9, 2025 at 11:12 PM
bowiesongs.bsky.social
Novel: Ulysses; poem: Waste Land; music: Trixie Smith & the Jazz Masters, "My Man Rocks Me (With One Steady Roll)"; architecture: the Shukov Tower; painting: Klee ,Twittering Machine (below); movies: Lang's Dr Mabuse
December 8, 2025 at 11:39 PM
bowiesongs.bsky.social
Quartet, trio
Les Buzzcocks
December 8, 2025 at 9:37 PM
bowiesongs.bsky.social
Bruce "Mr Tambourine Man" Langhorne, Carolyn Hester, B. Dylan, Bill Lee (Spike's dad), cutting Hester's s/t album in NYC, Sept 1961
December 7, 2025 at 11:25 PM
bowiesongs.bsky.social
Enda Walsh: at the end of the show, Bowie “went around to everyone in the theater… he wanted to celebrate the stage managers & the doormen — he thanked everyone.” When Bowie left through the front door, out to his car on East 4th St., “I knew that was going to be the last time I would see him.”
DB taking a bow with Michael C. Hall, Cristin Milioti et al Bowie heading home
December 7, 2025 at 12:59 PM
bowiesongs.bsky.social
At one point, many years ago, i could recite much of Elizabeth Bishop's "The Man-Moth" from memory
Here, above, Cracks in the buildings are filled with Battered moonlight The whole shadow of Man is only as big As his hat. It lies at his feet like a circle for a doll to stand on, And he makes an inverted pin, the point magnetized to the moon. He does not see the moon; he observes only her vast properties, feeling the queer light on his hands, neither warm nor cold.
December 6, 2025 at 10:57 PM
bowiesongs.bsky.social
RIP Frank Gehry. "Architects may come and architects may go & never change your point of vie w..." (sung about one of his contemporaries)
Ginger and Fred, 2005 Gehry House, 1978 Vitra Design Museum WFM Stata Center
December 5, 2025 at 7:38 PM
bowiesongs.bsky.social
Mekons in the Pioneer Valley!--well, 2026 has one good thing happening, at least
Mekons playing the Iron Horse in Northampton MA in June
December 5, 2025 at 3:31 PM
bowiesongs.bsky.social
finally, Sandy Gardiner of the Ottawa Journal thinks the LP is just "too far out for wide appeal" (11 Dec 1965)
The Beatles Rubber Soul is not their best set. And at the risk of being threatened by the foursome's fans I'll go out on a limb and say it's too far out for wide appeal. ..they have gone all out to please themselves instead of the fans and it doesn't come off."
December 3, 2025 at 6:29 PM
bowiesongs.bsky.social
60 years old now. Like many in the US, my 1st impression (our copy was a battered LP from my parents' teenage years) was that it was the Beatles' "folk" album, sides opening w/ "I've Just Seen a Face" & "It's Only Love." So a revelation in 1988 when I finally heard the "soul" UK original.
Rubbah Soul
December 3, 2025 at 6:06 PM
bowiesongs.bsky.social
first snow of the season
December 3, 2025 at 12:56 AM
bowiesongs.bsky.social
an exciting night at the new "quiet bar" in the Communal Building of the University of Bradford, UK, 1976, aka "The Commie". (Wire would play there in 1978---not in the quiet bar, though)
a group of fairly well-dressed college students and some more random looking types who appear to be waiting for a flight in a very soulless "modern" bar, 1976
December 2, 2025 at 7:39 PM
bowiesongs.bsky.social
50 years ago, Dec 1975: teenager Brad Elterman learns that Bowie's recording at Cherokee in LA & stakes out the studio, catching DB & Paul Buckmaster leaving one morning with a pile of "Man Who Fell to Earth" soundtrack tapes. "He thought it was a bit funny, smiled & said good morning."
a jaunty-looking Bowie in red sweater walking to his car DB and Buckmaster head out on North Fairfax Ave, LA
December 2, 2025 at 4:47 PM
bowiesongs.bsky.social
turning 50, 40*, 30** and 20 in December, respectively. * RIP D, 40 years now. ** really not much going on in Dec 95
Parliament, Mothership Connection Minutemen, 3-Way Tie (For Last) Cibo matto, first EP Lil Wayne, Tha Carter II
December 1, 2025 at 1:13 PM
bowiesongs.bsky.social
Eno diary, 28 November 1995: Damien Hirst reminds E. of the young John Lydon. "Still making that hippy music, then?"
At the next table there was Damien and his crowd. I was pleased he got the prize actually, but I’m not a total fan. I sort of suspect the people he hangs out with - there’s a certain arrogance about thinking yourselves so hip. Perhaps it’s not dissimilar to the early John Lydon scene. I remember him coming up to me in Iggy Pop’s dressing-room after a Rainbow concert in about 1978(?) and sitting down at my feet, cross-legged in his big boots, in a faux-disciple way, looking up at me and saying, ‘Still making that hippy music then?’ His currency was in being deliberately cheeky, in out-hipping you. And he was good at it too. About a year later I saw him slumping in an alley on Notting Hill Gate, looking truly dreadful, as though all his spiky wit had left him.
November 29, 2025 at 1:46 PM
bowiesongs.bsky.social
to John McVie at 80. Seen here as a cardboard cutout in the "Tusk" video, 1979.
Fleetwood Mac in the stands of Dodgers Stadium, with the McVie cutout looming behind them
November 26, 2025 at 5:08 PM
bowiesongs.bsky.social
Sharp Pins!
November 24, 2025 at 1:49 AM
bowiesongs.bsky.social
Hello, old friend
Manhattan, as seen from Jersey City
November 23, 2025 at 5:43 PM
bowiesongs.bsky.social
a '79 smooth evening
Chic's Risque and Robert Palmer's Secrets
November 19, 2025 at 10:29 PM