When I had the long Bowie obituary thread ten years ago today, it was done as a not-quite-obituary; more of an examination of Bowie’s presence in my timeline, and it was in any case before I adopted the trait of including all of the artist’s music in the Record Cell as a tiled image. So with that in mind, here’s the Bowie collection visual.
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Post-Punk Monk 
Woah! Thats… Thats a lot. Very nice
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steveforthedeaf – Well, a few of those were posthumous releases. And the doubles include my wife’s LPs! But I would never call myself a Bowie “collector!” That’s a whole ‘nother level! More just an “enthusiast.” To the point where I deemed it necessary by the mid-90s to even buy the [extremely] dodgy EMI albums that preceded Tim Machine. And I loved Tin Machine. I need every proper Bowie album. For context! But I draw the line at remixed, re-jigged albums I already have! That’s moneyspinning. Besides, no amount of post-modern plastic sonic surgery would ever turn “Never Let Me Down” into something I’d actually like.
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I’m a fan of Bhudda of Suburbia. I think other than Tin Machine (I love ’em too) and Never Let Me Down my Bowie stuff is all pretty universally Mojo and Q approved five star classics. But I do have David Live and all told maybe a dozen LPs. Always meant to get the Glastonbury set as I was at the show
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steveforthedeaf – His 70s run was peerless!And when I finally got “Buddha Of Suburbia” in 1997, and it blew my mind! It’s my favorite of the 83-13 period! In America it was an obscure import album that followed hot on the heels of “Black Tie White Noise” [which was about half good!] as well as a BBC film soundtrack? How could it be any good? Mea Culpa! Good on yer for seeing his triumphant return to Glastonbury!
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Only saw him three times but they were all wildly different sets
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steveforthedeaf – Same here! 1990, 1995, 1997.
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Awesome collection
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Middle Aged Man – It takes a while to simply throw a collage like that together. I’m sure that there are some nooks or crannies that I missed. Only three of the books are in there, owing to photos I have already used in the blog. It was a big ask for a Saturday but it had to be done!
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Nice tribute. I recommend Paul Morley’s new/recent book on Bowie to you.
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Rupert – I should own all of Morley’s books! A huge deficit in my [currently] small library!
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Excellent selections all. I have quite a few of those, including a couple of books.
Amazed it has been 10 years already. I attended a Bowie Ballroom club night last night, for which a made a new sparkly suit especially. It was an incredible atmosphere, full of friends and some real deep cuts played (Bowie and Bowie-adjecent)- my personal faves being Its No Game no.2, Magic Dance and Peter Schilling’s Major Tom(in German)
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Sorry I meant Its No Game no.1
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gavinthemetamorph – Hah! While I was impressed with Part 2 in your comment [the unexpected quality of it], the Fripp Frissons in Part 1 cannot be brushed away!
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Someone ripped a new ARTE tribute concert and posted it to YT for anyone who is interested. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIWtWD3MXgw&t=61s
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Those 10 years without Bowie’s presence feel like an entirely different world.
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slur – I’d go as far as saying that the world doesn’t just feel different… it is different! A harsh, cruel space where rapacious malignancy cares not a whit about the former norms of human decency. Not that the absence of David Bowie from the surface of the planet had anything to do with that!
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Monk would not approve of my Bowie collection. It happily includes Never let Me Down. I think this has come up before but two of the three times we both have seen Bowie was on the same tours (90 and 97). I’ve enjoyed all of his albums for one reason or another (except Tonight – I have a hard time listening to that whole thing) because I go into each not expecting what came before. Yes, this includes Outside and Black Tie White Noise. Somehow I have the soundtrack version and album version of Buddha of Suburbia so maybe I partially redeem myself?
Saw the headline and I knew exactly what this was before I even saw an image. Damn. That loss is still felt.
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postpostmoderndad – My Record Cell grudgingly contains “Never Let Me Down,” which thankfully was a birthday gift from a wise friend willing to sacrifice himself for me! You’re right. “Tonight” is the absolute worst. At least NLMD has the best song he released after “Scary Monsters (and Supercreeps)” – “Time Will Crawl!” And I could never cast aspersions on anyone’s “Bowie Collection,” because as we know, it takes all kinds!!
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I have the original edition of NLMD, before “Too Dizzy” was ruthlessly excised, as that particular track is one I quite like. I have all of Bowie’s studio albums except LEt’s Dance and Tonight! The latter, is Monk correctly notes, the worst. In the case of Let’s Dance, the three hit singles got (and continue to get) such massive radio play that I can’t imagine ever using my precious listening time at home for those tracks, and if I ever really want to hear the rest of the album (this has yet to occur), well, that’s why streaming exists.
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Big Mark – I also have the uncensored version of NLMD, and I have to ask, why did Bowie stop at the only mildly annoying “ Too Dizzy” when far worse songs awaited our ears on that opus?! And let me be the one to say it out loud; the singles were the best of a sad lot on “Let’s Dance!”
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Of the other Let’s Dance tracks, I remember liking ‘Shake It”, and finding the rejiggered version of “Cat People” inferior to the soundtrack version.
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Big Mark – Deeply inferior!
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Not sure why so many seem to think Tonight is the weakest Bowie album, I really enjoyed it for what it is (well at least most of it – Dancing With The Big Boys is too close to the embarrassing single with Mick Jagger). Of course it’s an typical 80’s production with only a few self-penned songs (Blue Jean was no highlight) by a Star under pressure but when it arrived in 1984 the most annoying thing for me was getting along with with Tina Turner’s appeareance.
I loved ‘Loving The Alien‘, the whole production and mastering was top of the game and besides the bad choice of the first single and the indifferent artwork – as a whole it was a state of the art pop rock album and not as depressing as Never Let Me Down which offered a confused Bowie and only one good track as mentioned above.
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Slur – You have a point. At first I felt that NLMD was the worst of it because it fell like Bowie was trying… very hard, to be “David Bowie” after selling out stadiums. But for every admirable idea struggling to rise to the top there were a half dozen farragoes that overwhelmed the efforts. You correctly cite confusion here. Which was extremely sad for my ears. Then I heard “God Only Knows” on “Tonight” and I knew that there could only be a single “Worst Bowie Album.” And “Tonight” was it.
Additionally, in 1984 I also appreciated “Loving The Alien” but that stopped once I heard the far superior Icehouse version. Then the tacky grandiloquence of it could not be unheard. in terms of overstatement, it was of a piece with “God Only Knows.” Worse, because he had written a song there that was clearly better than much of what he released in the era. Stumbling primarily in its execution.
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I concur that Tonight and NLMD are Bowie’s weakest entries across his wonderous career, but I have a soft spot for “Loving the Alien” and love “Blue Jean,” the latter probably in part because he’s quite funny in the video, and because it calls back to his own 1950s/60s musical influences.
I also love “Time Will Crawl,” and I should probably try to give the rest of NLMD a re-listen after all these years, but I suspect my poor overall opinion of it won’t change. Like pretty much everyone else who has commented, it’s my least fave Bowie official album.
*But his most uneven one the soundtrack album Buddha of Suburbia, which is because it wasn’t intended as an album at all. I wrote a review of sorts about it on my own occasional blog on the third anniversary of his death in 2019.
Later that same year I contributed a chapter to a charity anthology book about his impact on his fans. It’s sadly out of print now, but it raised a lot of money for cancer research which I’m very proud of.
As for this beautiful art piece you’ve put together, O Monk, it could be called the Boweaux tapestry!
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