Yet MORE Andrew Oliver, amateur music critic extraordinaire …

… YET another ARMCHAIR COUCH POTATO music review …

David Bowie Best Of DVD#1… The Late English Performer Extraordinaire …

Each track rated on a seven point scale as:- (1) Truly great song: (2) Great song: (3) Good song: (4) Technical merit pass: (5) Filler: (6) Terrible song: (7) Sehr langweilig: Together with notes and cultural allusions, to better criticise great music and pan terrible music, in the hope that the great artists of the future do, forevermore, keep up the good work …

1. Oh, You Pretty Things 1972

Great Song.

David's deep projection to “pretty things”. Rejecting John Wayne sortof masculinities, David wants to participate in being a pretty thing amongst the others. To express his deep love of pretty things.

“Oh you pretty things don't you know you're driving your mamas and poppas insane.”

Listen to the passion.

“Written in awe.”

2. Queen Bitch 1972

Technical Merit Pass. Lyrics too jarring.

Starts with bankrupted jazzed up melodrama, covered up by ritziness.

The Queen Of Diamonds? No not, not, if the rules be Rickety Kate, but that game's got an object …

Beyond selfishness, beyond the survival instinct, beyond into, to drives and desires ...

3. Five Years 1972

Great song.

Billion year spree. Solar flare zone. The muon source singularity yellow dwarf star core region enters an iron cycle. The gigantic flares begin. All agree, Five years, five years at most. Achieve something before the end. Stop the right wingers stalling. Is the outcome fated, inevitable, the iron source exploding when the big flare comes?

What of the lepton inverter companion, the moon? And the green cheese? Will the mice eat it ????

4. Starman 1972

Great Song.

Starwatchman. Intergalactic sailorman, newbie officer, parking 50 light years out, the collapsed galactic core timed automata in its rocky mantle, on the bridge, sends in the longboats …

Shore leave. Fear not, all stick together. Gambling at the end, drunk from the immorality of trade, with his copper purse floating after in the air, his burial rites, the cross that says: “A sailor lies below.”

To touch one, his mates might return and demolish the planet. That's the way life is.

5. John, I'm Only Dancing 1972

Good Song.

Gotta stall. Only romancing, gotta stall. Heard too many books gamblers won in games known all across the universe. The book planet, where things get filtched, and too many sailors won books in too many games … Immune from destruction their master copies, stall that, go for the other two ...

6. The Jean Genie 1972

Truly Great Song.

The genie in the bottle. Letting the secret out. Is it the truth? Hegelian illumination traps. Multi level hegelian illumination traps. Brain singularity shell structures. For men, women, clairvoyants, knight-clairvoyants, knight-astrologers, warlocks …

What is truth anyway? Neutral monism? I think, therefore I am?

That clairvoyants see dimly, using their props, as far as the end of their own lives ...

Given David Bowie's conformance to sex stereotypes, his delight in letting it out …

7. Space Oddity 1972

Truly Great Song.

Alludes to Catastrophe Theory. Rene Thom. A way of mapping functions a state vector to a state vector so that discontinuous transitions can be modelled, corresponding to states of probabilistic timed finite state automata.

“Ground control to Major Thom.” Sounds NASA, could be European Space Agency? What's Mars like, then?

8. Drive-In Saturday 1973

Good Song.

Melancholic. Sadly telling the tale of drive in culture, the fun of yesteryear, ended by general availability. The payment for silence the silence of so many 1945-1970.

9. Life On Mars? 1973

Technical Merit Pass. Think song too jarring.

Jazzed up anguish. Why won't they talk, talk to us? First contact, what's the hold up?

“Is there life on Mars?”

“tortured brow?”

Why oh why?

10. Ziggy Stardust 1973

Truly Great Song.

The stars like dust … Dune …

How to use iron source singularities and neutron stars and flip over a neutron star through a very large lanthanide shadow force ring and crash another neutron star and the anti-neutron star into a collapsed galactic core … How to do it right … To power intergalactic warp jumps … Star Trek ...

The immorality of intergalactic travel … Steadily uses up captured planets stabilising the neutron star arrays ...

When will the end of eternity come? First contact?

And why does every nearby galaxy buy planetary system cloaking devices, also using a collapsed galactic core, with the dust and particles burnt off, rather than talk to us? Are we such barbarians? Such barbarians as to have inspired Ringworld Engineers? To protect their precious cable TV?

11. Rebel Rebel 1974

Good Song.

Teenage rebellion, a celebration. Celebrates also tomboys and sissys.

12. Young Americans 1974

Great Song.

Tribute paid to the young americans, those fated by the stars to win, should be must be …

The young intended winner being setup as replacement intended major winner … Bambi …

13. Be My Wife 1977

Great Song.

“Sometimes you get so lonely. Sometimes you get nowhere.”

Deep melancholia. The garish eye shadow. The tragicomic face. The pure horror. Broken wires.

Terror Keep. The redundance of 90% of menfolk. Retrenchment theorist?

14. “Heroes” 1977

Good Song.

The policy of too many faithless Christians, to worship dead heroes … This helps to create wars …

Of Arthur Mees' Thousand Heroes, Engineering Press 1933-34 … And what the S.I.S. Right thought of all that, Heroes Hero Worship And The Heroic In History, Thomas Carlyle, dripping scorn …

Seems David took Charter Orders, got a job eh?

15. Boys Keep Swinging 1979

Filler.

Seems to be flim flam, keeping the boys in the dark about the 1948 master plan …

16. D.J. 1979

Truly Great Song.

Old J … Berlin, 1925 … Castle Gay John Buchan the credit-book establishment point …

Joyless Street, meant to lose ...

“Lost my job.” “I am a D.J., I am what I play.”

Reciprocity? I'm not a rock star, look I've not been to Jodrell Bank, never in times late ever ever looked at intergalactic cable T.V.! … Look, war criminals breeding horses and dogs and sinisters in the South of France … Implementing value sets from TV shows … I'm not a rock star …

The Eight Of Swords … I've got a social reality too ...

17. Look Back In Anger 1979

Filler.

Look back in angst more like it. Higher and higher bankrupt melodrama.

18. Ashes To Ashes 1980

Truly Great Song.

“Got a message for the action man.” Soldier ashes. Look, arranged payments that go value conflict, the detriments to reputation continue, no obligation … “I never did anything.”

Anyway, people are better off without major downpayment, recreational reading's better …

19. Fashion 1980

Great Song.

Anguish at the crimes of fashion. Fashion victims amany. The bankrupt melodrama of fashion competitions.

Pleasure in expression nevertheless.

20. Wild Is The Wind 1981

Good Song.

Trilling strings, Pan-like, the wild ones, the free, touched by the call, the call of the wild … Wild Thing …

21. Let's Dance 1983

Truly Great Song.

Let's dance. The blues. Let's dance and make romance. The sound they're playing on the radio …

Music, the language of the emotions.

22. China Girl 1983

Good Song.

Puzzled wonderment. Must have been being told lies. Cygnus X-1. What perniciousness. Smash the worker state!

23. Modern Love 1983

Great Song.

Don't believe in modern love. Too many left on the shelf. Best thing for them, retrospective abortion ????

Strange kind of coexistence policy …

Interlude … to get to the church on time ...

Church's Thesis Physics. Can't unify the forces, can't be done. Church's Thesis Chemistry. Duality of acid and base no end of variants. Church's Thesis Biology. Male/analog and female/digital life forces, no end of side effect duality minor force variants ...

24. Cat People (Putting Out Fire) 1983

Filler.

Anguish at a society where no one cares. No one believes. Where there's no way to rid the society of psychos.

25. Blue Jean 1984

Great Song.

Putting on the ritz. Bankrupt melodrama resented, remembered. What to do? Talk to Blueprints. Talk to the right people, get the right answer.

26. Loving The Alien

Filler.

An interlude. Seemed unbelievable. The salt tax. Didn't believe the French Death Register almost empty, full of food offense cascades, asked for payments going forced compassionate detriment chill.

This song reeks of disbelief.

27. Dancing In The Street 1985

Good Song.

Not just guys and dolls … A song of remembrance. Remembering a war crime.

From the tone of voice, something that needs vengeance ...

Paris the middle of May 1945. The US Army go berserk. Mass rape of Frenchwomen.