Since posting that Easybeats classic earlier this week, as well as "Friday" I have had birthday boy (and Patron Saint) David Bowie "on my mind"...
For, although I did post a two-part magnum opus in tribute to the great man on his 65th birthday:
...I never featured any tracks from Mr Bowie's 1973 covers album Pin-Ups, on which his own version of Friday On My Mind appeared.
The album also produced a gem that the great man made his very own - Sorrow [originally a hit for The Easybeats]:
Today, on his 69th birthday, David Bowie has released his twenty-sixth studio album Blackstar - and yet again, he is confounding the critics as only a human chameleon can:
- "...a ricochet of textural eccentricity and pictorial-shrapnel writing." - Rolling Stone
- "...the most extreme album of his entire career... Blackstar is as far as he's strayed from pop." - The Independent
- "...it’s hard to resist 40 years’ worth of craft resulting in so intriguing a record." - SPIN
- "...as enigmatic as its creator." - The Scotsman
- "...at once emotive and cryptic, structured and spontaneous and, above all, wilful, refusing to cater to the expectations of radio stations or fans." - New York Times
- "...a rich, deep and strange album that feels like Bowie moving restlessly forward, his eyes fixed ahead: the position in which he’s always made his greatest music." - The Guardian
I can't wait to hear the entire album!
However, as it is the end of a gruelling and tawdry week taken up by returning to work, it is to another of Dame David's earlier works (one that never appeared on any of his non-compilation albums, except as a recently-added "bonus") I turn to get the party started in appropriate fashion.
In the late 70s, meeting the prevalent funky grooves of disco head on, Mr Bowie reworked John I'm Only Dancing (Again) to great effect - and here it is. Thank Disco It's Friday!
David Bowie (born David Robert Jones, 8th January 1947)
