David Bowie's Incredible Station To Station

Wonderful piece about an album I love:

My favourite album: Station to Station by David Bowie
via @guardian (The Guardian newspaper/UK)

My thoughts: Bowie's version of Wild Is The Wind is very nearly the equal of Nina Simone's exquisite piece of heaven; Station To Station is a truly unique, original track that took Bowie in an entirely new direction (toward Low and Heroes); and Golden Years is just fantastic.

For an astonishing and wonderfully fresh new take on Golden Years, check out Jeremy Sole's heavily reggae-influenced remix/mashup on iTunes.

(My first blog post on the new iPhone app. I had to make a couple of edits on my Mac - and add the cover image.)

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The High Tower Apartments and The Long Goodbye

Photograph by Dwayne Moser. This beautiful apartment complex in Los Angeles is called the Hightower or High Tower Complex (the High Tower name refers to the central elevator, I believe), and was designed in 1935-1936 by architect Carl Kay - and made famous in 1973 by my favorite film, Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye (see Why I Love Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye ). Although Altman used the building as Philip Marlowe's apartment in his somewhat post-modern Long Goodbye (the film plays with references to Old Hollywood and opens and closes with the song, Hooray For Hollywood ), the building has another direct connection to Raymond Chandler. It was apparently the inspiration for Chandler in his book, The High Window (the first Chandler novel I ever read), in which Chandler describes the residence of Philip Marlowe as being on the cliffs above High Tower Drive in a building with a fancy elevator tower. (Thanks to the Society of Architectural Historians Southern...

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The Story Behind the Immortal Bass Line of Lou Reed's Walk On The Wild Side (VIDEO)

Of all the tributes to, and stories about, Lou Reed over the past week, this is one of the most fascinating - even though it doesn't directly concern Reed himself, but rather Herbie Flowers , the legendary British bass player who created the immortal bass line that opens Reed's massive solo hit, Walk On The Wild Side. When I first heard Walk On The Wild Side, it seemed the ultimate late night New York song: a transgender story (which apparently radio stations in the 1970s and since didn't even pick up on, despite the line, " Shaved his legs and then he was a she ") featuring characters from Andy Warhol's Factory , which sounded as if it had been recorded at about 1 am in some smoky lowdown basement hangout in the East Village. The video above reveals the immense influence of Herbie Flowers - who had worked with David Bowie , who produced Walk On The Wild Side and the Lou Reed album it came from, Transformer , on Bowie's own classic breakout s...

Alexander Stuart

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