Bowie Immersion #19: Tin Machine (1989)
<img src ="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/01/TinMachineBand.jpg/180px-TinMachineBand.jpg">
Record is <a href ="http://www.sendspace.com/file/zgdy4l"> here. </a>
Released May 23, 1989 on EMI Records.
I saw RG in a band (probably a solo band he led - cant remember all the details, sorry) opening for Living Colour on their 1992 (1991?)Time's Up tour in the third row @ the Orpheum (not that far from where we saw Iggy Pop).
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Mr. Gabriels attended Berklee.
We talked a friend's dad into driving me and him from Merrimack NH to Boston so our Fourteen year-old asses could go.
I've been a fan since then - I didn't learn until much later that Gabriels was such a key Bowie collaborator, but I knew from the first time I heard him that the guy has got the goods - lots of loud and experimental streaks, fun distortion and dissonance as well. A jazzier Page Hamilton? A crazy guitar night - RG and Vernon Reid on the same stage.
As an album, I don't come back to <i>Tin Machine</i> and its sequel a whole heck of a lot, but as a staunch Bowie fan, it comforts me in some kind of Chuck Klosterman-esque way that both cds are on my nearby and readily available cd shelves should the urge come about...
<img src ="http://akosut.com/log/img/FLUFFY%20BABY%20BUNNY.jpg">
Bowie put together a whole new, full-scale band with guitarist Reeves Gabriels (a Boston native) and the Sales brothers (as in Soupy's kids - who played with Iggy Pop and Todd Rundgren). All band members admittedly were obscure middle-aged musicians who Bowie was determined to hide himself behind. He was just a band member. None of their records was a substantial hit and the band didn't last too long. But amazingly, it's fun. Without all the usual distractions, Bowie just had a blast "being in a band." He went back to his 60's rock roots (title track), while Gabriels indulges the listener with heavy metal rips. The combination of talent is so weird it's guaranteed to make you sit up and take note.
The album was not really far off from contemporary offerings like those of Living Color - a band that the critics did like to be sure.
Apart from a cover of John Lennon's "Working Class Hero," the material is entirely Bowie's, with the others often co-credited. In my opinion, Bowie's lyrics are in top form - angrily political in some places, simply warped in other places, with the always glad to have it "love-song" mixed in.
In the end, we decided that it was DB "stickin' it to the man" by doing whatever the hell he wanted to, and in a way, that was the best gift he could have given his fans.
The Sales brothers are Soupy's spawn? You got chocolate in my peanut butter!
DÜ approved and agreed.