#can you tell that im a percussionist based on my moongel comment?

[alpacahat67]

Okay, I posted about Diamond Dogs at 7 in the morning and... I feel as if it wasn't my best writing. So... okay here's my Actual thoughts on Diamond Dogs.

Note that I haven't listened to all of Bowie's discography yet so go easy on me.

Generally, my thoughts about Diamond Dogs are mixed. I feel as if it has a lot of good material, both music and story-wise, but... side two is... not the best for a Bowie album, save for Big Brother which is literally in my top 10 Bowie songs. I might just have to read 1984 to appreciate it though, lol. It's really astonishing that this album turned out so objectively good and well received by critics IMO and honestly? Yeah I get it.

At first I really didn't like Diamond Dogs. I thought a lot of the songs just... they weren't my cup of tea, and I still am not a fan of Sweet Thing personally and I think the snare in Candidate is FAR too loud (typical percussion critique comment, sorry, but like seriously do you know what moongel is man buy a sticky hand from a coin machine that works just as well). And that was the extent of my opinions. Of course, I'm less partial to soul as a genre, and as it seems Bowie was playing around with soul in this era of his career, it makes sense as to why I didn't quite like some of the more soul-heavy songs.

Then I relistened to Diamond Dogs. And, boy, I really like the album now. It's not as good as The Man Who Sold The World or Station to Station in my books, but it's really good. Mainly, I enjoy the storyline of Diamond Dogs, but mostly side one. I need to read 1984 so I'm left with an incomplete understanding of side two, which is mostly an homage to 1984 (not like Bowie could turn it into a musical, lmaooo.)

I really like Halloween Jack! He's up there in my favorite Bowie characters! I feel as if he had a lot of potential that he didn't live up to because he was brought into the story so soon and then never mentioned again, and also the fact that he didn't exist as a stage character for long and was quickly replaced by the Soul Man. Furthermore, I love the worldbuilding of Hunger City and the gang of the Diamond Dogs that we get in the first half of the album. I really wish the entire album was solely that concept! Bowie seemed to have so many plans that were probably born from spite when his request to adapt 1984 into a musical was declined and I wish he got to put those ideas to good use. Rebel Rebel ends off side one and is a... really good song, yes, it ends off the half well, but... many critics bring up how it doesn't further the story provided in side one and I have to agree. It could be about Halloween Jack as he's mentioned to have a "hussy" with him and... if it's from his POV then it's probably about her. But that's the only correlation I really see. And to be fair, sometimes songs don't have to fit into an album's story, sometimes a guy can just write a funny little song. So it doesn't take away from my enjoyment of side one of Diamond Dogs

The second half of the album, side two, somehow, doesn't feel as... refined. Maybe because Bowie, realistically, might have had to leave that part as simplistic because again no rights to 1984. I feel as if someone more well-versed in the original media could comment further on this. I don't know I just... I wasn't interested in this half of the album. Until We Are The Dead and Big Brother came on but.

I don't know. It's not a bad album by any means, it just has some rough spots, and I greatly prefer one half to the other. It comes down to it not being my cup of tea more than anything. David Bowie's music is great about that though because he has changed his focus so much that like, he has a song for EVERYONE.

I'm very impressed by Diamond Dogs nonetheless, because you'd think it'd be a bad album because it was kind of a rebuilding period? Prior to this album, Bowie had fired all of his backing band from his Ziggy Stardust tour, and the documentary Cracked Actor came out around the same time as Diamond Dogs revealing Bowie's struggle with a cocaine addiction that had worsened during this time. It's also a more experimental period as he was clearly transitioning out of glam rock. I'd liken it to Hunky Dory, just in reverse. Where Hunky Dory was sort of like a precursor to Ziggy and kinda like Bowie playing around with the concept of glam rock while still maintaining some of that folk music he was doing previously, Diamond Dogs is Bowie playing around with soul while still maintaining some of that glam rock he was doing previously. A gateway between Ziggy to the Duke. Y'know?

TL;DR, Paul Trynka calls Diamond Dogs "a beautiful mess" and I agree. It is a mess, but because Bowie seemed to be able to write a hit song in his sleep, it wasn't BAD by any means. I really like it... even though there's some other albums I enjoy more.

I also think it's very fun that punks in rollerblades was a concept for the album before punk existed. He predicted punk. Also that audio glitch in Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family that Bowie kept in lol.