| features in: Album Chart of 1969 ● Album Chart of the Decade: 1960s |
A marked improvement on his strange-variety debut of two years previously, although he might have come up with an actual name for the thing, instead of me having to call one “David Bowie [1967]” and the other “David Bowie [1969]”. It seems bizarre to me that he'd spend the best part of a year on the opening track and couldn't take a minute to come up with an album title, especially with his '67 effort being a bit of a clunker. What an opening track though, the theatrical psychedelia of “Space Oddity” raising the bar considerably for the artist. With an eye for the fashionable statement of the day, an edited version had been released as a single back in July, just days before the launch of the Apollo 11 mission that was just about to lay down a marker for mankind that reverberated all around Planet Earth, and seemingly united us all for a brief moment at least. Thankfully, the disaster-fantasy of an astronaut being stranded in a capsule did not come to pass. Interestingly, the single was not played by the BBC until after the Apollo 11 crew had safely returned. “Unwashed And Somewhat Slightly Dazed” battles gamely to keep the momentum going and succeeds in doing so, cooly underpinned with a convincing blues rock swagger. Unfortunately, these leading tracks stand alone in terms of style and impact, as the album largely progresses in a rather boring soft-rock singer-songwriter kind of way before “Memory Of A Free Festival” finishes on a high, referencing the carefree joy of a wondrous day in the sun with beautiful people enjoying art together. It closes the album perfectly with big grins and feel-good vibes… “The Sun Machine is Coming Down, and We're Gonna Have a Party”
The Jukebox Rebel
06–Feb–2016
| Tracklist |
| A1 | [05:16]  David Bowie - Space Oddity (David Robert Jones) Psychedelia |
| A2 | [06:12]  David Bowie - Unwashed And Somewhat Slightly Dazed (David Robert Jones) Blues Rock / Soul Rock |
| A3 | [02:36]  David Bowie - Letter To Hermione (David Robert Jones) Songwriter |
| A4 | [09:35]  David Bowie - Cygnet Committee (David Robert Jones) Prog |
| B1 | [03:25]  David Bowie - Janine (David Robert Jones) Soft Rock / A.O.R. |
| B2 | [03:01]  David Bowie - An Occasional Dream (David Robert Jones) Songwriter |
| B3 | [04:52]  David Bowie - Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud (David Robert Jones) Songwriter |
| B4 | [03:21]  David Bowie - God Knows I‘m Good (David Robert Jones) Songwriter |
| B5 | [07:09]  David Bowie - Memory Of A Free Festival (David Robert Jones) Psychedelia |
