David Bowie: Lodger

We listened to this in the car on Saturday, on the way through London and up the M40 to visit my family. Lucy knows the album much better than me, from when she was… young. She was able to remind me that the Au Pairs did a cover version of Repetition, the domestic violence song on the album, which I'd forgotten already since she told me early last year. (Lucy liked that Au Pairs album so much that I had to give her their compilation, and now there are bands she's discovered from my collection that she knows much better than I do — I like that.)

On the way back, yesterday, Lucy put on her copy of Hunky Dory. Now there's an album I know from when I was young, really young. Lord knows what happened to the pre-recorded cassette copy I bought of that in December 1978, probably one of the first dozen or so albums I ever owned (after Shirley Bassey, Abba, The Kick Inside, Street Legal, Some Girls and Tonic for the Troops). Hunky Dory versus Lodger? No competition, is there? Not just for nostalgic reasons; there are more good songs in Quicksand alone than on the whole of Lodger.

Though I listened again to Lodger on headphones last night, and then I heard more of what let me to buy the album in the first place: the squawky, skronky, off-kilter interruptions and textures from Eno and Belew that decorate the songs. Even though I loved David Bowie at the end of 1978, things move fast when you're a boy and I had moved on by the time this album came out in 1979. I didn't get it until long after I had Low and Heroes in the '80s — I'd guess it was early '90s when I paid £13.49 at Their Price to complete the Bowie/Eno trilogy. According to Wikipedia, Eno thought the trilogy "petered out" by this point, and who'd argue with him?

I'm kind of surprised to find how many blindspots I have with Bowie. Diamond Dogs, this; I even find most of Ziggy Stardust a bit too heavy on the pantomime for my tastes. And, thinking about it, I don't think I've heard a single one of his albums since Lodger the whole way through. Note to self: check out some of them at Last.fm and We7.

MusicBrainz entry for this album Wikipedia entry for this album Rate Your Music entry for this album Listen to this album in full at Last.fm