Today we start David Bowie. Beginning his music career in 1963 and releasing his first album in 1967, he did not have his commercial breakthrough until 1972 when he released his fifth studio album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. A pioneer of the genre glam rock, he became one of the most influential musicians of all time and a best selling artist. His twenty-fifth and final studio album, Blackstar (2016), was released two days before his death and became a major critical and commercial success.
Today we have David Bowie's self-titled studio debut David Bowie. Released in 1967, the album was a commercial flop and the record company Derma Records dropped him because of it. Most retrospective reviews of the album are negative (usually not as negative as mine though).
This is a confused and terrible hodgepodge of Pink Floyd's The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and the Beatles' Sgt Pepper that doesn't give the slightest hint that Bowie will become anything. "Come and Buy My Toys" has good guitar strumming and "She's Got Medals" has a nice bass line but both have unlistenable sing-song vocal melodies. Bowie is writing about some interesting topics--which is the one plus on this failure--although their lyrics are rendered valueless by his crude musical experimentation. The worst debut from a major artist I've ever heard--thank God Lou Reed would show him the way. C-
