Still like “LOM?” as a record mind you.

Until recently I always thought if was “Lennon’s on sale again”… some reference to Working Class Hero or something…?

The Mickey Mouse line (and its delivery) and “My mother, my dog, and clowns” (clowns???) are both REALLY STINKY. Marcello, you were right first time – there is good and bad pretentious, and both occur frequently in Bowie’s catalogue.

seems appropriate at this juncture ;)

“Cuz Lenin’s on sale again”

“From Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads”

You can make the lyrics mean what you want. You can dismiss the song as pretentious. You can do what you like, but this song off “Hunky Dory” is gonna keep coming back…whether we love or loathe it.

It’s a god-awful small affair
To the girl with the mousy hair
And her mummy is yelling “no”
But her daddy has told her to go
But her friend is nowhere to be seen

As she walks through her sunken dream
To the seat with the clearest view
And she’s hooked to the silver screen
But the film is a saddening bore
Cuz she’s lived it ten times or more
She could spit in the eyes of fools
If they asked her to focus on

Sailor’s fighting in the dance hall

Oh man

Look at those cavemen go
It’s the freakiest show

Take a look at the lawman
Beating up the wrong guy

Oh man

Wonder if they’ll ever know?
They’re in the best selling show

Is there life on Mars?

It’s on America’s tortured brow
That Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow
And that workers are struck for fame
Cuz Lennon’s on sale again
See the mice in their million hordes
From Ibeza to the Norfolk Broads
Rule Britannia out of bounds
To my mother, my dog, and clowns
But the film is a saddening bore
Cuz I’ve written it ten times or more
It’s about to be writ again
As I ask you to focus on

Sailor’s fighting in the dance hall

Oh man

Look at those cavemen go
It’s the freakiest show

Take a look at the lawman
Beating up the wrong guy

Oh man

Wonder if they’ll ever know?
They’re in the best selling show

Is there life on Mars?

Oh, and according to Noddy Holder, the first batch of promotional copies of ‘My Friend Stan’ did indeed have a spelling mistake – they were labelled as ‘My Friend Satan’. No wonder it never got to Number One!

By failed pop single I of course mean aesthetic failure. Otherwise we’d all give “Tie A Yellow Ribbon” a 10.

Sitwell/Walton(/Lambert) Facade is of course the beginning of rap…

Agree with ITFU about Linda Lewis though. Good record that.

I also quite liked Linda Lewis’ Rock-A-Doodle-Doo at this time especially the middle bit.

Many many years later, in the same pub, on an ecstasy plateau, I danced and sang, lustily, to the *other* Eurodance cover of “Life On Mars”, whose lyrics suddenly struck me as The Most Brilliantly Prescient Commentary On Blair’s Britain That I Had Ever Heard, Oh My God Oh My God.

But the Co.Ro version does take a lot of beating, I do agree – especially the obligatory dinky little Motiv8-style riff that they stick on after the chorus…

“Life On Mars?” from that question mark downwards is an example of failed pretentiousness; indeed it is a failed pop single – a two-year-old album track pressed into abrupt 45 action to promote the back catalogue. Bowie’s attempts to do a Hockney/Ballard remix of “American Pie” flounder under the unsupportable weight of all its misfiring lyrical metaphors, the pomp-prog musical backing (complete with Rick Wakeman) which in a parallel world would have been the Moody Blues and Bowie’s own, exceptionally unpleasant yowling vocal.

It’s probably no accident that Bowie’s songs tend to work better when sung and performed by others; “All The Young Dudes,” for instance, has equally preposterous lyrics (Dylan after all these years still had so much to answer for) but Ian Hunter and Mott attack the song with such fervour that you believe them, are swept along with the flow. The fact that Lulu and Kurt could elicit such diverse meanings from “The Man Who Sold The World,” each giving an entirely individualistic reading of the line “I thought you died a long, a long, long time ago” indicates the ruined nobility which a good interpreter can evoke from an initially unpromising song.

The two best versions of “Life On Mars?” on record both treat the song with studied irreverence; Co.Ro’s Euro happy hardcore version – a shock smash hit at Club Poptimism – works for the same reasons as Peter Noone’s “Oh You Pretty Things”; in each instance, the singer clearly hasn’t a clue what Bowie is going on about but does their best anyway – in Co.Ro’s case, the dropped diphthongs and mangled vowels actually help stir the words into the nonsensical bouillabase that they constituted all along. In contrast, Django Bates and Human Chain’s reading from a couple of years ago succeeds by out-arthousing the arthouse man with its Bartokian string quartet reharmonisations, singer Josefine Lindstrand’s equally uncomprehending vocal, trademark Loose Tubes chord changes and saxophonists Iain Ballamy and David Sanborn (! – but then the latter did play on Young Americans) attempting to out-Ornette each other. Its pretentiousness is now so ludicrous yet bold that it succeeds.

Slade did at least though continue Glam’s domination for a while. Hopefully I’m not giving anything away by saying their reign at the top was ended by a fairly unlikely effort about as un-glam as you can get.