I spent some time with the David Bowie box set "Loving the Alien" this week. I listened to a disc each day. You could call it more or less Bowie in the '80s. The eighties is when DB took full force of my rock and roll dreams and imagination. Whether it was cruising in Archer Prewitt's Volvo listening to Ziggy, relishing every page of the Mainman years in Tony Zanetta's book "Stardust", or having my mind blown by D.A. Pennebaker's "Ziggy the movie" and "The Hunger", I like many others were ready for Bowie's big commercial break thru.
Supposedly, Bowie was unhappy with many of these records. I think it was a case of sometimes getting what you always wanted isn't all it's cracked up to be. At the very least, the royalties from these records kept Iggy alive and kicking. They probably revived Tina Turner and Peter Frampton's career's too.
I never owned "Let's Dance" but had all the singles. I always loved the live take of "Modern Love". "Loving the Alien" was weak but any album with the title cut and "Blue Jean" was worth a few bucks (i got my copy in the cut-out bin). "The Glass Spider" tour was an event and the only concert for which I ever tried to camp out for tickets. You get a reimagined version of this album with different musicians. It's interesting but unnecessary. The four good songs: "Day in Day out", "Time will crawl", "Never Let me Down" and "Bang Bang" survived the DX7 regardless. The Live Glass Spider was satisfyingly nostalgic and Frampton played better than Earl Slick.
The movie songs and remixes are great to listen to while folding laundry. That isn't a diss. It's easy to see why millions of us loved the alien back in the 1980's.