More of the Music of David Bowie
- STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from start to finish – this UK pressing will show you a Diamond Dogs you had no idea existed, yet here it is
- This copy is one of the best we heard in our recent shootout – the sound is big, full, lively and spacious with hard-rockin’ energy to spare
- It’s ridiculously tough to find even passable sound for this album – we guarantee you have never heard better than these two incredible sides
- Great songs including the title track, “Rebel Rebel,” “1984,” “Sweet Thing,” “Big Brother,” “Rock & Roll With Me” and more
The sound on this UK pressing is Tubey Magical yet still clean, clear and spacious — you’ll need a lot of luck and a good-sized pile of records to find a copy that sounds like this one.
“1984” (a favorite of ours on David Live) sounds great here. In addition to singing, the man handles sax, Mellotron, and Moog duties on the album, and, most surprisingly, plays practically all of the electric guitar parts.
Bowie was one of the handful of artists to produce an immensely enjoyable and meaningful body of work throughout the ’70s and into the ’80s, music that holds up to this day. The music on his albums, often groundbreaking and always multi-layered, will surely reward the listener who takes the time to dive deep into the complex sounds he recorded.
Repeated plays are the order of the day. The more critically you listen, the more you will discover within the exceedingly dense mixes favored by the man, his producers (Tony Visconti among them) and engineers (our favorite being Ken Scott). And the better your stereo gets the more you can appreciate the care and effort that went into the production of his recordings.
Size
One of the qualities that we don’t talk about on the site nearly enough is the SIZE of the record’s presentation. Some copies of the album just sound small — they don’t extend all the way to the outside edges of the speakers, and they don’t seem to take up all the space from the floor to the ceiling. In addition, the sound can often be recessed, with a lack of presence and immediacy in the center.
Other copies — my notes for these copies often read “BIG and BOLD” — create a huge soundfield, with the music positively jumping out of the speakers. They’re not brighter, they’re not more aggressive, they’re not hyped-up in any way, they’re just bigger and clearer.
And most of the time those very special pressings just plain rock harder. When you hear a copy that does all that, it’s an entirely different listening experience.
What The Best Sides Of Diamond Dogs Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear
- The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
- The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1974
- Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
- Natural tonality in the midrange — with all the instruments having the correct timbre
- Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space
No doubt there’s more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.
What We’re Listening For On Diamond Dogs
- Less grit — Smoother and sweeter sound, something that is not easy to come by on Diamond Dogs.
- A bigger presentation — More size, more space, more room for all the instruments and voices to occupy. The bigger the speakers you have to play this record, the better.
- More bass and tighter bass — This is fundamentally a pure rock record. It needs weight down low to rock the way David Bowie and Tony Visconti wanted it to.
- Present, breathy vocals — A veiled midrange is the rule, not the exception.
- Good top-end extension to reproduce the harmonics of the instruments and details of the recording, including the studio ambiance.
- Last but not least, balance — All the elements from top to bottom should be heard in harmony with each other.
Take our word for it, assuming you haven’t played a pile of these yourself, balance is not that easy to find. Our best copies will have it though, of that there is no doubt.
Side One
Future Legend
Diamond Dogs
Sweet Thing
Candidate
Sweet Thing (Reprise)
Side Two
Rebel Rebel
Rock & Roll With Me
We Are the Dead
1984
Big Brother
Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family
Review by ZowieZiggy
Bowie’s frenzy is huge. Six months after “Pin-Ups”, here he goes again with a new album.
1973 was an exceptional year for David. He was elected best UK singer by both the NME as well as the Melody Maker’s readers. He sold more than one million albums, one million singles. He has never been as rich as he is now (I mean then).
But De Fries is making serious mistakes which will put an end to their partnership (Wayne County, Mick Ronson, Dana Gillepsie). Bowie is more depressed than ever and the concept of “Diamond Dogs” is even darker than “The Man.”. David is also starting his addiction to heavy drugs (cocaine) which will have a disastrous effect.
The original sleeve designed by the Belgian Guy Peelaerts was just a superb weirdness, showing David as one of these mutant diamond dogs. It featured the lyrics of the intro “Future Legend”. An ocean of horror, darker than the darkest description of a post nuclear New York. Frightening, disturbing, sickening, disgusting, apocalyptical.grandiose. This one minute piece of theater is phenomenal:
“Fleas the size of rats sucked on rats the size of cats. And ten thousand peoploids split into small tribes. Coverting the highest of the sterile skyscrapers. Like packs of dogs assaulting the glass fronts of Love- Me Avenue. Ripping and rewrapping mink and shiny silver fox, now legwarmers. Family badge of sapphire and cracked emerald. Any day now. The Year of the Diamond Dogs”.
Ziggy has died, but now it is the turn of Halloween Jack to be in the spot light. “Diamond Dogs” is some sort of a logical follow-up of “A Lad Insane”. Some of the tracks do have the rock’n’roll feeling of it. The title track for instance is another Stones oriented song. It was chosen to be a single but failed to chart significantly (only 21st in the UK).
Still, it is a very good song with weird lyrics. But the whole of this album soaks in this gloomy atmosphere: “The diamond dogs are poachers and they hide behind trees. Hunt you to the ground they will, mannequins with kill appeal”.
THE highlight of this album is of course “Rebel Rebel”. Another homage to Richards and his performing guitar riffs. It peaked at the fifth position of the charts. It instantly entered into my vein and never left me.
Side two of the vinyl album is dedicated to a theme that Bowie has already covered. Totalitarianism, dictatorship, terror. The pivotal song from this concept album is “We Are The Dead”. Based on some words from the “1984” novel written by Georges Orwell, our friend Jack turns into Winston Smith (one of the main character from “1984”).
The last two songs are of course fully Orwell oriented. While “1984” has this soul mood which will be the main musical source of inspiration for David’s next album (“Young Americans”). “Big Brother” is a very pessimist track. Our hero (now Winston Smith) failed in fighting the dictator and will be converted as one of his followers. We will hear them, as if they were lobotomized, in the closing “Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family” repeating constantly: “Brother. Ooh-ooh. Shake it up, shake it up. Move it up, move it up” as a sign of submission to the Authority.
It will peak at the first spot of the UK charts (this is the third album in a row to do so in just a year.). It is also his biggest hit in the US so far (Nr. 5).
Four stars in my range. A very good album.