Bowie: From the beginning

Would you join me in a little project?

I am a fan of Bowie, which I understand is nothing special these days. Since his death we have seen no end of tributes and documentaries, with enough commentaries from expert Bowieologists to satisfy anyone.

I wasn't even his number one fan (in the last census I was ranked at only his 12,449th fan) and I didn’t grow up with Bowie as many did. It was only about twenty years ago that I really grew fond of him, so I always had access to pretty much his entire back catalogue. I could play the singles on repeat and skip the filler. I would listen curiously to the odd unknown album track that came up on random shuffle, before bumping the playlist onto Life on Mars again. But recently I found myself wondering what like to be there when the early albums were new, watching his style evolve over time, picking over the offerings as and when they were delivered? How would I feel if I only had access to one Bowie album at a time, so I had to wait for the new one to come out.

So this afternoon I have deleted all the Bowie from my music library. My plan is to listen to one album at a time, in chronological order. I’ll put them on hard repeat for one month, even if I grow sick of them, then I’ll report back. I’ll also read the relevant chapter of one of the Bowie biographies for that month. Hopefully this won’t be too wanky, but I am quite interested in the context of the recordings. You can join in, too. Most of the tracks are freely available on Youtube, and I’d love to read your comments.

So, let’s queue up the first album, David Bowie (1967), and I’ll see you in a month.