Space Oddity [Man of Words/Man of Music] (David Bowie, 1969)

First, a little program note. I'm calling this album Space Oddity even though the proper name is just David Bowie. However, to avoid confusion with the previous album of the same title, I'm sticking with the re-issue name (though not posting the re-issue cover). And, just to really mess with everybody, this album even sports a third title, Man of Words/Man of Music, which almost nobody uses anymore. Until 2009, pretty much everybody referred to the album as Space Oddity, which started with the re-issue version designed to capitalize on both the Ziggy Stardust era as well as the fact that the song of the same name was really his breakthrough hit. All was well and good until yet another re-issue reverted the name back to David Bowie. So, just to be absolutely clear, this is about the album featuring "Space Oddity", not the far more obscure self-titled album from the 1960's.

All right then! "Space Oddity" was one of those songs I had known for a long, long time, but I never bothered to check out the rest of the album until much more recently. By the time I got around to it, I was quite familiar with the album released the year after, The Man Who Sold the World, a much heavier album, and some live versions of these songs recorded for the BBC. Because of the runaway success of "Space Oddity", it may be tempting to think of this as Bowie's "space rock" era, but it's far more of a folk/country/singer-songwriter album, with a few nods to the "old" Bowie from the 1960's and a little foreshadowing of what was to come. Even a song like the brilliant "Cygnet Committee" is really only a spacey name for an elaborate, mostly-folk, multi-part song. Other than the title track, though, most of the songs are not standard classic rock radio fare. A lot of it could be fairly described as a more lucid Syd Barrett, an early idol of Bowie's. Songs like "Memories of a Free Festival" have an unmistakable "Hey Jude" vibe, and of course the Beatles were still very much a driving force in music in 1969.

As they say with Bowie, if you don't like the album you're currently listening to, you will certainly love the next one. While I couldn't bring myself to choose one over the other, the change of direction is obvious with The Man Who Sold the World, a heavier album that also gives the members of his band (an embryonic Spiders of Mars) more exposure and identity. But even that album would have it's own reaction in Hunky Dory, and within just a few years Bowie would leave it all behind to pursue blue-eyed soul and electronic music later in the decade.