david bowie’s station to station: best inner sleeve of all time? weirdly the internet didn’t have a picture of it, so i took this photograph of my very own copy of the album just now.
[taking photos of my pretty lps, part 3]


david bowie’s station to station: best inner sleeve of all time? weirdly the internet didn’t have a picture of it, so i took this photograph of my very own copy of the album just now.
[taking photos of my pretty lps, part 3]
i forgot how good david bowie’s station to station was, but it’s the only thing that’s saving this non-snowy day. first of all, tvc15 is one of the best pop songs of the 1970s, and not only because it’s about an incident in which iggy pop thought his television was eating his girlfriend. but then word on a wing sneaks up on you, golden years is a toe-tapper, and the title song is terrifying and classic. david bowie learned that station to station was recorded in los angeles only afterwards, and it shows.
[taking photos of my pretty lps, part 2]
#496: queen - crazy little thing called love (1979)
even if there are infinitely glorious things about freddie mercury’s leather-clad band, like the knee pads he wears down a runway made up of hands clapping along to crazy little thing called love, or his buxom naked lady friends racing bicycles, or his ability to rhyme “moet et chandon in a pretty cabinet” with “just like marie antoinette,” “caviar and cigarettes,” “well-versed in etiquette,” and “playful as a pussy cat,” is it all worth it if the opening song of nbc’s brand new and sensational four-night epic a capella showdown event sing-off manages to utterly and permanently destroy queen’s under pressure?
we would lose a lot if queen and its delightful songs hadn’t existed in the first place, but on the plus side no one would ever have heard this terrifying televised atrocity—let alone the introduction from nick lachey (“group singing is a phenomenon, and tonight we are taking it to soaring new heights”), or his breathless response: “and they did that totally without instruments. amazing! amazing.” would that maybe be worth it? freddie mercury can’t answer, because he’s dead, but someone should ask bowie.
#460: mott the hoople - all the young dudes (1972)
the best david bowie song that’s not actually a david bowie song is also the best pop smash about stealing clothes, popping pimples, funky little boat races, t.rex on tv, boogaloo, news about the end of the world, drag queens, boring 60s songs, wine, concrete and sex. most importantly, those sloppy and delicious hand claps during the chorus make i saw her standing there sound bad. and if you can tear your ears from the claps, you’ll hear ian hunter coo as the song closes, “hey you there, with the glasses. i want you.”
#428: david bowie - oh! you pretty things (old grey whistle test, 1972)
this isn’t just the best song on david’s bowie’s best album (unless ziggy stardust is better than hunky dory), it’s the world’s best example of tickled-ivory glam. was his piano made out of feather boas? yes. do the heavens open when woody woodmansey’s drums crash in? yes. could that jumpsuit have been comfortable? no.
#397: david bowie - rebel rebel (1974)
not that appearances are so important (only kidding, of course they are), but i resisted rebel rebel’s clammy, glammy, extra-warm, super-sticky, late-saturday-night charms until i watched bowie pretend to play it on a red guitar in spandex overalls, a polka-dotted neck scarf and an eye patch. outerspace rockstars who look like lesbians on mid-70s dutch television just have that pull.
#159: david bowie - five years (1972)
i’m back in new york city after seven days in the countryside, where i went to recuperate from cheekbone reconstructive surgery so that i could look more like david bowie.
no, just kidding, i was there on vacation. having bowie’s bones would be nice, though. then i could sing lines like: “news had just come over, we had five years left to sigh in/ news guy wept and told us, earth was really dying/ cried so much his face was wet, then I knew he was not lying.”
still, i don’t want his ‘72 jumpsuits.
#100: david bowie - drive in saturday (1973)
“gee, it’s late, let’s go to bed,” is my favorite pick-up line, and drive in saturday is my favorite david bowie tune. yes, that’s right, i love it—lerve it, luff it—more than starman or any of that spidery jive.
it’s just that there’s something about the doo-wop harmonies, the opium handclaps, the eyes-of-jagger romanticism, and especially the astronette/cabinet rhymes. and the cheek bones.
#99: david bowie - starman (1972)
this here is some hazy cosmic jive (which, incidentally, was originally posted as the second-ever video on this site back on jan. 19th, but because of a small glitch it was removed and reposted here as video #99). in 1972, david bowie was ziggy stardust, his band was the spiders from mars, and on top of the pops on the bbc (which called him “a bizarre, self-constructed freak”) they all played some get-it-on rock and roll.
does guitarist mick ronson’s gold jumpsuit beat dusty’s blouse from video #1? and does ziggy’s puffed red hair beat ronson’s blonde mane? and check out the sweater vested lad jiving in the background. and when you’re done, watch david bowie (then in his “thin white duke,” handfuls-of-cocaine phase), doing a young americans medley with cher on the cher show)
#4: t. rex - children of the revolution (1972)
even though this website’s only been in business for three days, it’s high time there’s a video with giant toothbrushes, stuffed zebras, white-faced glam rockers hiding inside of pianos played by elton john, and some ringo starr in clown paint.
this scene, from the film born to boogie, follows david bowie’s glam arch-enemy, t-rex (aka marc bolen), playing live in apple studios in london. i’ll be damned if ringo’s little drum solo isn’t fantastic, and if elton weren’t wearing a black turtleneck with hearts painted under his eyes i’d like his honky tonking too.