Changesbowie - Bowie, David (CD 1990)

Late 20th century decadent-androgynous-alien-folksinger David Jones was only 13 when he picked up the saxophone. By the early days of the next century, he had picked up the music industry, broken all their rules and did everything (including selling shares of profit from his future albums at the stock exchange) with style. Jones aka Bowie aka Ziggy Stardust, who underwent his first change of name to avoid confusion with Davy Jones, member of a (very) short-lived British band The Monkees, said yes, he remembers his dreams and even writes them down (for later references, maybe), to a Rolling Stones interview.

In fact, 30 per cent of all his songs were dreams once, the man says. Always a technophile, Bowie has been one of the true Internet musicians. His late 20th century work, Hours was released in its entirety on the Net. Hours... is a heady mix of post-rock electronica... but we're not here to talk about that, are we?

This anthology has tracks charting Bowie s development from his early stuff, when he hung out with Marc Bolan (now remembered as the man behind glit-rock outfit T Rex) and was trying to get a recording deal. His image began morphing once the 70s arrived. First he told Melody Maker he was gay, before taking on the theatrical (extraterrestrial) persona of Ziggy Stardust (a doomed messianic rock star) and playing with a band called The Spiders from Mars. Till 1975, Bowie was mixing punk with sci-fi. From 1975 on, a strong Black Soul/R&B/Jazz influence became noticeable, and Ziggy reverted back to Bowie, cut his bright orange hair, replaced unearthly costumes with baggy Oxford trousers and after producing the number one album Thin White Duke, began complaining that life was becoming predictable. He left LA and returned to the UK, meeting up with avant-garde artist Brian Eno (of Talking Heads fame) and spent the later half of the 70s experimenting with futuristic electronica.

With Hours..., Bowies returned to a more radio-friendly sound, incorporating his influences.

The other side of the former alien is quite interesting too. He starred in the BBC production of Brecht s Baal and played a 150-year-old vampire in the film The Hunger. A consummate musical chameleon, that s what Rolling Stone called him. Though the compilation focuses primarily on his first 10 years as a musician, it has enough Bowie classics to introduce a novice into Bowie s bizarre, topsy-turvy universe...