…hit me Jack…
This month’s Mojo continues its fascination (pun intended) with David Bowie’s ‘soul period’ (see 12/13/00 NEWS: BOWIE, CAVETT AND THE YEAR OF THE DIAMOND DOGS). In a piece that takes up the better part of two pages, the recording of ‘Young Americans’ is discussed, including an eye-witness account from May Pang on the recording of ‘Fame’. May feels better qualified to comment than most on this event, seeing as how she “was straight” at a time when “There was so much drugs – even John (Lennon) had never seen so much cocaine.”
The album, that started life as ‘The Gouster’, helped cement Bowie’s success in The States, staying in the chart for a year. The title track’s appearance in the top thirty paved the way for Bowie’s first US number one, ‘Fame’. Proving that however the song did actually come into being, the drugs in this case did actually seem to work!
Elsewhere in the mag, there is an excellent ten-page special on the band that David Bowie called “the band of the ’80’s…”, The Pixies. Most people with an ounce of suss understand this statement to be fact. There is also a feature on the terrible inspiration for Billie Holiday’s incredible performance of ‘Strange Fruit’. The story of the horrific lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in 1930, that you are most likely already familiar with. A story so unbelievable that it would be comforting to think that it belongs only to a time long before ours…but, still it goes on.
Total Blam Blam (European Correspondent)