@@ryandean3162That's also bad isn’t? hahaha I still don’t know the real purpose of the song. I think is more focused on a negative woman than a positive one.
Mike Garson said that Lady Grinning Soul was as romantic as it gets. French with a little Franz Liszt. It is said that a meeting with American Soul singer Claudia Lennear in 1972 inspired Bowie to write the song. According to Lennear Bowie called her in 2014 and told her the story of Lady Grinning Soul. It has also been compared to a Bond Theme. I can hear that in Mike Garson's piano. The lyrics to Jean Genie was an allusion to author Jean Genet.
Brilliant, so good .Regardless of listening to Bowie's music,what feels like forever.The talent the man and his fellow musicians never ceases to amaze me.❤
These two songs! What a way to close out an album. You've now done my two favorite Bowie albums, Station to Staion and this. Hope you hit my third one, Diamond Dogs, which was before the Berlin Trilogy (Young Americans as well). Diamond Dogs still as a Ziggy feel to it. What ever you choose, I'll be listening...
Remember hearing Jean Genie on my cheap Transistor radio in my teenage bedroom the day of release early 70s!! 50+ years ago And I realised that this guy was special !!!...
@@James-hd6ez Yes, I've long been aware of that. Great band, too - and Jim Kerr has recounted the decisive impression that seeing Bowie /Ziggy live in concert made on him at the age of fourteen.
Bowie called Aladdin Sane "Ziggy goes to America". After this album in 1973/1974, Bowie decides to do a cover album of his favorite British songs - "Pin-Ups" -which is very interesting - and then trys to buy the rights to use the themes of 1984 (the book) from the authors widow. He is turned down, so he constructs an album (Diamond Dogs) using dystopian futuristic imagery where the world has "gone to the dogs". It is such a fantastic album with some great quirky songs like "We Are the Dead" "Sweet Thing /Candidate" "Big Brother" and so many more. Also, there is the best live album I have ever heard "David Live" after that. Love the channel!
Pin-Ups doesn't get nearly enough respect... they say it's a throwaway covers album... i say it's the tightest and most polished album The Spiders ever recorded... Aynsley Dunbar replaced Woody and Ronson, Garson and Dunbar are the stars of the show
After Aladdin Sane he did Diamond Dogs, Young Americans (which I love) and Station To Station (which I love even more). He then did Low, Heroes & Lodger (the Berlin trilogy).
There is a great live version of Jean Genie in David Bowie's GLASS SPIDER TOUR concert video, with the great Peter Frampton as one of David's 2 lead guitarists. Worth a look/listen.
Jean Genie is what got me into Mick Ronson's excellent guitar playing, I mean listen to that Gibson Les Paul. The video is superb. I love both songs equally.
Bowie did a version o' The Jean Genie live at Hammersmiff Odeon-London July 3, 1973-the concert where he declared "Not only is this the last show o' the tour...but it's the last show we'll ever do..." He introduced special guest Jeff Beck to the stage 'n they included a passage o' The Beatles-Love Me Do in The Jean Genie performance.
Yeah, Lady Grinning Soul is magical somehow, the atmosphere so urban yet connected to the cosmos.(BTW Bowie sings "She'll be your living end," not heir) I always want to recommend SCARY MONSTERS as your next album listen although you may have heard a track from it aleeady? Not sure. But I mean Fripp plays on several tracks, plus Pete Townend and Carlos Alomar and Tony Visconti. Fripp told me and some others that it was his favorite album to play on because Bowie had a way of being in charge by allowing so much freedom.
There is no 'story' to Aladdin Sane. Its mainly snap shots of American cities whilst touring as Ziggy. As you've now done 2 songs already from Diamond Dogs , you should finish that off starting with the amazing triptych suite (no breaks between) of Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing Reprise. Most songs on the second side were inspired by George Orwells dystopian book 1984. Then move on to Young Anericans.
Bowie's vision of a future "decayed city life/ gangland city" world on those albums, especially Diamond Dogs, presaged punk rock in some ways, and actually much of the early punk/new wave community in the UK was made up of people who, four or five years before, had been Ziggy fans. The feel of a glamorous, lit-up urban world sliding towards dissolution, fighting and crisis inspired both Bowie and acts like The Clash, the New York Dolls, The Damned and so on...and that vibe was powerful on both sides of the Atlantic. In the US with Nixon, Watergate and the end of the Vietnam war, in the UK with the oil price shocks, heavy recession and disastrous state finances while the country still wanted to see itself as a great power. I think in some ways Supertramp were also commenting on the same feel of "dusk of the old Empire" and a mounting crisis, on the COTC album, though it's poles apart from Bowie and punk rock musically.
Face it dude...ya love Bowie and you'll hopefully be doing ALL his early albums! As Julie Andrews sang in 'The Sound Of Music'...'start at the very beginning, it's a very good place to start'. SPACE ODDITY should be your next port of call. It's a fabulous album!!!
@@L33ReactsDiamond Dogs is a grower but it's brilliant and totally raw. The Sweet Thing suite is one of the greatest things he's ever done and there are a bunch of super weird sleeper hits on it.
@@L33ReactsDiamond Dogs is extremely underrated, one of his darkest and weirdest albums. About half of the songs are from a planned musical adaptation of George Orwell's 1984 (but sadly Orwell's estate said no you drugged up mad man you can't do that)
While an album of covers, Pin-Ups should not be bypassed: it features the end of his collaborating with Ronson and Bolder (Woody is replaced by Aynsley Dunbar).
At 4:38 on this version of Jean Genie you are listening to, Bowie says, “ he can’t drive, he’s Mark Bolan” instead of the usual lyrics, “he can’t drive his module”. This is in tribute to Mark Bolan of T Rex who had recently fatally wrapped his sports car around a tree.
Diamond Dogs / Young Americans / Stationtostation / Low / Heroes are all top albums, so are Lodger / Scary Monsters / Let’s Dance - but the signs are there that he was starting to wane, Tonight has poor reviews, but I like it, though he was relying more on covers and re-workings of older songs he did with Iggy Pop. Bowie’s creativity diminished somewhat, until starting to recover it with Black Tie White Noise. His 1. Outside album with Brian Eno was polarising, I love it. It’s weird but companion albums never materialised, his popularity then began to increase and I think his final four albums were the return to his brilliance.
"She will be your living end" not heir, which is sort of a way to say she'll be the death of you, to my mind. If you're watching Top of the Pops you should definitely watch/react to Starman from TotP 1972 which is the performance that made Bowie an overnight star (8 years or so after he first started. )
I like that reading. A hallmark of Bowie at his best though is the beautiful ambiguity of lines like "she will be your living end," which never quite resolves to any one meaning. So you can listen endless times without ever pinning it or the song down completely. And yet it feels perfect, preferable to a lyric with a transparent meaning.
Ned coming back for more Bowie. Jean Genie is a crusher and there is a recently discovered TOTP live 1973 of it and you will lose your tiny mind. Lady Grinning Soul as thunderspike1892 said was about gorgeous Black goddess Claudia Linnear that every Rock boy was in love with. She had been an Ikette alongside the sublime Tina Turner from 1968 to 1971 and was all over the rock scene in the early 1970s. Mike Garsons playing on this LP is beyond amazing. You still have to hear the title track " Aladin Sane "
Somewhere on TH-cam his daughter sings 2 Bowie songs after his passing, just on her phone, and it's a real pleasure to see and hear. She is supercute! th-cam.com/video/RXLZPqXCuiU/w-d-xo.html
In the 40s and early 50s records were 10" 78 RPMs and an album contained 5 or 6 78s (that's 10 to 12 songs) with each 78rpm record was in its own paper sleeve and the sleeves were park of a "book" about an inch to an inch and a quarter thick and weighed a few pounds. A personnel collection usually didn't have too many albums, too bulky. and way too heavy. 78 records were made from shellac impregnated paper and easily broke
Half the fun of the charts in those days was watching your chosen song/album at the time climb and fall and climb again. Nowadays everything goes into their highest position then slowly, or quickly, sinks - tho’ does anyone look at charts now?
Nobody looks at much of anything these days,I feel. Either is manipulated or bought and paid for. And modern music is just a joke compared to stuff like this.
I have always loved Lady Grinning Soul.
He's actually singing "she will be your living end". In other words, she'll be the death of you.
Or, your entire purpose for existing.
In a good way. He's swooning isn't he?
@@ryandean3162 Yeah, living end has living in it for a reason. It doesn't mean death
@@ryandean3162That's also bad isn’t? hahaha
I still don’t know the real purpose of the song. I think is more focused on a negative woman than a positive one.
Mike Garson said that Lady Grinning Soul was as romantic as it gets. French with a little Franz Liszt. It is said that a meeting with American Soul singer Claudia Lennear in 1972 inspired Bowie to write the song. According to Lennear Bowie called her in 2014 and told her the story of Lady Grinning Soul. It has also been compared to a Bond Theme. I can hear that in Mike Garson's piano.
The lyrics to Jean Genie was an allusion to author Jean Genet.
Mick 'freaking' Ronson!
Mick Ronson again shows what he can do
The official video to Jean Genie is great, the Top of the Pops video is exciting, but the live version from the Midnight Special is frigg’n crazy!
"The Gene Jenie" was the big single, but "Lady Grinning Soul" is fantastic! Great dynamics.
Two great tracks ... the catchy pop tune, and then a beautiful ending ... wonderful
One more 'spiders' album to come - always overlooked...
Looking forward to you getting to the 'Low' album. Another huge change in the Bowie catalogue.
That last song, "Lady Grinning Soul" - a great band, yes, but the voice is just magical.
It's one of his best croons; he has quite a few. It's beautifully sexy/romantic.
Brilliant, so good .Regardless of listening to Bowie's music,what feels like forever.The talent the man and his fellow musicians never ceases to amaze me.❤
He is absolutely brilliant. I’m so glad y’all but him on my radar.
Back in the day a new Bowie album could often be a rough ride for me until a few times through the tracks. Then it was gold.
You weren’t alone, he stretched our imaginations taking us down roads we couldn’t conceive of . So grateful for the entirety of his Art
These two songs! What a way to close out an album. You've now done my two favorite Bowie albums, Station to Staion and this. Hope you hit my third one, Diamond Dogs, which was before the Berlin Trilogy (Young Americans as well). Diamond Dogs still as a Ziggy feel to it. What ever you choose, I'll be listening...
Lady Grinning Soul - the best ever Bond movie theme that was never a Bond movie theme. Magic.
Remember hearing Jean Genie on my cheap Transistor radio in my teenage bedroom the day of release early 70s!! 50+ years ago
And I realised that this guy was special !!!...
Hi L33
if you are doing Diamond Dogs next then remember that Sweet Thing, Candidate, and Sweet Thing (reprise) is considered one song, a suite
And one of his very greatest vocals. Stunning.
Don’t forget the album “Diamond Dogs”
Sitting down listening to his mystical voice
"She will be your living end."
The Jean Genie - wild times on that one
Bowie's lyrics have always faded to the obscure, but, with The Jean Genie, they're genuinely incomprehensible! 🤗
Inspired by French gay writer (and sometime prison convict) Jean Genet, who lived well before the days of gay lib. :)
@louise_rose And Simple Minds got their name from this one, " So Simple Minded he can't drive his module "
@@James-hd6ez Yes, I've long been aware of that. Great band, too - and Jim Kerr has recounted the decisive impression that seeing Bowie /Ziggy live in concert made on him at the age of fourteen.
Bowie called Aladdin Sane "Ziggy goes to America". After this album in 1973/1974, Bowie decides to do a cover album of his favorite British songs - "Pin-Ups" -which is very interesting - and then trys to buy the rights to use the themes of 1984 (the book) from the authors widow. He is turned down, so he constructs an album (Diamond Dogs) using dystopian futuristic imagery where the world has "gone to the dogs". It is such a fantastic album with some great quirky songs like "We Are the Dead" "Sweet Thing /Candidate" "Big Brother" and so many more. Also, there is the best live album I have ever heard "David Live" after that. Love the channel!
Pin-Ups doesn't get nearly enough respect... they say it's a throwaway covers album... i say it's the tightest and most polished album The Spiders ever recorded... Aynsley Dunbar replaced Woody and Ronson, Garson and Dunbar are the stars of the show
After Aladdin Sane he did Diamond Dogs, Young Americans (which I love) and Station To Station (which I love even more). He then did Low, Heroes & Lodger (the Berlin trilogy).
Oh damn so it was farther down the line then I thought lol thank you for the clarification my friend
After Aladdin Sane he did Pinups.
There is a great live version of Jean Genie in David Bowie's GLASS SPIDER TOUR concert video, with the great Peter Frampton as one of David's 2 lead guitarists. Worth a look/listen.
LGS is sublime!!! Never was performed live.
Jean Genie is what got me into Mick Ronson's excellent guitar playing, I mean listen to that Gibson Les Paul. The video is superb. I love both songs equally.
Wild Is The Wind
Ultimate live jam - Muddy Waters starting off with Mannish Boy and David Bowie finishing with Jean Genie!
He's swooning
Bowie did a version o' The Jean Genie live at Hammersmiff Odeon-London July 3, 1973-the concert where he declared "Not only is this the last show o' the tour...but it's the last show we'll ever do..." He introduced special guest Jeff Beck to the stage 'n they included a passage o' The Beatles-Love Me Do in The Jean Genie performance.
Now we’re talkin!!!
Always thought Lady Grinning Soul was a beautiful dreamy song.
it really is. i love bowie's work so much. mike really added so much to the almost dream like experience that song is like.
Live version from Ziggy the Motion Picture has Jeff Beck join Ronson and Bowie for Jean Genie.
Lady grinning soul would make a great Bond theme
*YES* 😮
David Bowie fathered two children: son Duncan Zowie Jones and daughter Alexandria "Lexi" Zahra Jones.
Garson hits the keys so hard, can you imagine the engineers in the studio gritting their teeth
Yeah, Lady Grinning Soul is magical somehow, the atmosphere so urban yet connected to the cosmos.(BTW Bowie sings "She'll be your living end," not heir)
I always want to recommend SCARY MONSTERS as your next album listen although you may have heard a track from it aleeady? Not sure. But I mean Fripp plays on several tracks, plus Pete Townend and Carlos Alomar and Tony Visconti. Fripp told me and some others that it was his favorite album to play on because Bowie had a way of being in charge by allowing so much freedom.
great request ! especially for it's no game part one !
Listen to The Hearts Filthy Lesson. Mike Garson is awesome on this!
There is no 'story' to Aladdin Sane. Its mainly snap shots of American cities whilst touring as Ziggy.
As you've now done 2 songs already from Diamond Dogs , you should finish that off starting with the amazing triptych suite (no breaks between) of Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing Reprise. Most songs on the second side were inspired by George Orwells dystopian book 1984.
Then move on to Young Anericans.
Two albums: ‚The Man Who Sold The World‘ and ‚Hunky Dory‘ have been skipped. And should be done next. 😊 All his albums are really nice.
I knew you'd love these two! By the way, Claudia Lennear was also an inspiration for The Stone's Sweet Black Angel as well. Great way to end an album!
He went into the thin white duke era after this.
Bowie's vision of a future "decayed city life/ gangland city" world on those albums, especially Diamond Dogs, presaged punk rock in some ways, and actually much of the early punk/new wave community in the UK was made up of people who, four or five years before, had been Ziggy fans. The feel of a glamorous, lit-up urban world sliding towards dissolution, fighting and crisis inspired both Bowie and acts like The Clash, the New York Dolls, The Damned and so on...and that vibe was powerful on both sides of the Atlantic. In the US with Nixon, Watergate and the end of the Vietnam war, in the UK with the oil price shocks, heavy recession and disastrous state finances while the country still wanted to see itself as a great power.
I think in some ways Supertramp were also commenting on the same feel of "dusk of the old Empire" and a mounting crisis, on the COTC album, though it's poles apart from Bowie and punk rock musically.
I know it's kinda late to mention this but "Mick" Woodmansy is usually referred to as Woody Woodmansy
i know. i just call him mick for some reason. my apologies.
Face it dude...ya love Bowie and you'll hopefully be doing ALL his early albums! As Julie Andrews sang in 'The Sound Of Music'...'start at the very beginning, it's a very good place to start'. SPACE ODDITY should be your next port of call. It's a fabulous album!!!
The next bowie release after aladin sane is pin ups, which features the spiders minus woody. It's a covers album, but worth checking out.
The album ends with, "She will be your living end." Berlin trilogy was still several years away. First came "Diamond Dogs" and his soul period.
maybe i will do diamond dogs next then...
@@L33ReactsDiamond Dogs is a grower but it's brilliant and totally raw. The Sweet Thing suite is one of the greatest things he's ever done and there are a bunch of super weird sleeper hits on it.
@@L33ReactsDiamond Dogs is extremely underrated, one of his darkest and weirdest albums. About half of the songs are from a planned musical adaptation of George Orwell's 1984 (but sadly Orwell's estate said no you drugged up mad man you can't do that)
Cool man. I've been listening to Jean Genie since it came out. Never knew it was about Iggy Pop. Makes way more sense now. Thanks
glad i put that tidbit in, then! thanks for watching my friend.
While an album of covers, Pin-Ups should not be bypassed: it features the end of his collaborating with Ronson and Bolder (Woody is replaced by Aynsley Dunbar).
At 4:38 on this version of Jean Genie you are listening to, Bowie says, “ he can’t drive, he’s Mark Bolan” instead of the usual lyrics, “he can’t drive his module”. This is in tribute to Mark Bolan of T Rex who had recently fatally wrapped his sports car around a tree.
Hunky Dory or Man who sold the world next
Diamond Dogs / Young Americans / Stationtostation / Low / Heroes are all top albums, so are Lodger / Scary Monsters / Let’s Dance - but the signs are there that he was starting to wane, Tonight has poor reviews, but I like it, though he was relying more on covers and re-workings of older songs he did with Iggy Pop. Bowie’s creativity diminished somewhat, until starting to recover it with Black Tie White Noise.
His 1. Outside album with Brian Eno was polarising, I love it. It’s weird but companion albums never materialised, his popularity then began to increase and I think his final four albums were the return to his brilliance.
Would love to see your reaction to "Young Americans" next. It has some of Bowie's best vocals he's ever done & it's just a deliciously sexy album 😌
"She will be your living end" not heir, which is sort of a way to say she'll be the death of you, to my mind. If you're watching Top of the Pops you should definitely watch/react to Starman from TotP 1972 which is the performance that made Bowie an overnight star (8 years or so after he first started. )
I like that reading. A hallmark of Bowie at his best though is the beautiful ambiguity of lines like "she will be your living end," which never quite resolves to any one meaning. So you can listen endless times without ever pinning it or the song down completely. And yet it feels perfect, preferable to a lyric with a transparent meaning.
I’ve done the starman one I believe… I could be wrong though. It’s in the Bowie playlist
Ned coming back for more Bowie. Jean Genie is a crusher and there is a recently discovered TOTP live 1973 of it and you will lose your tiny mind. Lady Grinning Soul as thunderspike1892 said was about gorgeous Black goddess Claudia Linnear that every Rock boy was in love with. She had been an Ikette alongside the sublime Tina Turner from 1968 to 1971 and was all over the rock scene in the early 1970s. Mike Garsons playing on this LP is beyond amazing. You still have to hear the title track " Aladin Sane "
Somewhere on TH-cam his daughter sings 2 Bowie songs after his passing, just on her phone, and it's a real pleasure to see and hear. She is supercute! th-cam.com/video/RXLZPqXCuiU/w-d-xo.html
Please check out the live version Life on mars with Mike Garson.
Two incredible songs 😊
Muskalata excellentoooo!!❤
In the 40s and early 50s records were 10" 78 RPMs and an album contained 5 or 6 78s (that's 10 to 12 songs) with each 78rpm record was in its own paper sleeve and the sleeves were park of a "book" about an inch to an inch and a quarter thick and weighed a few pounds. A personnel collection usually didn't have too many albums, too bulky. and way too heavy. 78 records were made from shellac impregnated paper and easily broke
Half the fun of the charts in those days was watching your chosen song/album at the time climb and fall and climb again. Nowadays everything goes into their highest position then slowly, or quickly, sinks - tho’ does anyone look at charts now?
Nobody looks at much of anything these days,I feel. Either is manipulated or bought and paid for. And modern music is just a joke compared to stuff like this.
@@L33Reacts Well said - it's why I got into Rap - there's still a message there.
Bowie.
He was singing "she will be your living end" not living heir.
Oh well I guess that throws a wrench in my whole interpretation LOL didn’t make much sense anyway
Pin Ups is a great Ziggy-period album. All cover versions of Bowies 60s favourites. Prefer Bowie's Sorrow and See Emily Play to the originals.
Lee, I think you need to search for the lyrics before listening to these songs. Yes, one word can change the whole meaning of the song.
Whe-hew!
Boy are you getting one hell of a music education. You may need to revisit some of these. You’re getting too much too quick
Dude, I'll say again. You're not a real reaction channel until you do Post Toastee by Tommy Bolin. Your jaw will hit the floor.
dude, i'll say it again. i did that song months ago lol th-cam.com/video/R0KWsT6A3E8/w-d-xo.html
Sweet rip off!
Blockbuster by The Sweet and Jean Genie were released at the same time. The similarities between the two riffs is purely coincidental.
@@John-et9yl True!