Cabeza de Vaca P004 – In-Edit special

I promised when I named the show Cabeza de Vaca that we would cross uneven and unexpected terrain and so it is that we end up playing almost all punk and no electronica in the most recent show! Well a couple of tracks anyway.

 

All the tracks on the program today were chosen to coincide with the 10^th edition of the Beefeater In-Edit International Festival of Music Documentaries  held this time every year in Barcelona (last year’s review can be found by clicking here). Because of the local nature of the festival I chose to do the program in Spanish this time, a first, and more difficult than I thought, but then it was late and I was tired and I am always rushing with preparation. Not a perfect example of the language, but not too shabby either. But apologies for saying repeatedly that Paul Weller was from The Clash and not from The Jam… I had one ear/eye already on Joe Strummer and The Clash. But That’s Entertainment!

 

The origins of the show actually came from an idea to do one about LCD Soundsystem’s track “Losing my edge” which I will still probably do in the future when the promos and new releases dry up a bit. Their track doesn’t need too much more introduction other than the film itself which will be eagerly awaited by many:


 

 

As part of the LCD show I had wanted to play the Talking Heads track “Cross-eyed and painless” from “Remain in light” as it always reminded me of LCD Soundsystem, even though it doesn’t feature on the official list part of “Losing my edge” that was to be the basis of the show. That said, neither does Can appear, perhaps the other critical group for triangulating the LCD sound, although Can does get a more official mention in the main lyrics. Looking forward to seeing the full feature of “Stop Making Sense” which seems to be one of the more pioneering live concert films ever made for different reasons, including staging, lights and so on.
 

 

The punk stuff in the show we have more or less dealt with serendipitously in different posts including the one on punk  and the second show which dealt with Tresor, Berlin and Detroit.

 

The only things additional to report here, especially for the English speakers who won’t catch me saying it in Spanish are the fight between Paul Weller and Sid Vicious over the Sex Pistols use of the bass guitar riff from “In the city” in “Holidays in the Sun”. The damage done by Weller on Vicious was apparently permanent (at least until his death not long after) with the irony being that Vicious had been incensed that Weller had dare claim that the riff was stolen, when all and sundry knew it had been, but he’d felt it worth fighting for anyway.

 

 

I chose to put in the live version of “New York” recorded at Chelmsford Prison, one of the only prison gigs I know of, except for Elvis Presley’s “Jailhouse Rock”, Johnny Cash in St Quentin’s prison in 1958 and The Cramps playing, of all places, California State Mental Hospital on June 13, 1978.

 

 

 

“Somebody told me you people were crazy, but you seem alright to me”

- Lux Interior

 

There is a great joke and insult by Johnny Rotten at the end of the track where he says

 

“Best captive audience I ever played for. Boring, you’re boring me. I bet you all have piles from sitting down too much”

 

Joe Strummer has two films about him, the more well-known Julien Temple film “The future is unwritten” as well as a Spanish film “Quiero tener una ferreteria en Andalucía” (y no “Quiero hacer una ferreteria en Andalucía” like I say in the show – lo siento mucho).

 

Finally, in the Joy Division track (another track from Jon Savage’s compilation) you can apparently hear the group eating crisps (patatas) at the start of the track, well drenched in reverb by Martin Hannett.

The Ice T track was chosen as it relates to the three films that he stars in, or appears in in the festival this year that relate to Hip Hop.

“Planet Rock: The Story Of Hip Hop And The Crack Generation”,

 

“Something from Nothing The Art of Rap”

And finally “Uprising: Hip Hop and The LA Riots”

 

  

The track “New Jack Hustler” from the “O.G. Original Gangster” album of 1991 is also one of the first examples of gangster rap, but was also used in soundtrack to the Mario van Peebles-directed film “New Jack City” starring Wesley Snipes as well as Ice T and Chris Rock amongst others.

 

Those with a keen sense of humour might also see the irony in the use of the term “O.G.” for “Over gold”, a syndrome by which African Americans die in ghettos from wearing too many gold chains a-la Mr T in the blackploitation comedy “I´m gonna get you sucka” which also stars Chris Rock as well as Isaac Hayes and was directed by the Keenan Ivory Wayans of “Scary Movie“ and more fame.

 

The classic scene with (young) Chris Rock and Isaac Hayes:

 

Rest of the tracks don’t need too much explanation, though arguably you shouldn’t mix Sigur Rós with The Doors too often, but, as Paul Weller says, “That’s Entertainment”. Enjoy the festival and the show!

 

 

Intrigue and Stuff

A strange musical week this week, as strange as the week itself. I had to contend with a certain lugubriousness in the face of too much work, over tiredness and little optimism about the future while the majority of my colleagues made their happy plans and their way to August summer holidays. The rest of the week was filled with diverse musical crystalisations on par with a sequence pf strange and seemingly random scenes and images.

Firstly, at one stage during the week I was called go the balcony of my fifth floor apartment by the drunken shouting of a man in the street. The man of African or French origin has been around a few times lately, always in the company of his beer and sitting tucked quietly away in one doorway or another. Our street is a rarity for down town Barcelona in that it has few shops and virtually no human or vehicle traffic, meaning it has been a convenient place over the years for people to step out of the rush and drink a few beers, roll and smoke a joint, or even hide from the police as many illegal street vendors do. The normally quiet man was this time surly, shouting racist comments against the Catalans. Many others had come to the window as is usual in such situations, including one neighbour from the building next door. He began retorting against the drunk in Spanish – perhaps an important consideration since if he was truly offended by the racist insults he might have used Catalan. As the man rained down his abuse, the drunk staggered to his feet and approached the neighbours balcony gingerly before grabbing his crotch and thrusting it at him

“Comme ça Catalan?… comme ça?” (Like that Catalan?... Like that) he yelled in French.

Needless to say the “Catalan” wasn’t impressed. Moments later he appeared on the street in sandals a pair of shorts and nothing else, but armed with a broom. He approached the drunk man and continued his own verbal tirade.

“Largate boracho de mierda. Fuera de aquí hijo de puta…. Vete ya…!” (Get  lost you drunk piece of shit. Get away from here you son of a bitch… go now!).

He pushed the drunk and when he staggered he used the end of the broom to knock the can of beer from his hands.

“No lo hagas Javier por favour. No lo hagas!” (Don´t do it Javier. Don’t do it!) came the cries of a woman from another balcony on the other side. Javier (a Spanish name with the Catalan equivalent being Xavier and pronounced differently of course) raised the broom several times and brought it crashing over the back and raised arm of the drunk. The drunk moved away and Javier, perhaps realising his folly, also stood back.

“Estoy llamando a la policía. No lo hagas más Javier por favor.” (I am calling the pólice. Please don’t do it again Javier).

The drunk clearly not hurt too badly staggered towards Javier and tried to push and continuing with his Catalan insults. The almost nude Javier easily side stepped him and prodded him back with the broom handle without wielding it fully against him.

“Basta ya boracho de mierda… vete o te pegaré de verded” (Enough you drunk shit, get out of here or I will hit  you properly). Javier abruptly turned and retreated to his flat while the drunk loitered quietly until all the faces had gone from the balconies and then started up again with his aggressive shouting.

I turned from this scene to my own flat where my girlfriend was watching the end of the reality tv show “Survivor”. The first thing I saw after turning from the fight was a helicopter landing in the sun somewhere near Madrid from out of out of which jumped four women in bikinis, three in their twenties or thirties and another pushing 50. All were excessively tanned and emaciated from being three months on an island scrapping for food with the only noticeable exception being their large silicone breasts which had survived the ravages of hunger.

This week I also saw a dirty looking man bend over to pull an ear ring from the gutter and almost be knocked over by a car in the process. What would he do with his treasure I wondered?

The contrast of images and image within image reminded me of J. G. Ballard’s book “The Atrocity Exhibition” which works like all the news reels you have ever seen distilled into one short novel of horrors. The contrast of “sexy” with “war machine”, “violence” with “decadence” and add to it  the whirling blood of fear from having been close to real violence makes for a disturbing combination.

“Take my hand and I will show you what was and what will be

This is the way, step inside”

Sings Ian Curtis in the last line of his famous tribute to the book.

Yesterday as well, was an unusual day: the forecast rains arrived, but not as a shower, but as the worst torrential down pour I have ever seen in person – and on the first day of summer holidays! The sky blackened to resemble night and the wind began to howl and tear up the trees. We were in the supermarket on La Rambla at the time and had to shelter there for 20 minutes with nearly a hundred others as the darkened streets became deserted. Some men entered and tried to sell the crowd stolen umbrellas for €1 each (how else could they be that price?). Eventually it began to ease a little and we took a chance. Running with 10kg of more of shopping was a difficult thing. All the drains had flooded and the street was submerged to the ankles and there was no avoiding it. Hours later the sun was out and the streets dried.

This episode at least reminds me of some music. M_nus is often a tedious label that all sounds the same and sometimes overly designed and/or intellectual, but with little freedom or feeling. Nonetheless, I am always drawn to it as there is usually something to be found. This is indeed the case with the new album “After the storm” by Argentina’s Mauricio Barembuem aka Barem. The track listing is like a vertical poem in the same way as Lucy’s “Wordplay for Working Bees”, reading “There is nothing better than a clear blue sky after the storm”. Barem’s production on the album emphasises the high end particularly. Sometimes it feels like half the mix or more is located there, squeezing out the midrange as is so common on minimal tracks, but especially on the first half of the album which is more jazzy with its heavy emphasis on intricate snares, high hats and other percussive noise that isn’t the kick drum. The best track in my opinion is the penultimate “Sky” which sounds both like M_nus and the rest of the album, but neatly side steps being trapped in either of these worlds. Droney, resonant and with a more balanced mix and equal emphasis on melodies and progression, and not siund design and texture, it easily stands above the rest, which is still actually quite good ofr a M_nus release.

Like many others I have also been appreciating the recent releases from James “Leyland” Kirby aka the Caretaker. However, I must confess tpo having been first put off a little by the title “Intrigue and Stuff” when the first volume came out. The title apparently comes from Martin Hannett who described the Factory Records operation in this way. It seemed a little cheap for the first volume, but it seemed only to make sense once the second volume arrived, with the intervening “An empty bliss beyond this world” album by the Caretaker also playing an important role. Putting on the second volume I was expecting it to sound like the recent Caretaker set, which in itself resembled the epic “Sadly, the future is no longer what it was” mega album from 2009. That nothing on “Vol. 2” resembles either the Caretaker or “Vol. 1” seemed to drive home the meaning of the title, that these releases were really a pick and mix collection of studio experiments that should not be interpreted to have any collective meaning.

Leyland Kirby - Intrigue & Stuff Vol. 1 (album preview) by experimedia

leyland kirby - intrigue and stuff vol 2 (album preview) by experimedia

I recently mentioned the Laurel Halo single as something completely unexpected for good reasons, but another recent  curiosity is the forthcoming/current Amon Tobin single for Ninja Tune called “Surge”. The RA editor informs me that Tobin was the highlight of the recent Mutek festival, but no matter what he plays live, it seems a strange choice to include a short, abstract electronic piece as the A-side to a new single.

However, whatever confusion the A-side might cause, you cannot fault the immense remix by 16-Bit on the flip-side which has some of the most evil sounds and heavy bass you have heard for a long time.

While on dubstep sounds, a rare 5/5 this week for an album from RA, for Machinedrums post-footwork mess up and mash down “Room(s)” that came out on Planet Mu. Much better than the likes of James Blake et el in my opinion, jittery and restless,

Seguing from dubstep to techno cannot be done in any other way, or by anyone better than Surgeon whose recent album “Breaking the Frame” has been number one on my personal radio of late. However, there are several things that many reviewers have not picked up on. On Resident Advisor, Michaelanelo Matos cleverly picked up the art gallery reference to the the title, whereas my good friend Josh Meggitt  intelligently picked out the anti-ambient feel to some tracks and the Basic Channel references. However, there are several other intriguing aspects to the album. One is that the vinyl version begins inside the run-in groove, especially for the techno track “The Power of Doubt” suggesting perhaps that it has “broken the frame” as it exists outside the physical space of the record. Careful nalysis of the track listing also reveals many references to darkness, doubt and negative concepts in true Surgeon style. However, it is “Radiance” that forms the middle section of the album and is the only track title to be written in capitals, suggesting that it might convey a special meaning. Finally, in the Sonar roundup, I mentioned Anthony Child has been fascinated with Alice Coltrane lately, but no one seems to have mentioned that “Presence” has some curious samples that sound particularly like a harp that might have been played by Alice Coltrane…

The new John Maus album “We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves” (in itself a very Leyland Kirby-like titlee) seems to be getting quite a lot of hyperbolic press which surprises me a great deal. I must confess to obtaining it by illegal download on a whim looking for “different” things, knowing nothing about it. Within days he seemed serendipitously everywhere, including the Wire (July 2011 Issue). However, I just cannot understand what it is all about. It seems just like synth waves hypnagogic retromania (sic) for 80s synth pop done by a guy brought up listening to indie music. “Streetlight” has some lovely synths, but the singing just isn’t up to it, while “Quantum Leap” (also known as “Dead Zone” is just a hidden cover of Mission of Burma’s “Academy Flight Song” done with a vocal delivery somewhere between Ian Curtis and Suicide.

The slow Demerol-like drawl of “Cop Killer” is perhaps my favourite track form the album despite its child-like lyrics inspired by too many B-films perhaps:

“Cop Killer.

Let’s kill the cops tonight

Cop killer

Kill every cop in sight

Against the law”

What is strange about John Maus in the Wire at least, was that while he receives a one page article and plenty of praise, the recent Joel Ford and Daniel “Oneohtrix Point Never” Lopatin  album “Channel pressure” was given a bad review the previous issue, despite proferring a similar style of synth wave pop.  Here, the vocals enhance the pop sensibility, while the inclusion of rawkus 80s rock guitar samples and licks really completes the retro vibe while adding contrast to the smoother synths.

Ask yourself why isn’t this on the radio?

For a hint of guitars, look no further than “Joey Rogers”

The Berlin Trilogy

David Bowie is always hard to pin down.  If you are looking for one definitive musical statement as to who he was, whichever one you pick you will be wrong. There is always a conceptual paradox that you will have to accept or a style somehow not reflected in a particular era. But for Bowie the man at least, there is one particular moment where it all came down and came together; an era when one could see Bowie at last playing himself. Before he’d always been a man playing a god and once “Let’s Dance” turned him into a megastar, it was a man who had transcended to be a god playing a man. But the era of Bowie in Berlin is naked Bowie, is a raw man exposed and looking for somewhere to hide.

The so-called Berlin Trilogy of albums, “Low”, “”Heroes”” and “Lodger”, actually a quintet with Iggy Pop’s “The idiot” and “Lust for life” recorded at the same time and place, represent the creative fulcrum of his career. The three combine pop, poetry and theatre, the critical elements of what had come before and what would come after, but added to them the contradictory elements of experimentalism and the quotidian. Quotidian for Bowie and his entourage that is.

After all, the Berlin Trilogy is not only about Bowie, but about a triumvirate of characters, all looking for the same thing at the same time and finding different outcomes. Bowie had come from California and years of cocaine abuse that had left him on the brink and often delusional, including several mythical television appearances.

With him came Iggy Pop, inspiration himself for the Ziggy Stardust character that had led Bowie to the brink. Ironically, Pop had been rescued by Ziggy, both physically from drug addiction and financially, hauled from jail to the studio to get it back together.



Brian Eno, meanwhile, had shed the feathers of his stay in Roxy Music (leaving after their second album) and wound down a solo career to find a new direction with these two misfits. Producer Tony Visconti is a noble fourth, but overall his character has less influence to play here and especially afterwards.

All three eloped to Germany in 1976 to collaborate and invent a new musical future for each of them. Destination German had been chosen for its fervent musical scene (Bowie and Eno, particularly had already been heavily influenced by Kraftwerk, but would soon extend their local music interests).  But also with it came the anonymity they sought, away from their former characters and the shackles of fame, to be themselves. Divided Berlin at the time was an ideal place to lose and find yourself and was a society that understood split personalities and paranoia.

But Berlin was also France and the Château d'Hérouville near Paris where most of Iggy Pop’s “The Idiot” was recorded as well as the first side of “Low”. Finishing was done at Hansa Studios in Berlin where the next albums were recorded, though Bowie’s bookend to the era, 1979s “Lodger” was finished in New York and its hazy mixing has the cocaine edge that suggests that coming down hadn’t quite gone to plan.

David Bowie – Low

“Low” was the second album of the 5 to be recorded, but the first to be released, first seeing the light of day in 1977 where it was critically praised but did not seem to make much immediate impression. “The Idiot” was ready to go, but apparently Bowie’s ego meant that his album was to go first so that it would not seem as if he was drawing influence from Iggy. Hailed as the greatest album of the 70s by Pitchfork, “Low” presents the true low of Bowie’s life: cocaine paranoia, drinking, break up of marriage with Angie and artistic burnout after a decade of high living and creative overload. The first side, recorded in the Chateau is Bowie scraping together his life in little bios and half-finished song.

Thomas Jerome Seabrook in his excellent book on this topic makes the valid points of fade outs: everything on this album fades out, shrinks away, worn out or induced to hide again. This is most pronounced on the second side where Bowie’s only lyrics are meaningless words called out from the abyss of “Warszawa”, the opening track of side two and the usual opening track for Bowie’s subsequent tours. Bowie had effectively been rendered speechless from his life and was also fading away. “Warszawa” was also the first key intervention of Eno, who performed most of the music alone, to which additional parts were added. His and Bowie’s fascination for the “very unfocal” forms of the kosmische/krautrock music they were immersing in were essential for fashioning the atypical song structures that would dominate this track and all the albums, especially the ambient tracks which were a shocking inclusion for an album in 1977, Punk’s year zero. This was also the song that gave the early incarnation of Joy Division their name: Warsaw.

But if the ambient side to “Low” and subsequently “”Heroes”” were to illuminate Bowie’s limitations, the lyrics on the first side of each album are full of clues to his vulnerability. For example, the single “Sound and vision” gives Bowie’s state of mind and creative method in intimate and simple detail.

“Pale blinds drawn all day

Nothing to do, nothing to say

Blue, blue

I will sit right down, waiting for the gift of sound and vision

And I will sing, waiting for the gift of sound and vision

Drifting into my solitude, over my head”

Iggy Pop – The Idiot.

According to legend, the lyrics to Iggy Pop’s “The Idiot” where largely improvised in Berlin, made up in the spur of the moment with the tracks largely written by Bowie, were already completed in France. As with Bowie’s output, the lyrics are largely biographic, detailing the duos attempts to quit years of drug addiction by drinking, particularly noticeable in the seedy, psychedelic stagger of “Nightclubbing”.

“Nightclubbing we're nightclubbing

We're walking through town

Nightclubbing we're nightclubbing

We walk like a ghost”

Alternatively, “The Dum Dum Boys” is a literal biography of his former group The Stooges written at the behest of Bowie.

“Where are you now my

dum dum boys are you

Alive or dead

Have you left me the last

Of the dum dum daze

Then the sun goes down

And the boys broke down.”

The title of the album was often said to refer to both Bowie and Pop and their social failure at the time, as well as referencing the novel of the same name by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Critically, while the album is hailed as a classic, many also complain that it is not really an Iggy Pop album as it seems too far removed from the dirge rock of the Stooges. “The Idiot” has also gone down in rock infamy as being the last album listened to by Ian Curtis on the night he killed himself.

Pop and Bowie subsequently went on tour together to promote the album, with Bowie playing keyboards and trying to keep a low profile and maintain the life style as straight as possible. But inevitably a certain friction began to develop, particularly in the eyes of the critics who viewed Pop as something of a pawn in Bowie’s game, much as Lou Reed had been seen around the time that Bowie and Mick Ronson had recorded “Transformer” with him, an era when Reed had far less influence and fame than he has now come to be associated with.

David Bowie - ”Heroes”

““Heroes”” needs no introduction as it is perhaps Bowie’s most recognisable song. The parenthesis was apparently for irony, though this somewhat undermines the beautiful elliptical lyrics and the wrenching waves of guitar from Robert Fripp providing the signature sound, with the three takes recorded in one day and mixed together on the fly by Eno. This song forms the centre of the trilogy, being its high water mark while also being emblematic of time and place. The lyrics probably refer to Bowie’s declining relationship with his wife, but also recount the story of producer Visconti and his lover, a backing vocalist, meeting for a tryst beneath the Berlin wall which could be seen from the studio window.

The track was also used to great effect in the controversial film “Christiane F”, with a group of disaffected and doomed teenagers running through the empty corridors of a shopping mall in front of the Zoobahnhof station, situated below the forever wounded church that is a reminder of the war. The film uses the bilingual English-German version called “”Helden”” whereas a French version “”Héros”” was also made.

Legend also has it that the name was in part inspired by Neu! and their track “Hero” from their final (official) album “Neu! 75” played here in a rare live version.

The instrumental track “Seed of doubt” from the second side also showcases part of Bowie and Eno’s methods of composition at the time, which often relied on Eno’s “Oblique strategies” method. The Oblique Strategies are a series of cards with cryptic phrases on them and used much like tarot or John Cage’s I-ching compositional method to overcome creative blocks and obstacles or to forge new, unexpected directions. In this track, both Bowie and Eno had drawn contradictory cards, putting them in compositional opposition to each other with interesting results.

“”Heroes”” is also ostensibly a drinking album, with many tracks mentioning alcohol or taking place in bars, such as the line from “”Heroes””

“And you, you can be mean

And I, I´ll drink all the time”

Whereas

“Joe the lion

Went to the bar

A couple of drinks on the house an' he said

"Tell you who you are…””

Meanwhile the track “Blackout” says it all in the title, referring to a dark episode in Bowie’s life where he may have even suffered is first heart problems.

The cover of “”Heroes”” also seems to contain some kind of code. Beautifully showcasing Bowie’s mismatched eyes, the oblique hand gesture and robotic poise seem to hide or suggest something else. Indeed, the cover of “The Idiot” sports a similar poise and both were apparently influenced by Erich Heckel's painting “Roquairol”, though some have also claimed a lot of influence from Egon Schiele as well.

Iggy Pop –Lust for Life

After the chagrin of appearing as Bowie’s “stooge” on “The Idiot”, Pop took a more active role in the writing and production of “Lust for Life”. The music is more optimistic and the lyrics more self-confident, particularly on the title track which given the circumstances is a remarkable transformation, but somewhat contradictory given Iggy's behaviour at the time.

“I'm worth a million in prizes

Yeah, I'm through with sleeping on the sidewalk

No more beating my brains

No more beating my brains

With the liquor and drugs”

The first tour to promote “The Idiot” had been somewhat more restrained, but with Punk now in full swing and widely hailing Iggy and the Stooges as their ancestors, it was not long before Pop was back into old, dirty habits and riding the wave of success to oblivion. This video of “The Passenger”, the second iconic track from “Lust for life” shows Pop clearly wired and stoking the vibe.

“Oh, the passenger

He rides and he rides

He sees things from under glass

He looks through his window's eye

He sees the things he knows are his”

The release of “Lust for Life” effectively spelled the end of Pop and Bowie’s close relationship as suggested by this famous video from the Australian tv show Countdown, filmed here in 1979, with an erratic Iggy showing with body language at least, that he was uncomfortable with living in Bowie's shadow. Bowie did however, return to cover “China Girl” and “Tonight” on his respective “Let’s Dance” and “Tonight” albums in the 80s,the later with Tina Turner, paving and payign the way for another Iggy Pop return.

David Bowie – Lodger

Lodger is perhaps Bowie’s first failure to really find new ground since his breakthrough a decade before. This is perhaps not surprising after such a long creatively rich period and the gradual breakdown of artistic relations with both Pop and Eno. Indeed, Eno apparently was charged with directing many of the sessions for Lodger in Bowie’s absence, using only his Oblique Strategy cards which somewhat offended Bowie’s team of musicians.

“DJ” is proto-Talking Heads from the lyrical phrasing to the edgy, post-punk rhythm. It is no surprise that Eno went on to work with them after the “”Heroes”” sessions, appearing first on their 1978 album “More Songs About Buildings and Food” but with more rewarding results on 1979s “Fear of music” and 1980s “Remain in light”. The lyrics also touch on one of Bowie’s major themes emerging from this time, which is fame, mixed with his usual preoccupation with existentialism.

“I am the DJ

I am what I play

I´ve got believers

Believing in me”

Parts of the video were filmed in central London with a real Bowie surprising real people in the street for an unrehearsed walk.

“Look back in anger” is indeed one of Bowie’s angriest moments and had a video directed to recall Oscar Wilde’s “Dorian Grey”, perhaps again signifying Bowie’s clash with fame and existence/identity as he aged.

“Look back in anger

Driven by the night

Until you come”

Legacy.

The legacy of the five albums from the Berlin period is uncountable. Not only are their numerous high profile covers, from Grace Jones to Siouxsie and the Banshees as well as many imitators, particularly Gary Numan. But perhaps the most significant legacy is Bowie’s breaching of the divide between pop and electronic instrumentation and the recasting of the pop arrangement into more fluid forms. As influenced as Bowie, Pop and Eno were by Krautrock, the legacy also turned full circle with Krautrock paying its homage to them. Kraftwerk’s Florian Schneider had been name dropped on “V-2 Schneider”, the opening track on side 2 of “”Heroes””, but Kraftwerk also returned the favour in perhaps their most famous song "Trans Europe Express", dropping the line:

“From station to station, back to Düsseldorf City

To meet Iggy Pop and David Bowie

Trans Europe Express”

(around 3 minute mark).

Station to Station of course also clverely refers to Bowie's 1975 album of that bname and neatly fits into the groups railway themed lyrics.