![\"\"](\"http:\/\/musoscribe.com\/images\/david_bowie_calm.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
It’s a shopworn clich\u00e9 to claim that David Bowie<\/strong> is and has always been a chameleon. Yes, his music and onstage\/public person have gone through a series of calculated ch-ch-changes (there; got that<\/em> out of the way quickly), but his work has proceeded I nan arguably very linear fashion. Another in the long series of \u201cunder review\u201d type DVDs, David Bowie: The Calm Before the Storm<\/em> applies a critical perspective to Bowie’s first four albums.<\/p>\n Drawing upon the now familiar (or familiar to anyone who’s watched as many Chrome Dream productions as I have) battery of music journos, former collaborators and occasional scenesters, The Calm Before the Storm<\/em> moves quickly through assessments of Bowie’s early recorded output. After dispensing with his David Jones and the Lower Third<\/strong> work in a cursory fashion (to be fair, it doesn’t deserve more), the film examines his self-titled debut, arguing that it was influenced by equal parts Anthony Newley<\/strong> and Syd Barrett<\/strong>. Your mileage may vary, but I hear a lot of Newley and not much Syd in numbers like \u201cLove You Till Tuesday.\u201d<\/p>\n After that record went nowhere, Bowie worked harder on his songwriting, hooked up with producer Tony Visconti<\/strong> and created another self-titled album, this one much more in a Donovan<\/strong> vein. But when events conspired to help make \u201cSpace Oddity\u201d (a track that Visconti passed on) a hit, that album \u2013 re-released as Space Oddity<\/em> \u2013 helped launch him into the commercial stratosphere.<\/p>\n But after the second LP’s initial release, it was time for another change. The Man Who Sold the World<\/em> is described in this critical review DVD as \u201cdark,\u201d \u201cdrug-addled\u201d and in other arguably negative terms, but it’s more of a piece with what would come later than anything else Bowie did on his other early work. The fourth album, Hunky Dory<\/em>, is widely (and on this DVD) hailed as the finest release of Bowie’s early career, but I’ve never been all that fond of it: it’s too precious by half, far too dated (unlike \u201cThe Man Who Sold the World,\u201d which sounded as fresh when Nirvana<\/strong> covered it as the day it was written), and a bit too English Music Hall for my tastes. Plus, Mick Ronson<\/strong> got more guitar parts on The Man Who Sold the World<\/em> than on Hunky Dory<\/em>; the former rocks while the latter rarely does so.<\/p>\n The Calm Before the Storm<\/em> is relatively brief at just over an hour. The bonus material \u2013 nothing astounding \u2013 adds a few more minutes. The talking heads chosen for this project do know their subject, though. Kris Needs<\/strong> is particularly insightful, as is (via archival footage) the late John Peel<\/strong>. A number of Bowie’s early musical collaborators (he might call them sidemen) add a good deal of interesting information; they argue convincingly that Bowie’s not so enigmatic as he’d have you believe. And Australian-born, UK-based music journalist Andrew Mueller<\/strong> does a first-rate job of creeping this viewer out by looking, sounding and acting uncannily like the late and sorely missed Paul Hester<\/strong> (Split Enz<\/strong>, Crowded House<\/strong>).<\/p>\n Sometimes the visuals don’t make a helluva lot of contextual sense; this is an unfortunate hallmark of the otherwise solid Chrome Dreams productions. They want to show you something interesting while the audio of a relevant song plays, so they sometimes slap on whatever’s at hand. In the case of “The Man Who Sold the World,” it’s a clip from Carol Reed<\/strong>‘s cold-war noirish 1949 thriller The Third Man<\/em>, a scene with Joseph Cotten<\/strong> and Orson Welles<\/strong>. What that has to do with a Bowie song from the dawn of the 1970s will remain a mystery.<\/p>\n The Calm Before the Storm<\/em> feels like \u2013 and almost assuredly is \u2013 the first in a series of critical overviews of Bowie\u2019s work. It doesn\u2019t cover the most interesting phase of the man’s recording career, but it’s a necessary prologue to what would follow.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/musoscribe.com\/images\/icon_twitter_small.jpg\"){kind=icon}
Twitter<\/a> and get notified