occasional dream, fourteen

Raw Power is more about atmosphere than it is about good music.  The two aren’t mutually exclusive, of course, but separating them in this case is the only way I can explain why the record appeals to me.  With the exception of the first two tracks, Search and Destroy and Gimme Danger, the songs are kinda ho hum.  But the record’s dark and deeply nihilistic vibe, a continuation of what we get on Fun House, makes up for the mostly mediocre music when judged strictly as music, if that makes sense. One of the received ideas about Raw Power is the notion that Bowie ruined it with a muddy, messy mix.  Sure, it’s not the greatest sounding record in the world. But I’ve taken the Pepsi Challenge with the Bowie mix and the updated ‘should have been’ mix side by side and I’m here to tell you that there’s really not much difference between the two.  It’s a big myth.  If anything, the Bowie mix is more appropriate because an album like Raw Power ought to sound as washed out as the guys who are playing on it.  And maybe I get a little defensive when it comes to David Bowie, but another thing that bothers me is the commonly circulated idea that Bowie’s only contribution to Raw Power is his ‘shitty’ mix.  All you have to do is listen to the acoustic rhythm guitar and the tambourine on Gimme Danger and you’ll know that Bowie has his finger prints all over the record, directly and indirectly.  A number of the songs actually sound like outtakes from Alladin Sane.  The two records are perfectly complementary.  They were released within several months of one another in 1973, and while each is imperfect, perhaps necessarily so, they both also make the high hopes of 60s idealism seem naïve and remote.  A rainy Saturday afternoon spent listening to Raw Power and Alladin Sane, and then perhaps viewing The Parallax View, The Conversation, and The King of Marvin Gardens, would really put you in a malaised, early 70s frame of mind, probably not altogether different from the frame of mind you find yourself in these days when you choose to not live in the past...