"Music is magic," says Steve Guttenberg's character Jack Morell in Can't Stop The Music starring Village People, "I want to make that magic." Jack Morell is the Americanized, dorkified, movie version of Jacques Morali, the guy who created Village People. Jacques Morali also wrote their songs and produced their records. In real life Jacques was a suave looking man from France and bore no resemblance to Steve Guttenberg.
I know this because he is on the back of the Macho Man album wearing a turtleneck. He was that important. (To be on the album, not to wear a turtleneck. I think anyone can do that if they so choose.) And when they decided to make a movie about Jacques Morali's fabulous group they cast Steve Guttenberg as Jacques. What? In some scenes they dressed Steve in white overalls. With no shirt. Suave!
Anyway, I have to agree with Steve Guttenberg as Jack Morell. Music is magic. But what happens when the magic wears off? One of the great tragedies of being a music fan is going back to an album and discovering that it doesn't hold up. The record may still be good, but it is no longer magical and that is when things get sad.
I think albums have a definite life cycle, but that life cycle does not necessarily mean the album loses its magic. For instance, the new Iron Maiden record Dance Of Death. When I first got it I listened to it at least once a day, and more often than not it was two or three times a day. Now, ten months later, I only need to play it every week or two. There are still surprises on the album, but I am close to knowing it both inside and out. Soon every note on that record will be mine for keeps.
Dance Of Death will comfortably sit in my music collection, but the amount of time between listens will slowly increase until its place in the rotation is almost nonexistent. I will need to make room for the next magical album that comes along. That's just how it goes. Appetite For Destruction was my favorite album in 1987 but these days I only listen to it once a year, maybe once every two years. I just played the first side the other night and it was still excellent. That is good, because sometimes I play a beloved album and the magic is gone.
Paging Space Oddity! Paging Space Oddity! Your magic has vanished and you will now be filed in the disappointment category.
I got my first copy of Space Oddity eleven or twelve years ago and I loved it. It was the greatest record ever, except of course for The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars. I had just graduated from the two Changes LPs into the world of complete David Bowie albums. Getting both Space Oddity and Ziggy Stardust in such a short period of time was almost more excellence than I could handle.
They both enjoyed very heavy rotation until I knew them well enough to file them away instead of keeping them next to the turntable at all times. Several years later, as I was listening to my albums in alphabetical order I noticed that my copy of Space Oddity was scratchy and gross. I sold it before finding a replacement copy (always a mistake) and was without Space Oddity for a couple of years.
I finally found a beautiful shiny copy (I didn't realize how hard those were to come by until I needed one) and all was well again. I would never again be crushed when I wanted to hear Letter to Hermione but didn't have the album. Space Oddity was back! Memory of a Free Festival was within reach any time! I love that one so much I used it as an article title. I use lots of song titles for articles but I thought long and hard over that one, because once I used it I would never be able to use it again. Space Oddity references are big decisions.
Well, they were big decisions. Last week I listened to Space Oddity for the first time in a couple of years and was sorely disappointed. That had never happened before! Space Oddity left me vaguely disgruntled. The desperate to tell a story vocals that I like so much on Ziggy Stardust were not working for me on Space Oddity. Instead of a sense of urgency it sounded like a hysterical teenager trying to make a point.
Particularly sad was my new impression of Letter to Hermione. Poor, poor David's letter to the girlfriend who had recently dumped him had always been a gut-wrencher. Last week I finally heard it for what it is. Whiny David doing some whining. It has gone from being a snippet of beauty to being something that makes me want to holler shut up already! at the speakers. I didn't see that coming!
Cygnet Committee is easily one of the best songs on the record, if not the very best. It left me bored and waiting for the side to end so I could listen to something else. I didn't even think I could make it through side two. Of course, since Cygnet Committee is nine minutes and thirty-three seconds long there was time for me to change my mind. Parts of that song still make me shout, "Genius!" and that made me play the second side.
Yawn.
In an effort to be fair to Space Oddity I listened to the album three or four more times after the initial disappointment, just in case I was being too harsh. I was not. The record I remembered so fondly had fallen flat. It's still a good album, but it has lost its fairy dust luster. Without the magic, it's just another album. And after all this time, I don't know if Space Oddity just being good will be good enough for me.