Random Review Day!

"I Would Be Your Slave", from David Bowie's Heathen

I never knew my place, I never know my place. Rarely, if ever, do I feel a sense of being invited. Not sure why it's even important that I feel that way. The facts are, lucky for me, what they are.

Who: me, you, Mod Girl

What: getting back in your car after another radio show of yours, handing the cd through the space of the seats, suggesting the track with Pete Townshend first. We got drinks? We got food?

When: 2001?

Where: in a parking garage the same color as your Ford Taurus. On campus. In Fayetteville. In the car where conversations gestated, lived and breathed, died. The full impunity of your car to shelter my insecurities, broadened to the point that I'm afraid to suggest a song on an album.

Why: I wanted to share, and I did, and then immediately felt like I overstepped some boundary.

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I'm a sucker for the drumming on this track; it's an understated shuffle that chugs along with nary a change (not like Charlie Watts' best moments where he's trying to do something interesting on another too-disco tune) until the "B" section of the song. But the second half of the section starts shuffling along again, this time with some added punctuation to close the song out.

Bowie's vocals are broad, nearly vunerable, with a vibrato just this side of controlled. Lyrics that start out as a longing for company turn slightly chastising for not opening up, slightly paranoid about the way others percieve the speaker.

The backing band? Some string sweeps, arpeggiated guitar, keyboard glistenings, and a slight undercurrent of techno-ish drum machine.

Ultimately there's a coldness to the music. Maybe it was cold when we heard it first.