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Rating: Tin Machine, or the "tin machine".
But tin, when associated with other words, takes on particular meanings: for example, a "tin god" is a bighead, someone who believes themselves to be a God.
Who knows what was the reason behind choosing this curious name. Let's hypothesize by taking a step back. It was 1988, Bowie was the God of Pop, his records (though generally not great, except for Let's Dance) had sold enough to enrich him sufficiently so he no longer had to worry about retirement.
Thankfully, the Duke was tired of always playing only the role of the pop music icon, a role he did not feel belonged to him at all. His noble artist's soul was weakened by writing songs to be consumed by the audience that crowded his concerts. He was no longer creating, but automatically generating chart hits. Few, very few good things, some notable collaborations, a few cinematic appearances, and, as often happens in the mainstream, lots of money.
Then the meeting with a very instinctive guitarist, very, very rock, a certain Reeves Gabrels, who would accompany Bowie till today. The "bighead" needed someone to make a nice hole in his side to deflate him sharply (I remember that at the first live show with Tin Machine, as soon as David got on stage he pretended to discover a hole in his side and, simulating a rapid deflation, acted as if to collapse, only to stand up smiling) and Reeves' guitar would pierce Bowie's heart with a couple of very hard riffs.
From there to the band's first album (May 1989) was a short step. It was enough to enlist a solidly reliable rhythm section, the brothers Tony and Hunt Sales, whom the Duke had met ten years earlier while helping his friend Iggy Pop record "Lust For Life", and start recording.
The songs poured into the rehearsal room with momentum, flowing and composed with extreme ease. Bowie, backed by Gabrels, had rediscovered the artistic vein lost in the clear and light atmospheres of Let's Dance, Tonight, and Never Let Me Down. The album would have lukewarm success, to date about one million copies sold.
A fairly homogeneous work with a sufficiently smeared sound to recall real rock band situations. The lyrics are well-crafted, the homage to rock also passes through the famous "Working Class Hero" by Lennon, played with considerable harshness.
Unfortunately, beyond a couple of passages and some anthology-worthy riffs (the intro to Heaven's in Here, Crack City, something from Video Crime and Baby Can Dance), the album itself leaves me quite indifferent. Not that it's disharmonious, just that it presents nothing revolutionary, nothing innovative, it's an unexpected moment of self-regeneration, accomplished by an artist engaged in rediscovering himself, through a sincere yet bare homage to the sound of rock bands.
Yes, of "rock bands," and not of the rock singer ("I no longer want to be David Bowie, I just want to become the singer of Tin Machine," he said). A "fortiori" the Duke, with a beard and slightly less groomed hair, didn't even want his image to be celebrated on the cover. It was placed there nonetheless with clear commercial intents, but that's another story.
The band would also record the follow-up (Tin Machine II) and a live album to commemorate the world tour they undertook. But that's another story too. If someone lent it to you, you could satisfy your curiosity by listening to a different Bowie, but don't drive yourself crazy trying to find it (even though it's fairly easy to find, it surely lies buried under 10 cm of dust on the shelves of your favorite record store), there are better things to do in life.
Like, for instance, listening to the albums where Bowie transmigrates from the concrete figure of a musician to his more suitable and incorporeal representation as a "state of mind"...
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Heaven's in Here (06:07)
Baby I dream between the blade and the tongue
Of the rose on your cheek the wounded and dumb
We stumble and fall we stumble and fall
Skin on skin but there's heaven in...
CHORUS
Heaven's in here
Heaven's in here
Among the twilight and stars
Like a rocket to mars
Heaven in here
The first and the last are telling it all
Telling you loud but selling it small
I'm taking a swing at this shadow of mine
Crucifix hangs an' my heart's in my mouth
But it's here
CHORUS
Heaven in one sigh
Heaven in two eyes
Heaven lies between your marbled thighs
The rustle of your falling gown
We stumble and fall like tragedy falls
We stumble and twirl there's heaven in here
We stumble and fall uncertain we fall
Flesh on flesh but there's heaven in...
Heaven's in here
CHORUS
You'll dance to my tongue we'll dance on the sun
We're the twilight and stars
There's heaven in here
02 Tin Machine (03:36)
David Bowie/Tony Sales/Hunt Sales/Reeves Gabrels)
Tin machine
Tin machine
Take me anywhere
somewhere without alcohol
Or goons with muddy hair
Tin machine
Tin machine
Tin machine
Tin machine
The zombies that I pass
The guy that beats his baby up
The preachers and their past
Tin machine
Tin machine
Tin machine
Baby doll
Baby doll
There's more than money moving here
Clarity and power
Working horrors-humping Tories
There's mindless maggot glare
Spittle on their chins
Read 'em pal and grin
Carving up my children's future
Burning in my room
Raging raging raging
C'mon and get it soon
C'mon and get a good idea
I'm waiting on the fire escape
I'm not exactly well
I'm neither red nor black nor white
I'm grey and blown to hell
Tin machine
Tin machine
Make some new computer thing
Not this psycho-time-bomb planet
That puts me on the moon
Poised to meet its maker
Shake a leg
Tin machine
Tin machine
One sick deathless duty to remain endangered species
They reach right out to touch someone
Then wash their crusty hands
Tin machine
Tin machine
Baby doll
Baby doll
Mass confusion-faithless blues
Blue suede tuneless wonders
Night that spews out watchmen
Mopping up another fortune
Fractured words and branca-sonic
Anger trapped behind locked doors
And right between the eyes
-------------------------------------------------------
04 Crack City (04:36)
David Bowie)
Oh come all you children
Don't grab that scabby hand
It belongs to Mr. Sniff and Tell
It belongs to the candyman
Don't whore your little bodies
Tthe worms of paradise
Like Everest it's fatal
Its peaks are cold as ice
They're riding on the subways
They're riding on the streets
They'll ride you down to the gutters
They'll ride you off your feet
CHORUS
Gonna hit Crack City
Hit Crack City
Piss on the icon monsters
Whose guitars bequeath you pain
They'll face you down to their level
With their addictions and their fast lanes
Corrupt with shaky visions
And crack and coke and alcohol
They're just a bunch of assholes
With buttholes for their brains
You can't keep on riding
The pain you know so well
They'll ride you down to the gutter
They'll ride you down to hell
CHORUS
And you the master dealer
May death be on your brow
May razors slash your mainline
I'm calling you out right now
May all your vilest nightmares
Consume your shrunken head
May the ho-ho-hoounds of paranoia
Dance upon your stinking bed
Don't look at me you fuckhead
This nation's turning blue
Its stink it fouls the highways
Its filth it sticks like glue
CHORUS
They'll bury you in velvet
And place you underground
The hatred of yourself
And the sufferings that conspire
To take your little body and throw it to the fools
And the hounds that rip your flesh
Only your mind can take you out of this
Only your mind or death
I'm riding on the subway
The subway down to hell
I've finished with this journey
I seem to know it well
CHORUS
-----------------------------------------------------
05 I Can't Read (04:53)
I can't read and I can't write down
I don't know a book from countdown
I don't care which shadow gets me
All I've got is someone's face
Money goes to money heaven
Bodies go to body hell
I just cough, catch the chase
Switch the channel watch the police car
CHORUS
I can't read shit anymore
I just sit back and ignore
I just can't get it right, can't get it right
I can't read shit I can't read shit
When you see a famous smile
No matter where you run your mile
To be right in that photograph
Andy where's my fifteen minutes
CHORUS
06 Under the God (04:06)
Skin dance back-a-the condo
Skin heads getting to school
Beating on Blacks with a baseball bat
Racism back in rule
White trash picking up Nazi flags
While you was gone, there was war
This is the West, get used to it
They put a swastika over the door
Under the God
Under the God
One step over the red line
Under the God
Under the God
Ten steps into the crazy
Washington heads in the toilet bowl
Don't see supremicist hate
Right wing dicks in their boiler suits
Picking out who to annihilate
Toxic jungle of Uzi trails
Tribesmen just wouldn't live here
Fascist flare is fashion cool
Well, you're dead - you just ain't buried (yet)
Under the God
Under the God
One step over the red line
Under the God
Under the God
Ten steps into the crazy
As the walls came tumbling down
So, the secrets that we shared
I believed you by the palace gates
Now the savage days are here
Under the gods
Crazy eyed man with a shot gun
Hot headed creep with a knife
Love and peace and harmony
Love you could cut with a life
Under the God
Under the God
One step over the red line
Under the God
Under the God
Ten steps into the crazy
07 Amazing (03:06)
I'm lazy
You're crazy, girl
Stay by my side
I'm scared you'll
Meet someone
In whom you'll confide
Life's still a dream
Your love's amazing
Since I found you
My life's amazing
I pledge you
You'll never be blue
There's too much at stake to be down
My nightmare
Rooted here watching you go
Divine in both, our lives
Life's still a dream
Your love's amazing
Since I found you
My life's amazing
My life's a roll
Go go go
And it's amazing
09 Bus Stop (01:43)
David Bowie/Reeves Gabrels)
There's a cry that is heard in the city
Froom Vivian at Pentecost Lane
A shriekin' and dancing till 4 a.m.
Another night of muscles and pain
I love you despite your convictions
That God never laughs at my jokes
CHORUS
I'm a young man at oods with the Bible
But I don't pretend faith never works
When we're down on our knees
Prayin' at the bus stop
Now Jesus he came in a vision
And offered you redemption from sin
I'm not sayin' that I don't believe you
But are you sure that it really was him
I've been told that it couldn've been blue cheese
Or the meal that we ate down the road
Hallelujah
CHORUS
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10 Pretty Thing (04:39)
Think about the good things
Think about thte bad things
Think about a reason to see you tonight
Somethng getting hard when you rock it up
Something getting hot when you rock it up
Pretty little girl let your sweet thing sway
Never gonna treat you wrong
Tie you down pretend you're Madonna
Never gonna treat you wrong
Oh you pretty thing
Shake your pretty thng
Gimmee that pretty thing
Think about the love thing
Think about the sex thing
Think about you holding me, taking me down
Something getting hard when you rock it up
Something getting hot when you rock it up
Pretty little girl let your sweet thing sway
Never gonna do you wrong
Strip you down and take you to pieces
Always gonna love this song
Oh you pretty thing
Feel that pretty thing
Suck that pretty thing
11 Video Crime (03:54)
Ain't got room for charity
Me, I'm crawling with no cash
Me, I'm looking for hot flesh
This skeleton's mine
Chop it up
Chop it up
Blood on video-video crime
Video crime
Needles and pins and video crime
Video crime
I've got dollars-I've got sense
Wonder where the Third World went
Aint got time for honeymoon (chop it up)
Trash Time Bundy, Death Row Chic (chop it up)
Haunt this street from half past ten (chop it up)
Blood on video-video crime
Video crime
Needles and pins and video crime
Video crime
Late night cannibal-cripples decay
Just can't tear my eyes away
Ain't got no room for charity (this skeleton's mine)
Ain't got room for Hollywood (chop it up)
Me, I'm crawling with no cash (chop it up)
Blood on video-video crime
Video crime
Needles and pins and video crime
Video crime
I've got dollars I've got sense
Wonder where the Third World went
12 Run (03:20)
Wish I were a sailor
Crossing an azure sea
Under leaden skies
Under your eyes
But I can't see too far
With these animal eyes
Can't hold my breath
Without your voice
An' I'm danger-prone
I'll be bound
I'll be fast as hell
Without your touch
An' I'll run run run run run
An' I'll run run run run run
Without your love
I'm a goldman
I'm a soaring tower
And it's cold in here
Without your love
Trouble in here-trouble out there
Mainline problems til you no longer care
Get a long-low life-it's duty bound
No hope-no life-no you-ah ha
And I run run run
Run run run
Without your love
I duck the shots-tilt the world
I talk myself crazy-shoot the breeze
Shout to live-shoot to kill
Double up in pain-I'm on my knees
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