David Bowie - Toy (2000)

I wasn't going to bother on the grounds that I don't just automatically spunk up a wad of cash every time I see that the latest squeeze of the postmortem Bowie udder has yielded yet another boxed set of unreleased answering machine messages, this time issued as fifteen 8" picture discs depicting the master's kneecaps through the ages and yours for just fifty billion smackers, you fucking chump; but then the American government gave me a whole bunch of money and I thought, fuck it - I'll only regret it if I don't.

Toy, as everyone in the universe knows, was Bowie doing covers of songs first recorded by himself back when he was merely a calf. The selling point - aside from it being Bowie - seems to be how much fun you can tell they were having, despite which, the label were disinclined to release it at the time.

My initial impressions were that, firstly - it was better than I'd expected, and secondly - that despite being better than I expected there's not one song here which improves on the original version. I'm quite keen on Bowie's sixties crap, corny and overly mannered though at least some of it may be, and on close inspection I realise Toy mostly covers what I vaguely regard as the lesser tracks - I Dig Everything, Can't Help Thinking About Me and so on; on the other hand, the lad revisits The London Boys, and he does a great job, a powerful rendering which is almost there, except we're talking about The London Boys, the original of which is arguably one of the greatest things ever produced by western civilisation; so although middle aged Bowie produces as great a version as you'll hear, it will never be the original.

Anyway, after a week or so of listening to the thing, I begin to get a feel for it. There are actually four tracks I've never heard before for reasons given in the first paragraph, and they're pretty great; and the rest of Toy slowly establishes its own identity as something other than slightly more expensive sounding versions of songs I remember from when I was little. So, it's nowhere near as good as Heathen, but it's probably better than Hours, and Hours isn't actually bad so why not, I suppose. That being said, the reason this seemed to cost so much is that it's the same album three fucking times spread over twelve sides of vinyl, the rest of the material being outtakes, demos, alternate versions and - ugh - remixes, none of which I'm likely to bother listening to a second time. The twelve proper tracks fit very nicely on a natty wee 10" double album with each disc in an overly informative sixties style inner sleeve suggesting we play these phonograph recordings with such and such a stylus etc. etc. - and it's all you need, and probably all Dave needed us to hear.