The Comedy of Errors: The Legendary Stardust Cowboy - I Hate CDs (1 May 1992)

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Norman Carl Odam AKA The Legendary Stardust Cowboy has two particular claims to musical fame:

1) He had a surprise hit with arguably the worst song to be placed in the Billboard Hot 200.  Paralysed (1968) is a blatant attempt to try and set The Legendary Stardust Cowboy up as a musical idiot savant in the style of Captain Beefheart, Wild Man Fischer, Moondog and others. It won him a
slot on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In, but apart from the trumpet mid-section and T-Bone Burnett’s insane  drumming, my reaction to it is similar to Dick Martin’s. But Dick and I were in a minority considering that it sits between The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix in the very first Festive Fifty and...
2) He inspired David Bowie so much that his most iconic creation was named after The Legendary Stardust Cowboy.  Bowie became enamoured of Odam after signing to Mercury Records in the late 60s.  In keeping with record company generosity to new signings, Mercury gave Bowie records by other acts that they had, one of which was The Legendary Stardust Cowboy.  Bowie, by his own admission, loved the idea of the music that Odam was making more than the content itself, but his appreciation was genuine and enduring.  On 2002’s Heathen album, he would cover I Took a Trip (On a Gemini Spaceship), which with its wonderfully dislocated spaced out ambience could be described as the arresting runt of the litter which produced Space Oddity. And in 2007, The Legendary Stardust Cowboy performed at a New York festival curated by Bowie.
Just as Bowie’s star was starting to rise in the late 60s, The Legendary Stardust Cowboy went into a near 20 year absence from recording until, perhaps due to his influence on the Psychobilly movement which arose through the late 70s/mid 80s, he was back with the Rides Again album, which presaged a 3 year spell of albums and singles ending in 1992 with I Hate CDs, after which there would be a 10 year gap till 2002’s Tokyo album, on which The Legendary Stardust Cowboy repaid his most prominent acolyte with a cover of Space Oddity that would have made Bowie’s year.

One of the great pleasures of John Peel’s playlist was the occasional record which showcased quality shouting.  Not in the skilful manner of a death metal record, but just simple, unhinged bellowing.  In the glut of articles I read about him after his death, one that stuck in my mind was of a female writer whose first exposure to Peel’s show was hearing someone shouting, “THERE’S A MAN OUTSIDE!” for 2 and a half minutes only for Peel to calmly announce it as a Tools You Can Trust song.  I Hate CDs is a masterful example of the shout song, following its own logical course, which would have held huge appeal to a vinyl lover like Peel, who regarded CDs as an overpriced occupational necessity rather than a major aural advance.  The slagging off of Bruce Springsteen would surely have tickled Peel further.  More than anything, it’s a great example of an extreme artist in charge of his material rather than benefitting from people laughing at perceived craziness.  It also shows just how durable the riff of Tequila is, which the track appears to take as its basis before concluding on the start of a Two Minute Hate outside Tower Records in Lubbock, Texas.

Bowie gets the kids clapping along to a Legendary Stardust Cowboy song.  Nothing less than its writer deserves



Videos courtesy of peelsmusic (Legendary Stardust Cowboy) and gracexakane (Bowie)