Pin Ups vs These Foolish Things

[Moleskin]

We've probably talked about these before, but which glam era covers album is your pick?

[Moleskin]

Pin Ups for me. I like that the songs are all from a period. Bryan's cherry picking from the ages doesn't work so well. In fact I think only on As Time Goes By does he make a really consistent covers album.

[toomanyhatz]

I've said this before, but I love that TFT treats multiple generations of songs as part of a continuum. And he really Ferry-izes them in a way that Bowie doesn't, for the most part.

Pin Ups is a collection of songs that he likes/grew up with, and is a nice side project. TFT is richer both conceptually and performance-wise, and is definably a Bryan Ferry album.

[ConnyOlivetti]

These Foolish Things

[Mike Boom]

Difficult, love both these albums but These Foolish Things has that great version of Hard Rain so probably just edges it.

Another Time, Another Place however, is better than both of them

[naughty boy]

Pin Ups is enormous fun.

The Ferry album doesn't catch fire. Apart from the title track, there are hardly even sparks.

[The Modernist]

Pin Ups is enormous fun.

The Ferry album doesn't catch fire. Apart from the title track, there are hardly even sparks.

He does a great version of Hard Rain...

I kind of agree with Hatz, but in truth I don't need either album.

[toomanyhatz]

"Sympathy for the Devil" is a bit too kitschy, but pretty much everything else works for me.

And even as a Dylan fan, I'll say it: what makes "Hard Rain" work so well is his absolute refusal to treat it as overly stodgy and "important". He has fun with it.

"Loving You is Sweeter Than Ever" is my other favorite.

[Ranking Ted]

I think Ferry’s way with a cover version is something pretty unique - it’s integral to his output, interpreting and arranging and, yes, Ferryising any number of styles and genres. Aside from a few clunkers over his career as an interpreter - Eight Miles High springs immediately to mind - it’s nearly all nicely done. This album is not all good but it’s got enough and has the best single thing across both records in Hard Rain. Pin-Ups is very much the least of Bowie in the 70s. To be honest, I can do without it, one or two tracks aside.

Ferry, surprisingly easily.

[Brickyard Jack]

Bowie's album is good, but the Ferry record is 50 times better.

[The Modernist]

The funny thing about pin-ups was that it was Bowie getting nostalgic for his mod youth. At the time it must have seemed as if he was revisiting a far off era, yet the tunes were only from six or seven years before. It would be like someone now getting all nostalgic about 2010!

[Ranking Ted]

The eras when trends changed so much that stuff from two years ago was hopelessly old hat and there was no nostalgia industry are completely alien in these times. I still think of bands like LCD Soundsystem or Arctic Monkeys as being relatively new. They’ve been going twice as long as the Beatles.

[ChrisB]

Bowie's album is good, but the Ferry record is 50 times better.

Make that 100. Pin ups is lazy Bowie, his worst album of the 70's by the proverbial mile. Ferry, on the other hand, takes a classic song and 're interprets it, making it his own. Always feel that Bowie chose the songs to make him look cool.

[Brickyard Jack]

Bowie's album is good, but the Ferry record is 50 times better.

Make that 100. Pin ups is lazy Bowie, his worst album of the 70's by the proverbial mile. Ferry, on the other hand, takes a classic song and 're interprets it, making it his own. Always feel that Bowie chose the songs to make him look cool.

Split the difference at 75?

[yomptepi]

Pin Ups is enormous fun.

The Ferry album doesn't catch fire. Apart from the title track, there are hardly even sparks.

I cannot believe this. These foolish things is everything Pin Ups is not. It is joyful, energetic, reverential, funny, inspired and beautifully arranged. It is a work of love. It has been a personal favourite for most of my life. When I was 13 or 14 I got to spend an afternoon in the old rehearsal studio across the road from my school, watching Ferry and the band go through the set for the tour. I even got to talk to Chris Spedding, who was nearly as much in awe of Ferry as we were. Maybe that experience explains my love of this record, but I still play it a lot, and I still love every note.

The Bowie album, by comparison is a very turgid affair. It sounds like it was conceived and recorded in an afternoon whilst the band were really badly hung over. The songs are poorly chosen, and if I am being generous, only two or three of the versions are any good. It is the very definition of a contractual obligation record. In the end it demeaned Bowie and the Spiders, reducing them to little more than a glam, pub rock covers band. For shame.

[Darkness_Fish]

I think that Pin-Ups is a really poor album given Bowie's output at that time.

But Ferry's covers are a car-crash.

[naughty boy]

That tossed-off feeling is exactly what I love about Pin Ups. It's lively and it retains a lot of peak-era Bowie eccentricity.

The Ferry thing is lifeless and vapid - polished AOR fronted by a vain arsehole who gives no fuck about any of it. Mind you that would describe 99% of the shit that's lauded here these days.

[The Modernist]

I thought you liked Ferry?

[The Modernist]

But Ferry's covers are a car-crash.

I prefer this to the original (and I like the original a lot).

[yomptepi]

That tossed-off feeling is exactly what I love about Pin Ups. It's lively and it retains a lot of peak-era Bowie eccentricity.

The Ferry thing is lifeless and vapid - polished AOR fronted by a vain arsehole who gives no fuck about any of it. Mind you that would describe 99% of the shit that's lauded here these days.

Your bollocks.