Velvet Goldmine

This is one of my favorite albums, and I say that as a casual fan of both the original era and of the bands today that are heavily influenced by that musical genre. It's not meant to be a beginner's course in glam music, but it serves that purpose well anyway. We've got the dreamy, atmospheric, pretentious songs, the fast rockers, the goofy songs about spaceships, etc. This is great campy, fun music, and it's, as the CD case states "to be played at maximum volume". The modern recreations of the glam style are done extremely well. Since most of the bands were already heavily drinkers at the well of neo-glam (Pulp, that's you), presumably performing these songs weren't a stretch for them at all.

A lot of famous names from today's music scene pop up in the credits for this album. Thom York, better known as the little guy from Radiohead, sings on a few of the tracks performed by the Venus In Furs (one of the movie's fake bands; the name taken from The Velvet Underground song). And R.E.M. lead singer Michael Stipe is listed as producer.

An album that can be listened to all the way through without skipping substandard tracks is a rare thing indeed. What an album like that is also a soundtrack, it's almost a miracle. While this is a great overall CD, I will admit to fondness for some songs over others. A few times while driving home from work, I've repeated listening to Steve Harley's "Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me)" more times than is probably healthy and enough times that I would have received very odd looks had my fellow commuters been able to hear what I was up to.

Whether you're a fan of glam, or someone who would like to be, I think this is a great place to start. While the lack of any appearances by David Bowie himself does mean that the album lacks a major foundation in glam's short history (apparently he was planning his own semi-biographical film and wanted to focus on that instead), what's actually here is fantastic. Any album with Lou Reed's goofily surreal "Satellite of Love" on it is worth having, and I can recommend this to almost any rock fan who doesn't take music too seriously.


Sounds good to me   March 16, 2004
Gremlin (Carthage, Tx United States)
I was around in the '70's, but too young to take notice of the music scene. So... this soundtrack is a huge revelation to me. Covers or originals for the film, doesn't matter to me. They all sound fabulous. I only watched the movie because Eddie Izzard was in it, but came away with the desparate need to have the music. 20th Century Boy by Placebo could easily be a top hit today. T.V. Eye! Damn, I love that! Go Ewan. Can't honestly think of a better soundtrack I've listened to lately.