Track of the Day: "Weren't Born A Man," by Dana Gillespie

Dana Gillespie (born Richenda Antoinette de Winterstein Gillespie) was born into an aristocratic family, yet decided to pursue a life of blues and rock ‘n roll. Despite having a personal and professional relationship with the likes of David Bowie (who supposedly penned “Andy Warhol” for her) as well as having the looks and talent a star usually needs, things never quite panned-out for her. All the same, she recorded some admirable material in the 1970s.

One of her most striking tracks is the title track of her album, Weren’t Born a Man. Although the album features a cheesecake pin-up picture of Ms. Gillespie on the cover, suggesting the obvious—that this beautiful, extremely feminine, woman is the farthest thing from a man—the song is about something else entirely. Rather, Dana is singing to someone she is absolutely smitten by, infatuated with, and in thrall of and it’s THAT person who Dana laments that “it’s so sad…you weren’t born a man.” Is that person another woman? A gay man? Not clear. And she does it all over this slinky and smoky, funky Country Blues groove that Bonnie Raitt would have killed for. As a mid-70s slice of confident female sexual ambiguity, it’s as hot as you could long for.

 
 

David Bowie (January 8, 1947-January 10, 2016)

David Bowie All-Time Lows: A Spotify Program of Bowie's Finest, 1970-1980

If I coulda been any "Rock Star"-type rock star, it would have been David Bowie. I was just reflecting on that a couple of days ago, when we were celebrating his 69th birthday and the widely-admired release of his recent album, Blackstar.

There is no one who straddled the avant-garde and the commercial music worlds as well as he did, as consistently as he did, in as many ways and styles as he did. While many credit his impact on the fashion and image worlds, I am less interested in that. Many people try to wade into those waters, lured by its perceived glamour. I find that road, in itself, to be artistically vapid and inevitably leading to dead ends. I would say, our world of Kardashians, Hiltons, Rhiannas and Gagas are exactly the kinds of dead ends a fetishization of fashion and image leads to (I blame Warhol).

What made Bowie special was, for all of his wild looks and character creations, those characters never took precedence over Bowie's supreme underlying musical craftsmanship. Simply put, Bowie put out around a dozen albums in a decade, and almost every one of them is either excellent, important or both, with several of them among the greatest albums in rock history. That's Complete Art, sound and vision.

Just as importantly, Bowie lived a LIFE. He did almost anything you can imagine at least once, and emerged from his experiences only wiser and more sophisticated. Only a few days before his death, he still looked like a zillion bucks. It's hard to imagine there will be another quite like him...

Here is a program of Bowie's finest from Man Who Sold the World (1970) through Scary Monsters (1980).