Ah, such a pleasure to get out of the office after a semi-annoying day, put on the headphones on the way downstairs, and hit the streets of NYC with the sound of 'Dum Dum Boys' in my ears. It's all there - Iggy's attitude in full force, the propulsive groove, and above all the guitar riff that makes me want to call up my rock-crit thesaurus for words like 'snarling' and 'sinewy.'
For some reason the true genius of this song eluded me for many years, which is odd since as a Bowie-fanatic you would have thought I'd have consumed THE IDIOT completely and not left a morsel of meat on the bones. I guess, thinking about it, when the album came in '77 it sort of fell between my early adolescent Bowie fanaticism and subsequent going back and discovering all the offshoots - at the time I was into all the new bands, and (maybe by virtue of his association with Bowie, who knows) Iggy didn't seem quite so new and current. (Hey, I was a kid, what can I say?) When I got into it a few years later, as I remember it, 'Nightclubbing' was the big underground hit on the album at the time, 'Funtime' and 'Sister Midnight' got some play as well; then a few years later people noticed that here was the original version of 'China Girl.' For me it wasn't until hearing Sugar cover 'DDB' live that it was fully revealed to me. It was a great mid-set break, with Bob digging into the guitar part with gusto and Dave Barbe channeling Iggy in all his short-guy glory...
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