ALIEN CITY original private limited Seattle 1979 glam / Bowie psych JON TORNBOW

$

68

Original 1979 U.S.  press of LP on private  Dog Star Productions label
ALIEN CITY  self titled 
limited to just 500 copies ~ comes complete with double sided insert
CONDITION:
cover: VG+
lite shelf wear/soiling ~ lite wear/fray to edges & corners ~ small punch hole upper right
vinyl: VG++ to Excellent
clean & glossy ~several paper sleeve lines ~ several faint needlemarks & just  a couple of
lite hairlines ~ very lite press stain on the early grooves of Side 2 ~ very superficial
plays excellent,but, with some very lite ticks & some occasional lite low level surface noise/
soft surface crackle in spots ~ all very low level ~ does not compete, but, litely noticeable
(visually, looks way better than play graded )
SELECTIONS:
FIRST MOVEMENT: When Everything Is Too Fast, Too Soon
Alien City (Overtura)
Get Away
Cathode Rays
Information Overload
Olden Men
Suffer
SECOND MOVEMENT: When Everything Is All Wrong
Almost Every Day
Target Area
Keep Your Cool
Between The Lines (Ruby's Blues)
You're Being Used
Dirty Heaven

Most reviewers compare this to Bowie style glam / psych from
here's a couple of reviews gleaned ~ NOTE BOTH REVIEWS ERRORONEOUS CREDIT TO
JON TURNBOW instread of the correct  JON TORNBOW  

#1

By the time Jon Turnbow finished and self-released this album in 1979, the face of rock music was vastly different from when he'd started working on it in 1974: punk had happened. It may seem like a simplistic explanation, and definitely not the only one as to why this record remains a lost, very rare and hard to find gem. It wasnt only that it was, in an age that was just witnessing the birth of DIY labels, self-released in an extremely limited amount of 500 copies, although Im sure that helped. Its also that, by any standard, musically it was totally out of place anywhere in the landscape of even the quirkiest pop music circa 1979. Along the course of five years, Turnbow assembled twelve tracks of moody glam rock, with an obvious debt to mid-70s Bowie, specially in the vocal department (albeit much more amateurish). But where Bowie had snazz and swag to spare, and was backed by an incredibly potent array of backing musicians and the best studios money could buy in order to perfectly execute grandiose rock albums, Turnbow is some kind of weirdo bedroom genius, obsessed with putting together this relatively lo-fi concept album about some epic cosmic spiritual thing or other (not quite sure about this bit) with more passion and will than actual means, and coming up with a decent collection of moody and vaguely theatrical garage pop songs that come across as unsettling and somehow uncomfortable, like hes been able to actually transport us into his strange esoteric dealings. Turnbow is rumored to have been committed to a mental institution soon after, and while it is definitely a lazy comparison, it does sometimes brings to mind the absolutely out-there-acid-casualty feel that the great Roky Erickson sometimes conveys in his best work. Close as he may have been sonically, John Turnbow was miles away from Bowie or Marc Bolans glitzy glamour rock and roll, but was much more deeply entrenched in the worlds of obscure visions that Bowie only so much as approached during the era (and further explored during his Berlin period).

#2

Someone who sold a copy of Alien City a few months ago related such an enchanting story (while aptly describing the album and its music) that I decided to use it here: When I was a kid in the late 70s, I had a friend who very well may have been David Bowies biggest fan.  He used to play all the albums for me, back when I couldnt afford to own anything besides used 8-tracks, and I was soon as infatuated with this bizarre androgynous glam rocker as he was.  But, like a true Bowie fan back then, he believed that Davids discography officially ended in 1974.  To him, Young Americans never existed (and even today, I wish that were true), and there was no Berlin phase of Bowies career either.  No, David Bowie was forever frozen as space alien/Aladdin Sane/Orwellian dog-boy, and that was that.  In our world, The Chant of the Ever-Circling Skeletal Family never faded out.   I mention all this because, after listening to this mega-obscure self-financed album called Alien City, I kinda think my old friend mightve grown up to become just like Jon Turnbow, the man behind this project.  Only 500 of this micro-pressing came out in 1979, but it was clear a lot of work went into it Jon had spent five years (Five Years, how ironic is that?) working on Alien City, a loose concept album about celestial visitation that musically channels early 70s Bowie while assuming valiantly that The Thin White Duke never happened.  Many of Alien Citys songs are introspective, piano-led numbers, so he also seems to favor the laid-back Bowie of Lady Grinning Soul and Aladdin Sane over the harder-edged, sexed-up glam of Cracked Actor or Diamond Dogs.   Which is not to say that hes completely out of touch with his musical time there are quite a few songs here that show Jons been checking out the early punk/new wave movement (even more so than Bowie himself).  Information Overload is a lost robot pop classic, with lots of jagged, angular punk guitar and the happy sounds of nuclear bomb explosions in the background.  If you played this for Gary Numans mom (assuming hehas a mom), shed swear it was her sons latest Tubeway Army single.  Get Away even flirts with reggae in the same way early Police did, but with Jons vocals channeling glam-era Bowie.  Or Jobriath, with a touch of Pete Shelley from the Buzzcocks, that lead singer from the Doctors of Madness, and Ian Hunter as a child, to be more precise.   Of course, none of this would matter if the music didnt stand on its own, and it does, using Bowies mannerisms and lyrical concepts, but incorporating them into Jons own warped hybrid of prog-rock and new wave pop.  The songs are catchy too, which helps, and Bowied be the first to tell you that.  Theres even some fine female backing vocals on Older Men.  Its a longalbum too over 50 minutes and that kinda makes up for Diamond Dogs, which a stingy Bowie faded after only 36 minutes.  And if you have trouble following Alien Citys colonization story, theres even a lyric sheet.   With only 500 of these pressed, and no reissue in sight, Alien City remains a mostly unheard treasure.  And if hes not somehow involved, I doubt even my former Bowie-obsessed friends heard it.  Its an album thats truly one mans life work, and completing it was so exhausting for Jon Turnbow, he reportedly checked himself into an asylum after it was released.  Which, come to think of it, was a very smart way to avoid going through a Philly soul phase.

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