Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family.
Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family (live, 1974 (3:00 in)).
Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family (live, 1987 (3:10 in)).
Brutish and short, “Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family” was the only way Bowie could have ended something like Diamond Dogs. Segueing from “Big Brother,” the track could be Winston Smith’s complete, joyous submission to power, or it could just as well be the return of the Diamond Dogs, dancing around a bonfire on some skyscraper roof in Hunger City.
“Chant,” almost purely a rhythm track, is something of a rhythmic puzzle. Nicholas Pegg wrote that “Chant” is in alternating measures of 6/4 and 5/4, which doesn’t seem right. Rather “Chant” seems to begin with alternating bars of 2/4 and 3/4 and then, in the six “choruses” (1 chorus = 1 set of “brother,” “ooh ooh,” “shake it up” x2, “move it up” x2), it moves completely to 5/4. Further accents–three beats on a tambourine every three measures, a cowbell coming in on the second chorus (hit either two or three times), what sounds like a guiro on the third—seem intended to muddle the sense of time.
[An earlier version of this entry said the track's end repeat was a lock groove, which isn't accurate: thus the perils on relying on 25-year-old memories. Still, I've retained the info on lock grooves, if that sort of thing interests you.]
The track, and the LP, end in a pseudo-lock groove, the first syllable of Bowie singing “brother” repeated in a stabbing loop of sound. The idea of a repeating lock groove on a record was an avant-garde experiment, its main innovator Pierre Schaeffer, a co-founder of the Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète. By the mid-’60s lock grooves had begun to appear on pop/rock LPs like the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper and The Who Sell Out (the latter’s lock groove was an endlessly-repeating advertisement for Track Records). There the lock groove was often intended as a joke, meant to startle stoned people who were unwilling or unable to get up and change the record (Paul McCartney said the Beatles were inspired after many parties where everyone sat listening to the ticking of a record’s end groove for 20 minutes).
Recorded ca. January-February 1974. Performed during the Diamond Dogs tour of summer ’74 as well as the 1987 tour, in both cases as part of “Big Brother.” Essential cover: The Wedding Present, 1992.
Top: Try convincing your parents to let you go to this concert.
Excellent piece, but I must add that ‘Chant’, in its vinyl format, never actually ended in a locked groove, and so the coda on those subsequent CD reissues is authentic.
damn, my memory completely wronged me. I could swear one of my friends had a Diamond Dogs w/a locked groove but perhaps it was just a skip! will correct that: thanks.
Hmmm. The key is to listen to the guitar: that pattern of six eighth notes (I’m hearing it always on “1″) alternates every five beats and every six beats – so I’m inclined to go with Pegg on this one. You’re right that the percussion doesn’t follow that pattern, though. But unless I messed up, if you just count along with the guitar, and do every other bar as 5/4 and 6/4, you’ll never lose your place.
I’ve heard from other sources about the locked groove ending too – and because I first discovered Diamond Dogs on cassette in 1990, grew to assume that I wasn’t getting the full experience of Chant. I’m kinda heartened that I’ve been getting the real deal all along!
Try convincing your parents to let you go to this concert.
Since my mother thought Bowie was “that Alvin Stardust man”, I probably would have managed it.
Laughed out loud at the Alvin Stardust man comment!
Great blog mate! I always thought that the track ended with a loop of Bowie shouting “Rock!” rather than the first syllable of “Brother”?
Didn’t know about the Wedding Present cover – nice find.
The site is always great reading, keep it coming.
Love the Alvin Stardust anecdote – oddly enough Alvin’s man in black leathers act owed something to Vince Taylor who Ziggy was based on
This is my favorite cover. For some reason, I’m quite enamored of this song. I guess it’s because the images I think of when putting it on are awesome and terrifying. It’s also pretty much the only way such a bizarrely unique record could have ended.
Plus, it’s a great title! Musta been why I <a href="http://circlingskeleton.tumblr.com" named one of my blogs after it.
DOH. leave it to me to forget to close a string of code…
I seem to remember Tony Visconti saying that they’d wanted to repeat ‘Brother’ but that the unit that they were using (a first generation Bell digital delay with ‘locking’ facility) could only capture the first syllable. Love on ya. M
Nice blog, good info. though i must add that this song is the is an attempt from david bowie to musicalize the “Two Minutes of Hate” from 1984. Sorry for my bad english, it’s not my first language.