“David Bowie, Brian Eno and Tony Visconti record, ‘Warszawa” (Adam Buxton Bowie parody pt. 3)

This one is so replete with Bowie-lore that aside from the sheer absurdism of the whole thing, only true aficionados will pick up all the jokes.  “Warszawa” is one of Bowie’s more obscure instrumentals to begin with, and those who might recognize the music might not remember the name.  The reference to never feeling so low, is, of course, a hint (the song is from, “Low”).

The overall joke, of course, is that  this is an explanation of how it came to be that Bowie did not record vocals for this song.  Well, he kind of did— his voice does appear, but he is singing sounds, not real words.  

The brief video gets the studio right, and the year it was recorded.  It sets the historically accurate time period around when Bowie had to go to Paris to deal with legal troubles (though I think he had to go after the recording off the song).  As suggested in the video, Bowie was inspired in part by his trip to Poland with Iggy Pop.

References to the “oblique strategies” and “eventide harmonizer” were, respectively a strategy employed by Eno during the recording of, “Low,” and a digital audio effects device used on the album.  

At one point Eno holds up a fake record, “Music for Bus Stops,” which is a play on the real Eno’s real record, “Music for Airports” (could it also be an obscure reference to the Tin Machine song, “Bus Stop”?)

Derek and Clive were characters played by Dudley Moore and Peter Cook— I’m not quite sure what the connection is here.

I read somewhere that tony Visconti does not find this funny— which in itself, I find to be funny. 

As a side note, I read that the band Joy Division almost named itself Warszawa, after the song.