Scary Monsters, the record which acted as the verve-filled sonic bridge between the 1970s and 1980s that David Bowie treaded upon, is now available on MP3 format this month for only $5.00, as part of the Amazon’s $5 MP3 Deals.

Originally released in 1980, Bowie tips his many hats goodbye to the stellar career he had in the 1970s and ushers in the embryonic fragments of sounds he would shape more and more like a sculptor with a ball peen hammer and a tin sheet as the 1980s began. With Scary Monsters and its wall of iron and metal and glass sound, treble quaking with guitars by musicians as diverse as Robert Fripp from King Crimson, Carlos Alomar, and even guest appearances by Pete Townshend and long-time Bowie collaborator and producer Tony Visconti, and containing a bottom end which still expands on his more white boy R&B measures, the album takes all the influence Bowie used as colors before and smashes it in one fell swoop and lets the sonic pieces fall where they may.

The album opener, “It’s No Game,” showcases Bowie snarling into the microphone, holding notes until his throat sounds sore and sheared and the music does the same. It’s a loud, booming, screeching display of arrangements, accentuated by a Japanese woman warbling in her own native tongue. The jingle-jangle of “Up the Hill Backwards” in which the chorus intones that “It’ll Be All Right,” is like the lying calm before the dark, ominous storm comes via the next few tracks, like the cold flush of the title song, almost robotic in its presentation, Kraftwerk by way of early power pop/new wave. The influences Bowie absorbed from his recent Berlin jaunts at the time are all over this record, the sonically jutting and verbal attack on cliques and their brethren in the hit “Fashion” and the heroin-soaked sequel also hit single to his 1969 track “Space Oddity” entitled “Ashes to Ashes” also finds Bowie in a form of expressing cold turkey withdrawal on a steely, perfectly frozen floor, naked and ashamedly unashamed. Other tracks like “Teenage Wildlife” and “Kingdom Come” (penned by Television leader Tom Verlaine) also keep the dirtied cotton swabs still in the musical ether. The title alone of Scary Monsters is almost like a warning of the kind of guises David Bowie manifests on this album, and thusly, it remains absolutely irresistible to the die-hard Bowie fanatic. Others simply weaned on his greatest hits packages may have to wince a bit when the needle that is this album hits their skin, metaphorically speaking.

Browse all 100 albums on sale this month for only $5 each.

Track Listing

1. It’s No Game (Part 1)
2. Up The Hill Backwards
3. Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)
4. Ashes To Ashes
5. Fashion
6. Teenage Wildlife
7. Scream Like A Baby
8. Kingdom Come
9. Because You’re Young
10. It’s No Game (Part 2)

Note – when you purchase MP3s through Amazon, it stores your purchases to Amazon’s Cloud Drive; from there you can stream the music right from their online player. Also, if you have a Kindle Fire, your MP3 purchases will automatically be available for you to stream on your device. All your purchases are backed up and available for you to download at any time. You can download the files to your computer to load to an MP3 device and to your iTunes account if you have one. If you’d like to gift these MP3 purchases, you can – just click the “Give album or song as gift” button on the right on the product page. From there you enter the recipient’s email address and then select either specific songs to gift or the entire album.