This week’s Did You Hear That? is an easy one. There isn’t much of a backstory, it’s just a mistake that we can only assume sounded so cool everyone involved decided to just let it ride.
Queue up Bowie’s Jean Genie and crank up the system – not because this mistake is hard to hear, it’s not, but just because the song is so great.
At the end of the first verse before the lift to the chorus, listen to the bass at the 0:37 second mark. Rock solid bassist Trevor Bolder leaves a bar too early. You can hear Bowie say “get back on it” presumably through microphone bleed. The vocal sounds a bit different here than the main vocal so it’s likely to be a remnant from when the basic tracks were laid down.
Either way, the intro to the chorus is a little sloppy and doesn’t punch real hard, but it makes the rest of the chorus entrances just slam with energy.
You gotta love pure rock & roll – early bass changes and all.
