Actors - The Laughing Gnome

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	Actors - The Laughing Gnome

The Laughing Gnome was a single by David Bowie. Released in 1967, the song was a novelty single, as Bowie desperately tried to find a commercial breakthrough. The track consisted of the singer meeting the creature of the title and having a conversation, with the gnome’s high-pitched voice (provided by Bowie and studio engineer Gus Dudgeon) delivering a number of deliberately terrible puns on the word ‘gnome’.

Despite this wanton abandonment of Bowie’s musical standards, at the time “The Laughing Gnome” would not provide Bowie with the much-wanted hit single.

Ironically, the song would be a hit when reissued in 1973 by Deram, when Bowie had already made a massive commercial breakthrough with The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
, and despite it being (to put it mildly) radically different to his material at the time, the single made #6 in the UK charts, much to the amusement of the music press and Bowie’s rival, Marc Bolan. A second reissue in 1982 wasn’t as successful, failing to chart.

In 1990, Bowie announced that the set list for his ‘greatest hits’ Sound + Vision Tour would be decided by telephone voting, and the NME made a spirited attempt to rig the voting so Bowie would have to perform “The Laughing Gnome”, but the voting system was scrapped.

Track listing

# "The Laughing Gnome" (Bowie) – 3:01 # "The Gospel According to Tony Day” (Bowie) – 2:48

Production credits

Producers:
* Mike Vernon

Musicians:
* David Bowie
: vocals, guitar
* Derek Boyes: organ
* Dek Fearnley: bass
* John Eager: drums

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for The Laughing Gnome ]

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