David Bowie R.I.P

If you like the Berlin period, Bowie in Berlin was pretty good iirc.

Yes. Good on tracks.

No one to vouch for the Paul Trynka book? I liked the one he wrote about Iggy.

lazarus is a pretty incredible song

Pretty sure all the Leon stuff is bogus as I dug into this all a number of years ago. It pains me to think he and Eno were discussing revisiting that so recently.

Josh OTM about taking him for granted – he's just been with us for so long. It's hard for me to process that my parents (both of whom liked him but are 5-8 years older than Bowie) have outlived him. It seems counterintuitive.

Another vote of love for Al's obit. Fine work.

Know that sounds almost ghoulish about my folks but it does feel weird to me.

https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xap1/v/t1.0-9/12522990_10153166459701891_1724192041819334738_n.jpg?oh=b4edecadc290532bb88244ed26980568&oe=57074D0E

oh man, that photo!!!!!!

In fact, the set lists are impressive ("Up the Hill Backwards," "Sons of the Silent Age," etc).

I wish I could have heard one of those!

Pretty sure all the Leon stuff is bogus as I dug into this all a number of years ago.

the leon jams are discussed pretty earnestly on bowiesongs? their most recent form leaked pretty recently afaict

Another vote of love for Al's obit. Fine work.

― Naive Teen Idol,

thanks

Alfred, this is a wonderful eulogy - especially because it's probably the only one among thousands which links not only to Jump They Say and Fantastic Voyage but to Move On, the first song which gave me some sort of consolation while listening to tonight.
I avoided all the half-assed cobbled together texts (safe for the ubiquitous sharing of personal memories of which I can strangely not get enough of), but I really enjoyed reading this text.

Another vote of love for Al's obit. Fine work.

Yes, great. I like the point that he was a huge fan, he loved music.

To finish this strange day off, and for once to post a video after all, but this piece from The Mainman And The Mainline slays me every time.
After the false starts and despite the sloppy rehearsal stance, out of the blue something clicks and the song is coming together in such an astonishing, affecting, perfectly unperfect way, it might be my favourite version of my favourite Bowie song right now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTy3ryGZQvw

Yoko emotionally moving as usual: http://imaginepeace.com/archives/21641

Was hoping for more from pushing ahead of the dame, but ok. https://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/2016/01/11/david-robert-jones-1947-2016/

i mean it hasn't even been 24 hours

http://www.eonline.com/news/730322/inside-david-bowie-and-iman-s-enduring-love-story

no doubt Bowie Songs is happy for the clicks

btw you guys know he's all over the Eagles listening thread and helped me with the Elton one, right?

I'm still incredibly sad and also in awe. Honestly, I was looking forward to an era of clandestine and inscrutable albums and endless Internet arguments over them. Little did we know...

I mean, who else would you trust to take on the Ultimate Question with the appropriate amount of theatricality?

Did anybody here ever partake of BowieNet? I still have copies of the little ad included in the Virgin reissue series CDs. It looked like a forecast of a bunch of big current web ventures (tumblr, reddit, twitter etc.).

Stephin Merritt tribute:

David Bowie’s importance -- at least in my life, and probably in the lives of most people -- is, in a way, more important than the entire gay rights movement. Bowie is about the freedom to have any identity you want, not just gendered. Space alien, crazy person -- it’s all tied together, and it’s all sorts of fun.

It’s not like Aladdin Sane is depressing. It’s fun! And on Diamond Dogs, it’s the end of the world -- and it’s fun! David Bowie showed everybody that they could have absolutely ridiculous clothing and makeup, and not just that it was androgynous, but that it was pointedly absurd, like a gold circle on your forehead.

Ziggy & Mick reunited again, pass the fuckin glitter boys

In listening back to old stuff I have to say I reaaaaaally love the percussion/bass sound from the Ziggy era

dont ask me to describe it or explain why i just do

Chris Frantz: http://nypost.com/2016/01/11/from-one-hall-of-famer-to-another-thank-you-david-bowie/

Years later, in 1982, we had the good fortune to meet David when we played the Montreux Jazz Festival with Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club. He had a home nearby, and he decided to drop into our dressing room to say hello.

Dressed very unpretentiously in a brown anorak and a Shetland wool tweed cap, he was friendly and a little bit shy. By this time, we knew, through our mutual collaborator Brian Eno, that our music had been an influence on his, and I can tell you this was a great honor.

David looked at the spread of snacks the promoter had provided for us and asked, “Are you going to be eating that cheese?”

“No,” we said, and he wrapped it up in a napkin and put it in the pocket of his jacket.

Then he asked. “Are you going to be eating those nuts? “No,” we said, and he wrapped those up and put them in his pocket, too. He giggled as he did so.

interviewed him in 2003 for…yeah, Reality, right before his long break. Like JiC sez up there a bit, in the late '90s-early '00s, he released so many records and played around the NY area so often that you possibly could take him for granted. Saw the 50th birthday show at MSG in 1997, which was a clusterfuck, and so much preferred Roseland with his 90s band in 1996.

Was pants-shittingly nervous for the interview, and for that matter anticipated that he would be wearing an exquisite suit from some avant garde japanese designer. uh uh: had on a rugby shirt and chinos. Could not have been more pleasant and less self involved.

Stephin Merritt tribute🔗:

I think one of the most touching testimonials to Bowie, one that I suspect the man himself would have appreciated, is that his passing has inspired so many genuinely insightful and moving tributes from those whose opinions might otherwise be ordinary or unremarkable.

The Lennon comparison upthread may not be far off.

that Lorde thing made me cry all over again

and yes the last "pop" star loss that was this personal and painful for me was Lennon (I was 14 in Dec 1980)

he was like this super cool uncle, I have no idea how I would have dealt with high school bisexuality if he hadn't been there with his advice and maturity.

If you like the Berlin period, Bowie in Berlin was pretty good iirc.

2nded

Rest easy Bowie

This is really going to take a while to assimilate, maybe even forever, because it was never possible to assimilate "Bowie" really, is it? His M.O. was to show up obliquely. His personas were in dialogue with the culture, but we often didn't know what the substance of that dialogue was, so that in the narrative of pop culture he appeared as a non sequitur, or what we might call in these parts a "WTF" generator. And this is so bullshit, even to talk about him that way... but how else? I was eight when "Starman" hit the airwaves, and I never forget the pang it triggered in me, that sense of enormous, empty, yearning space. For years thereafter, he was always there, surveying us, curating us, and biding his time for his next entrance. This distant, unsettling creature was comforting to me, without my really noticing, because he made the world larger and kept the possibility of (weird) rebirth alive.

Thank you Mr. Bowie, and don't forget about us.

Thank you Mr. Bowie, and don't forget about us.

Madison Square Garden about ten minutes after Elvis hit the stage. I had the humiliating experience of walking down the center aisle
Handsome Dick Manitoba just said that he and Scott Kempner paid eight dollars each to go to that show and they sat very close to Bowie. After the show SK made his way up to Bowie and asked him what he thought of the show to which the answer was the one word "undeniable."

great post collardio

watched "The Prestige" tonight. it was great. David Bowie electrifies a cat in it:

http://lolpics.se/pics/9025.gif

I was trying to parse through just WHY I felt so empty and shitty last night and this morning, I haven't taken a celeb death this hard ever.

Initially I thought that it had something to do with the fact that Bowie occupied this kind of past-tense-yet-still-existing role in the world since my introduction to him, but of course, he continued to exist as an album-maker and actor and curator and video game character and so on and so on.

I realized that what I was experiencing was less so the death of a single man but the death of an institution-- the best analogy I could think of would be Doctor Who. We had Ziggy Stardust and The Thin White Duke and Jareth and 90s Renaissance Man and Tesla and dotage-Bowie, same as we had Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker and Peter Davison and Christopher Eccleston and so on. But the idea of Doctor Who actually DYING is ludicrous and that's what I think I'm experiencing. That this continuously changing and evolving and active shapeshifter is now dead is really tough to digest

otm

the last time i felt anything like this was when paul hester from crowded house committed suicide, and that was partly because of how confronting & tragic the death itself was.

this is different, obv. the sadness runs a lot deeper, and it's going to hang around a lot longer

it definitely feels like a more monolithic loss that goes beyond just a person who sang songs

http://payload430.cargocollective.com/1/16/514318/10917782/Im-a-Blackstar-gif-600-945.gif

Martin Gore, from FB:

David Bowie - Where does one start? Is it too obvious to state that he was the most influential artist for people of our generation and younger? Ziggy Stardust was the first album I owned and his ability to innovate meant that I was waiting patiently for the release of Blackstar just a few days ago.

I have heard Bowie blasting from Mr. Gahan’s dressing room way too many times to begin to count. Heroes was the first song that we ever played as the original Depeche Mode. We were all much more than casual fans.

He is the only artist who compelled us to rush to a record store on day one of a release back in the days of vinyl and beyond. His music is what grabbed us but he was so much more than just a musician.

To follow Bowie, to be one of his fans, was to be led on a magical, winding journey. He constantly pushed boundaries and introduced us to styles and genres we were unaware of or didn’t exist before he invented them.

He was a star - the star of stars. For us, he was the greatest legend. A legend who never rested on his laurels but continued to experiment up until his death.

We, along with the rest of the world, mourn the loss of our greatest talent. This will be a hard one to recover from.

^that is awesome

(I'd love Karl Malone maken a complimentary one of the cover of Low in which the clouds would be moving ever so slightly)

xpost

Photo spread from Rock Scene shared by Devo on FB:

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Since hearing this profoundly sad news I keep thinking about a Leonard Michaels quote I love very much and how graciously and elegantly Bowie has, by all accounts, exemplified it: "Courage is continuing to perform your daily tasks, and being hopeful despite the odds, not inflicting your fears on others, and remaining sensitive to their needs and expectations, and also not supposing, because you're dying, nothing matters any longer."

Sort of agree with FGTI that what's so emotionally rug-pulling about this is not the death of a man but the death of an Institution.

But at the same time feeling that the Institution is, in so many ways still so alive, and that's what hurts so much. That ~Bowie~ is not some edifice that happened a long time ago, but an archetype, a mode of being/creating/performing. The Idea of Bowie was something I was really glad to have alive in the cultural slipstream. It's not even about Fandom or about Being A Fan, it's this thing where Pop Music and Pop Culture is intensely tribal, and the sense of... even without performing fandom or participating in a fandom (I didn't do either; but funnily enough, he kept turning up in fandoms I was in) there was a massive sense of this is ~The Tribe I Belonged To~ and the sense that that tribe's benevolent leader is gone.

That analogy isn't v good. Replace Dr Who with Bond and it gets worse.

http://pitchfork.com/news/62847-nile-rodgers-reflects-on-david-bowie/ - touching interview with Nile Rodgers about Bowie. Some good stories in there and some more evidence of his genius/overall decency as a human.

How familiar was "The Man Who Sold the World" when Nirvana covered it? I figured it took real crate digging for Cobain to own its host album. It wasn't even a hit in America.

Bowirheads knew it. I didn't ever recall hearing it, not being one.

You people sure think about music a lot.

*bowieheads