David Bowie R.I.P

FATHER OF SLENG TENG! hell, why not?

https://axischemicals.wordpress.com/2016/01/11/david-bowie-digital-reggae-kingpin/

New album very hard to listen to today. It's taken on a an entirely new identity. "Dollar Days" breaks my heart.

What made Bowie so interesting in the 70s: he had so many radio hits, but refused to settle into one predictable approach. Some of this was going against the grain--- coterie singer-songwriter goes glitter and glam, when most Brits are still bringing us denim mustache boogie, etc----but there was also a sense of restlessness, which went with the shrewdness: especially after, bout even before, his production helped elevate Reed, Iggy, Mott, he moved away from "Queen Bitch" pastiche, "Panic In Detroit" Creem/Midwestern commentary, hard rock itself, for Young Americans, then rock and dance with Station To Station, way before post-punk etc---but still looking for something, working with Eno etc. When he finally seemed to go pop all the way, in the early 80s, the albums didn't work as well as the singles, then he walked away. Came back with much more uneven albums, and no more big singles, but he sure tried with the albums, even though the balance of speculation (in the art and commercial senses) was off.
But he kept plugging away, long after many of his contemporaries ran out of energy and/or ideas. And everything I've heard from Blackstar (haven't had time for the whole thing yet) is lovely, and was before I got the news.

"Against the grain" as marketing decision, I meant (he'd already been plugging away since pre-Beatlemania, so learning to think hard about these things, and make tough calls).

huh that sleng teng claim is ... interesting

"*but* even before" etc. etc. (typoing on phone, sorry)

Still working my way through the discography.

-Diamond Dogs is such a weird dip (I think I even prefer Pin Ups as an album) and feels like he's running out of steam...and then Young Americans happens and he's right back in it. He could've done a straight soul album and I'm sure it would've been great but YA is such a wonderful synthesis of that thing and his own thing.

-I'm listening to the Rykodisc reissues and realizing that I've really unfairly slighted some of these b-sides and otherwise-unreleased tracks. I might prefer some of the extras on Diamond Dogs to stuff that made it onto the album proper.

-I'm hard-pressed to think of many 10-minute songs that breeze by as quickly as 'Station To Station'. A fantastic groove succeeded by a fantastic rave-up.

I was listening to a bunch of his albums on shuffle last night and when "Young Americans" came on it was so great, that was one of the records I came to last as a punk rocker and it totally won me over.

https://youtu.be/8nKb2JC7Qn0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nKb2JC7Qn0&feature=youtu.be

Great interview here, good comments on the nascent internet:

https://www.facebook.com/FACTmagazine/videos/10153819928364687/?fref=nf

i went to amoeba yesterday to honor bowie with a couple of acquisitions but blackstar was sold out, as was literally everything else (it had opened only 30 min before) but i found a nice copy of station to station in the employee picks section and grabbed it. so good.

also on my way there i flipped through all the L.A. radio stations to find one that was doing a Bowie marathon (you'd think) and finally landed on one playing 'Young Americans' and settled in for a listen sesh, but then they followed it up with something by Capitol Cities(?) and then Sheryl Crow and then...idk, i put on a cd at that point.

the DMCA prevents any station that does streaming from playing more than 2 cuts by an artist per hour, FYI -a maximum of three cuts from an artist in 2 hours is allowed.

(I hate this rule so much)

ugh

there should be a new rule when a musician dies, call it 'the bowie exception'

OTM

x-posting to me: at one point he excitedly calls the internet an alien life form, then asks "is there life on Mars? Yes! And it's landed here!" This is as the interlocutor poo-poos its importance and Bowie essentially says "no way, we're at the cusp, we have yet to even scrape the surface of the internet, which will surely one day produce some of the most exciting and terrifying things the world has ever known." Which is totally OTM prescient, given his vantage.

Oh, here it is, in tube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJTGXOwH1u0

Fuck that, not that. This:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiK7s_0tGsg

Old lunch u mad diamond dogs is so fucking great! GTFO with this peopleoid nonsense!

that tinkling piano on Bowie's Watershed commercial soundtrack is super visionary though

Ryko extras: the ones on scary monsters are so sweet. I love that plastic Ono slow ass space oddity and don't even ask me about crystal Japan

there should be a new rule when a musician dies, call it 'the bowie exception'

― nomar, Tuesday, January 12, 2016 6:40 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM

― sleeve, Tuesday, January 12, 2016 6:40 PM (1 minute ago)

YES

xpost Only two tracks by the same artist in same hour? Must not apply to college/NPR stations, or maybe it was just ignored by the one I heard streaming an hour of Bowiesongs, Ziggy-zagging through the years, on Friday night---followed by a second hour, incl. live versions, interview excerpts, guest shots (like on Mick Ronson's Slaughter On Tenth Avenue), productions of Lou, Ig, Mott etc

xxp best Ryko CD extra IMHO is 'Who Can I Be Now?' from 'Young Americans' - it's so great, I don't understand why it wasn't the closing track on the original release.

that Lazarus video is something else. I waited to watch it and it's a tough one. Bowie scribbling down his thoughts before it's too late...

I think the most moving part is that little shimmy dance he does.

xpost Or the manic Hard to Be a Saint in the City cover, maybe, which would fit on ... "Station to Station?"

The Ryko extras prove he didn't leave many good songs lying around. The YA extras, "Candidate (Demo)," "Some Are," "All Saints," "Velvet Goldmine" – what is it?

xposts Yeah, I just properly listened to 'Who Can I Be Now?' for the first time about half an hour ago. Excellent.

I love the stripped down bonus track version of Quicksand on Hunky Dory. But that's the only CD I've got of his with the bonus tracks. The bonus stuff never got reissued again after those 1990-ish CDs did they?

Must not apply to college/NPR stations, or maybe it was just ignored by the one I heard streaming an hour of Bowiesongs

they were ignoring the regulation (not every college station has a lawyer as a GM, but we do, for better or worse)

i watched the "lazarus" video for the first time last friday and thought, "oh, he looks great!"

:\

xxp no I don't think they were ever released on CD again. They were booted off in favour of an interactive ad for Bowienet.

great tribute by bradford cox, this part is awesome:

I keep hearing a lot of people say things like "David Bowie made it OK to just be yourself"… and while I think that’s a great sentiment, it feels a little off to me. David Bowie was the guy that made it OK for you to be your ideal self—your imagined self, your self in space, your self as a superman. I love him for that.

RIP, I didn't know much about Bowie to be honest (only had 5 records, including his last two). I was strangely intimidated by his grandeur and aura. Last night was the first time I ever listened to ''Heroes'. So now is the time to really dive deep in the discography, everyday I will listen to a Bowie record every night for the next 24 days.

Also, my very initial reaction was to listen to as many Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Dylan song as possible. I had this deep drive to celebrate the ones who are still here with us.

so jealous of everyone who gets to discover him for the first time. he had a solid 10 years at least of back-to-back classic albums.

Old lunch u mad diamond dogs is so fucking great! GTFO with this peopleoid nonsense!

― banned on ixlor (Jon not Jon), Tuesday, January 12, 2016 12:45 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

My problems with Diamond Dogs are probably 1) it was the first classic-era album that I heard ("I should check out something Bowie made prior to Outside...hey, look, a new remaster of DD...wait, this is what people rave about?") and 2) I subsequently only listen to it nestled between his other albums from that period. So it pales in comparison but I maybe need to give it more of a chance in isolation.

Oh, also, 3) '1984' sounds like the first recorded instance of Bowie descending to earth and trying to fit in with decidedly mixed results. He was always much better residing on his own planet.

Regarding Nirvana's Unplugged cover of "The Man Who Sold the World": Cobain didn't pick it, Pat Smear did. The rehearsals for that show were a mess, everyone thought it would be a disaster, and at some point Cobain asked Smear "hey man you like Bowie, go pick something for us to do." there was a crate of records at the rehearsal space and Smear pulled out that record and they picked the song pretty nonchalantly. Really changes the whole significance and subtext of Cobain picking that song to play at his funeral concert. I'll look for a link, this was a quote that came from Smear around the 20th anniversary of Cobain's death.

current itunes uk singles chart (supposedly)

http://kworb.net/popuk/

Must not apply to college/NPR stations, or maybe it was just ignored by the one I heard streaming an hour of Bowiesongs

they were ignoring the regulation (not every college station has a lawyer as a GM, but we do, for better or worse)

― sleeve, Tuesday, January 12, 2016 12:55 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I was gonna say, we've got a Pacifica station in Houston that does big tributes all the time, including a big Bowie show on my friend Jeff's show that's starting now.

diamond dogs rules so hard for me. might be my most played bowie. on the flip side, i never listen to young americans.

i hate to be that guy really i do but i kinda stop with scary monsters. i mean i love his very first album and pretty much everything up to and including scary monsters and that's a lot of music! and i always enjoy hearing those records. i just doubt i would ever listen to the new album BUT i am really glad that his superfans seem to dig it so much. i'm glad they got a parting gift.

(and even though i don't listen to newer stuff i always liked having him around and seeing what his hair was up to...)

yeah I know we've covered this topic before but it bears repeating that there are very very few solo artists that can match his run of albums through the 70s. Prince in the 80s is closest, as is Stevie Wonder in the 70s, but beyond that there are not a lot of people who have ever maintained such a consistent output for so long.

I've never taken more than a passing glance at '80s Bowie but I'm going to keep plugging through that stuff, too.

there's not a lot of it

Scott, Blackstar is way better than a record that's just for superfans, you really should check it out

yeah his discography from 1970-1980 is insane

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRz1tOAa73A

Looks like a good car set, although I'll swap the last two for "TVC15" and "The Man Who Sold The World" (also maybe original "Fame" for this '90 mix, but I'll compare first):
http://www.discogs.com/David-Bowie-Changesbowie/master/43597