David Bowie R.I.P

I keep getting sad again

― Flamenco Drop (VegemiteGrrl

me too, it's OK.

just came back from an 80's night tribute at the local arcade where I was sitting and crying quietly, finishing a beer while people young enough to be my kids danced to "Golden Years" and my wife (who is older and never grew up with Bowie or music fandom in general) fidgeted and cast worried looks at her inconsolable husband.

now we're gonna make chocolate chip cookies

three people I personally know have died/are dying this week, one of them a close friend

fuck

There's no better feeling of being among the living than "Golden Years" and chocolate chip cookies, even when mourning and missing those who are gone.

One-off from 2007:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HnjsULFHmM

"Queen Bitch" blasting out of a hippie shop on PCH in town tonight - people dancing as they walked past.

Couple nights ago I was at a late-night diner and the folks at the table next to me suddenly broke out into a "have you listened to Blackstar yet?" conversation.

<3 sleeve

i keep thinking I want to do some Bowie karaoke but me ugly-crying on my knees singing Starman prob isnt what ppl need to see

"Ziggy Stardust" has always been my go-to karaoke song. Don't think I could manage it right now (hell, I can't even play the "Rebel Rebel" riff without breaking down)

i sang life on mars to myself in the shower the morning after he died, it's the only song of his i havent played yet

i cant

;_;

i sang "heroes" at karaoke on wednesday and discovered 1) it's in my range 2) can't get through it without crying

Los Angeles folks - big Bowie remembrance gig at HM157 on Saturday night. Should be fun!
https://www.facebook.com/events/177258945965503/

I know this has been talked and written about a million times by now, but I finally gave Blackstar a thorough listen and watched the videos. Jesus Christ, what a brilliant, chilling, profound way for an artist to go out. Will take some time to digest.

I decided to teetotal tonight, thus sparing the free karaoke room at the arts complex opening party from my rendition of "All The Young Dudes" (since I'm closer in range to Hunter than Bowie).

that buxton show is terrific, is there some easy way to do an mp3 rip of it? hope they keep it up

scott walker doing laughing gnome had me irl lolling

the gilmour fan around 6:48 in that comfortably numb live with bowie doing verses also brought a smile to my face

my friend's DJ thing tonight in W'burg

https://www.facebook.com/events/1535486980077558/

what about going backwards to his 1st album?

never spent much time with this before, but silly boy blue really got to me this morning...

You wish and wish, and wish again
You've tried so hard to fly
You'll never leave your body now
You've got to wait to die

damn

Don't recommend trying to sing Kooks to your kids, in the way I used to do when they were smaller and Bowie was still with us. Made a rod for my own back there. :/

Buxton MP3 is available - let me find the link (though it's not as good quality as streaming it on iPlayer). Alternatively I can Dropbox it to you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvMbkg1ZoFc

I'm really caught off guard by how hard this is hitting me. I didn't even think I was among the bigger Bowie fans I knew, but it's like he was someone I hoped would always be around, giving us his take on each decade, guiding us through postmodernity.

I feel like popular culture just needs a Bowie, and there isn't another Bowie.

Alex In NYC said in a Facebook post "Honestly, how’s this all supposed to work without Bowie?" and I can't think of anything better to say.

I listened to the rebroadcasted Terry Gross interview with him, where he talked about "trying to create the 21st Century in 1971" with Ziggy Stardust, and about making music for the "post-culture era." I feel like there was a subset of his generation, but especially him more than anyone else, who really consciously, deliberately tried to design new ways of living and being in that "post-culture era." And maybe this is something particularly American, but I feel like we are losing some of that deliberateness, that meta-consciousness of the shit we are in and our power to shape the shit. Something something social media, IDK, maybe I'm just depressed.

PLAYBOY: You claim you like to work all the time, yet you release only one album a year. What exactly do you do between recording sessions?

'only'

I want a timemachine so I can go back & re-appreciate the 38 years of Bowie that I had, it doesn't seem right going on without him now

and who else is going to look THAT dapper always jfc

I know. When I think about our rock royalty (as such), Paul is too goofy, Mick is too cynical, Dylan is too weird. For dapper we'll have Bryan Ferry and Leonard Cohen for a few more years.

C'mon, if we're talking dapper Ferry has no competition.

'Dapper' seems too condescending a word to use on either Bowie or Ferry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgmhF0XV8uA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAAJ4tTs91Q

^ There's a lot of incredible, revealing stuff in here.

I'm really caught off guard by how hard this is hitting me. I didn't even think I was among the bigger Bowie fans I knew, but it's like he was someone I hoped would always be around, giving us his take on each decade, guiding us through postmodernity.

― on entre O.K. on sort K.O. (man alive), Saturday, January 16, 2016 8:42 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Feeling this. I wouldn't have ever described myself as a superfan, but listening to his best stuff in a mad rush this week was a shock inasmuch as I realized how thoroughly he'd gotten under my musical skin without me realizing. I came to see just how much he really did mean to me and the extent to which he'd informed my tastes and influenced so much of the music that I love. And, yeah, my stock reaction to celebrity deaths is generally an "aw, that's too bad" but this one is really sticking with me. I'm glad this thread keeps floating to the top (and it seems an indication that this is a much more impactful celebrity death than most).

a cool link found early within another link posted on the Blackstar thread: http://www.parareligion.ch/bowie.htm

This quote from guitarist Ben Monder, from a Yahoo interview, is great:

"On 'Sue,' he wanted a bunch of really atmospheric stuff so I did one pass with a lot of reverbed out guitar. When I was done he said, 'Can you just come over and do that every day for me?'”

Think Ben should do an album with Bob Dylan and the two of them should play chess together.

Okay, just read the interview. Nice thanks. I see him sometimes when he co-leads a jam session with a friend of mine. He is great to talk to, super smart, never says stuff just to fill the air, remembers details from conversations we had a year before.

So I assume he would appreciate similar qualities in Bowie.

jarvis's sunday service is all bowie today.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06whnv6

I've only recently started checking out a bunch of stuff Monder's done; I was mostly familiar with him from saxophonist Jerome Sabbagh's quartet. Here's some footage I shot of them performing at the Jazz Gallery in 2014:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XQyLsiZt1o

At the new location? Still haven't been

Enjoyed that "Five Years" BBC Bowie doc. Hearing from Carlos Alomar, Robert Fripp, Nile Rodgers and others on working with Bowie in creating songs was fascinating.

i think Bowie's death hits a lot harder than other musicians bc his influence was not just limited to music. feel if you have ever felt weird in your life, David Bowie was always there as a kind of guiding light.

^^^
I listened to 'The Next Day' and 'Blackstar' on Monday, but nothing of his since then. He's dead but it's not really sunk in yet. It's going to take me a long time to process this. When I heard that Tony Hart died, it felt like I'd been punched in the stomach. And he was one of many famous people from my childhood. So I would have thought that the news of Bowie's death, who played a massive part in my teen years and beyond, would have felt much worse by comparison. But at the moment I just feel kind of numb.

I too was slightly numb on Bowie passing for a while, was much more affected by the passing of Alfredo "Chocolate" Armenteros, but the ice may be starting to melt today. But also was numb when Lennon died. Think maybe because in both cases I was told by someone else rather than me finding it about it through the media, I immediately had to put up a defensive wall which then requires a lot of time to take down. Also when it's the passing of a star this big a lot of energy has to be expended dealing with the flood of opinions from all directions, have to hang fire, biding my time until I can figure out what I myself think or feel about it. Finally realize maybe up until now I always more or less considered myself a little more a fan of Lou and Iggy, but when this happens the question becomes moot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lWwiGIWJ94

Uff da

I've been keeping quiet here because, despite being a David Bowie fan since i was 10 years old (literally), his death has had nothing like the effect on me as it seems to have had on so many other people, here and elsewhere.

You can contribute via your erudition. For instance, can you tell the good people of ILX who Tony Visconti's wife was, which I just learned a second ago.

First #1 album in the states

Uff da

Has this been posted? Sterling Campbell's take on his life's connection and eventually career with Bowie:
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1941338-sterling-campbell-my-time-with-david-bowie/

..which included some random variations on Oblique Strategies:

Every day I would have breakfast with Eno and he would share stories with me. Then we would go to the studio and just try left of center ideas, like Brian having the band play with “Baby Love” by The Supremes in our headphones. He told the band to play along with the song, but do something totally different from the song. David and Brian would listen to the results of the experiment and if they found something good, they would develop a song around it.