David Bowie R.I.P

Five Years gone from Hulu but seems to still be on YouTube.

Or is it? Seems to be scrambled. However there is something else called Sound & Vision of about the same length.

That Ferry and Bowie picture makes me happy. It's like FDR and Churchill meeting.

Five Years has gone off the net because of you.

Found it. Love him imitating Warhol's speaking voice.

http://artvod.com/music/david-bowie-five-years-documentary/

That Ferry and Bowie picture makes me happy. It's like FDR and Churchill meeting.

Considering the fact that, until three weeks ago, I wouldn't have described myself as a Bowie fan particularly, we know own 18 Bowie albums, comfortably more than any other individual artist. Even pre-demise we owned a dozen, and I think only Miles Davis and The Beatles could compete with that in terms of shelf-space.

now not know

Yeah, I believe I only ever once bought a "new" bowie issue once, it was the cassette single of "Let's Dance"..

but reckoning up I have eight CD albums, and about six LPs, which is a lot for an artist I wasn't that fussed about..

and a bunch of singles: Changes, Sorrow, the Baal EP, um..

Fascinating, I know..

I'm having the opposite response: the Nothing Has Changed 3CD compilation arrived this past weekend, and I have been slowly trudging through it and coming to the realization that I don't ever need to hear anything he did between Let's Dance and The Next Day again. I like Low and "Heroes" well enough, and Blackstar is amazing, but the pre-Berlin albums never did anything for me, and everything past the '80s falls somewhere between dull and actively awful.

you're missing out on outside

My current ranking from the classic period through '95 (as far as I've gotten in my recent voyage through his discography) would be:

Young Americans through Scary Monsters > Hunky Dory through Aladdin Sane > Diamond Dogs/Pin Ups >>> Man Who Sold The World > Outside > '80s soundtrack songs and 'Loving The Alien' and 'Blue Jean' > Let's Dance > '87-'93 (in roughly reverse chronological order) >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Tonight

I can't decide whether Outside is amazing or a mess. Maybe it's just an amazing mess.

It's like a peanut butter stack: you see it and think "omg that looks so good, I'm going to enjoy this" and you eat it and you're thinking "OMG this IS good, my dreams are real" but by the time you get to the end you think "OMG I am so STUFFED I feel SICK I never want another peanut butter stack again, I should just stick to those Snickers peanut butter cube things, they are so much smaller and less sickly".

http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/D513/production/_88074545_bowie.jpg

🗻

:/

I can't decide whether Outside is amazing or a mess. Maybe it's just an amazing mess.

I think this post, which I’ve been noodling on for most of the last week, is probably more relevant to this thread than the Outside one. But here goes:

A lot of has been written about Bowie’s legacy since his passing, but for me, the thing I keep coming back to is the fact, or perception anyway, that Bowie was the guy who spotted trends before they were trends and brought them into the mainstream. Outside very clearly—and very self-consciously—was designed to explore that side of Bowie's persona. Yes, it was a celebration of “outsider” art and the sordid characters that produce it, but even more than that, a tribute to Bowie's own mythology for championing, popularizing, consuming, and, ultimately, discarding those artists and movements before moving on to something else.

Candidly, I think Bowie understood the significance of that role—as Lester Bangs wrote about Young Americans, Bowie's best work often seemed to be when he failed at something so wildly that it became something else entirely—but don’t think he was ever entirely satisfied playing it. Deep down, Bowie really did wish he could be a pop hermit like Scott Walker or a performance artist like Chris Burden physically harming himself for his art. But as his copious interviews on the talk show circuit reveal, he also wanted to be loved, admired and appreciated.

I realize now that this is one of the reasons I have always found Outside so fascinating, because it not only self-consciously exploits that tension — but the project itself was consumed by it, transforming from the ambitious, careening, improvised opera about “outsider" art it was initially conceived as into a messy, overstuffed “gothic non-linear hyper-cycle” into an art rock concept album, the subject of which is "David Bowie."

That’s why, even tho PAotD judges Outside to be something of a failure … I’m not sure it actually is. The songs are great. The bootlegged Leon sessions that started it off are completely unique. The story is intentionally batshit and incomprehensible. Not everything works and some of it is baffling, but it’s never boring. As a result, the project as a whole feels like…pretty much everything Bowie ever did. And on those terms, I feel like it has to be judged as one of his most important releases.

Wow

Yeah, like I said, I'd been tossing that around for a week.

I have no trouble ranking 1. Outside as his best since the late seventies.

Digression but:

Bowie's best work often seemed to be when he failed at something so wildly that it became something else entirely

Thisis absolutely why I feel like Young Americans, as an album, is the true precursor of the class of 79 postpunkers: Gang of Four, PiL, The Pop Group, The Fall, The Slits, no wave...to my mind YA p much is the turning the point, the exact moment when the ebb of the 60s ended and the fliw of the 80s began...

The nature of art, right? William Carlos Williams started as an H.D. mimic. Keith Richards practiced Chuck Berry and they came out sounding wrong.

Yeah, thats true

Never in the history of art

Teenage Fanclub expressed this perfectly in an NME singles of the year panel in about 1996, re: Ocean Colour Scene. "They're too talented; they try to mimic something and they're so good they sound exactly like it, but it's when you try and fail that you make something new and interesting." Or summat to that effect.

Definitely, though I suspect some of the anti-pop weirdness of post-punk's take on dub and funk can be specifically traced back to Bowie's alien-ness and his strong misinterpretation of Philly soul

Teenage Fanclub expressed this perfectly in an NME singles of the year panel in about 1996, re: Ocean Colour Scene. "They're too talented; they try to mimic something and they're so good they sound exactly like it, but it's when you try and fail that you make something new and interesting." Or summat to that effect.

― Hey Bob (Scik Mouthy), Wednesday, February 3, 2016 6:49 PM (32 minutes ago)

Teenage Fanclub have never successfully replicated the sound of Big Star, The Byrds, Dinosaur Jr etc, they've always ended up sounding like themselves, even when they stole bits from others' songs

One might be tempted to say the same about Ocean Colour Scene... if one could remember what they sounded like.

haha ouch!

the local indie theater showed the ziggy stardust film the other night as a tribute and i went. just an amazing experience, great sound, with a totally packed theater cheering and clapping after every song. found myself tearing up a couple times. really did feel like everyone was somehow willing it to be the bowie concert experience we can't ever have again.

that sounds so great

Yup.

Had no idea backing vocalist Robin Clark and Carlos Alomar were a couple. She has some charming photos from Young American sessions posted on her Twitter feed. Got me a wee bit choked up again for some reason.

oh no way, that's so sweet

so

so

so

hi :/

keep coming back to the laughing gnome, this cover from the buxton thing is great

https://soundcloud.com/sweeping-the-nation/scott-walker-the-laughing

So funny that the Laughing Gnome has become sort of this running Bowie joke.

Bowie in on it too!

https://youtu.be/-0nn-35Tt-Y

ILM's collective blood boils
http://pitchfork.com/news/63321-listen-to-amanda-palmer-and-jherek-bischoffs-david-bowie-covers-ep-featuring-neil-gaiman-john-cameron-mitchell-anna-calvi/

we could have pre-covered that one if they had warned us...

hey btw isn't it kind of interesting how Errol Brown from Hot Chocolate sounds real bowie-esque?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFYOHrwi-W8

His singing on A Reality Tour is pretty great throughout isn't it? Listening to the line album for the first time rn

Live album

Yup.

Had no idea backing vocalist Robin Clark and Carlos Alomar were a couple. She has some charming photos from Young American sessions posted on her Twitter feed. Got me a wee bit choked up again for some reason.

On a similar note, I was surprised Tony Visconti married May Pang (Lennon's lost weekend GF) AND she's one of the dancers in Bowie's Fashion video.

Hmm, from Mary Hopkin to May Pang!

On a similar note, I was surprised Tony Visconti married May Pang (Lennon's lost weekend GF) AND she's one of the dancers in Bowie's Fashion video.

― Darin, Friday, February 5, 2016 11:27 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah that blows my mind, they had a couple kids, too.

Hmm, from Mary Hopkin to May Pang!

With that bgd singer he kissed by the Berlin Wall in between.

He trots that story out in literally every interview about the making of "Heroes." But I suppose I would, too...