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David Bowie RIP
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He'll always be Ziggy Stardust to me and so somehow eternal.
Mod
Even the local classical station was paying homage to Bowie today. I didn't realize he had narrated Prokofiev's 'Peter and the Wolf' - way back in 1978. I think they played the whole thing, I only came in at the tail end but it sounded great.They also played some Philip Glass symphonies which were inspired by the albums "Low" and "Heroes."
Mod
In the wake of David Bowie’s death, his last album, “Blackstar”, is his swan song, an enigmatic conclusion to a career punctuated by otherworldly alter-egos and esoteric symbolism. We’ll look at the meaning of “Blackstar” in the context of David Bowie’s career.
http://vigilantcitizen.com/musicbusin...
I still subscribe to the most readable of literature-specific mags Strong Words. Not only does the great Ed Needham produce this hugely-informative, embrace-all publication on his own, he’s now found time to send out a weekly e-mail bulletin. Today’s contains this golden item of correspondence:“On David Bowie experts...
Dear Ed, I followed your recommendation to read Dylan Jones' memoir These Foolish Things. Many thanks, I enjoyed it. But one question arose for which the answer is now out of date, and perhaps you or the Book Club could help. He describes waiting to speak to David Bowie backstage at a concert, but someone else is taking up all Bowie's time. Bowie's assistant says “I thought I had met every Bowie nut in the world, but he knows more about Bowie than I do. In fact I think he knows more about David than David.” Who could this encyclopedia be, wonders Jones, and is “flabbergasted” to learn that “the world's biggest Bowie expert turned out to be the Liberal Democrat leader, Charles Kennedy.” Now that poor Charles Kennedy is no longer with us, who is the leading authority on all things Bowie?
Theo F.
I'm going to have to hand that over to the Book Club Theo, that's beyond my range, although Charles Kennedy would have been delighted at the Lib Dems performance in the recent election, and his favourite book on Desert Island Discs was the excellent Day of the Jackal.
Book club readers: does anyone know more than you about David Bowie? If not, please put yourself forward as a global authority at info@strong-words.com“
Ed has published an update on the Kennedy/Bowie revelation:“More on leading Bowieologist, Charles Kennedy MP...
Dear Ed, further to the late Charles Kennedy, former leader of the Liberal Democrats, being the world's leading authority on David Bowie (see June 14 Book Club), I went back to his biography (Charles Kennedy: A Tragic Flaw, by Greg Hurst. Methuen, £16.99) where the only mentions of his obsession are that “as a teenager he developed a devotion to the pop musician David Bowie” and how as an MP “when entertaining visitors at his flat he would always play music from a kaleidoscope of tastes. These ranged from his teenage fixation with David Bowie, whose album Station to Station remained an all-time favourite, to Scottish folk.”
Shortly after the first mention of Bowie is a slightly more colourful piece of family legend, about how Charles' grandfather once “literally let loose a bull in a china shop.” The Kennedys were Lochaber crofters, and “following crofting custom” grandad Donald bought a bull in Carlisle to service the local herds. However, “on his return by cattle train, the bull charged off from Fort William station and found its way into a gift shop.” Fortunately farmer Kennedy was able to persuade the majestic beast to leave “without a single breakage.”
Gordon G.
Thank you for that excellent piece of Highland animal husbandry Gordon. I feel it should be set to a ballad. Ed
Book club readers: can you confirm that Station to Station was Charles Kennedy's favourite Bowie album? Did you ever listen to it with him?Reminisce here: info@strong-words.com”
Mod
I was listening to the Bowie episode of Max Bell's Dead Rockstar's podcast the other day
It's got a few amusing DB anecdotes not least him hanging out with The Exploited in Switzerland. Strange but true
Suzi Ronson’s Me and Mr Jones is on my to-do list. I heard her discuss life with Ronno on a couple of podcasts when it was published and it sounds like a very interesting tale. This clip regularly comes up on some feed or other that’s worked out my limited-perimeter algorithm.
https://youtu.be/P4wqgLU3YK8?si=sZlM6...
Like many of my generation it all started with THAT Top of the Pops appearance….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v342T...
David Bowie - Starman
I was only 10 but the performance was burned into my consciousness. As a glam obsessed pre-teen I devoured his singles along with those other glamtastic artists. Whilst most of those waned Bowie went from strength to strength.
When I started secondary school, and befriended Kevin, he took it upon himself to fully convert me. He brought a portable cassette player to school specifically to play me “Velvet Goldmine” (just recently released as the B-side, along with “Changes", of the UK re-release of "Space Oddity" in 1975)…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfRgd...
David Bowie - Velvet Goldmine
Why Velvet Goldmine I know not, however it did the job and within days I bought my first Bowie album (and one of my first ever albums) “Hunky Dory” and the life long love affair was underway.
In my musical universe Bowie was the star around whom all others orbited and, whilst I have drifted far and wide, this still holds true. My many and varied musical journeys.. glam, punk, post-punk, soul, disco, techno, reggae, ambient etc etc all in my mind link to and from David Bowie.
As a 16 year old, already a bit disillusioned with punk, I heard about a Bowie night from my then girlfriend Judy’s sister Stevie, at a club off Dean Street called Billys. That little club, where a handful of Bowie fans danced to DJ Rusty Egan, was the birth place of what became New Romanticism, but that’s another story for another day. Kevin, Richard, Harley, Sam and many more loved it there. I must have gone virtually every week - as I did when it moved to the Blitz winebar in Covent Garden. Rusty played a lot of Bowie in amongst Iggy, Kraftwerk, La Dusseldorf, Roxy etc. but Bowie was always the touchstone….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMThz...
Bowie - Ashes to Ashes
As I try to process the news of David Bowie’s death, and start to listen to Blackstar with much more attention (he must have known it was to be his last album right?), I feel both sadness but also gratitude. As one tweet put it, "If you're feeling sad, just remember the world is 4.543 billion years old and you somehow managed to exist at the same time as David Bowie.”
So farewell David. There's a starman waiting in the sky.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tgcc5...
David Bowie - Heroes
Thanks for the music. Thanks for the memories.
All the vids here...
http://nigeyb.tumblr.com/post/1370810...