RIP David Bowie

[nofi]

willie weeks as well.

[Pekka]

willie weeks as well.

And Doug Rauch. He and Greg Errico were a great rhythm section for September 1974 concerts, including the one filmed for "Cracked Actor" document.

[Dave W]

Tim Lefebvre, bass player of his swan song album BlackStar had some very nice things to say about him:

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/blackstar-bassist-on-bowie-the-greatest-musician-ive-ever-heard-20160111

That was a nice tribute.

I have great respect for him, but fans floor me. Last night I saw a report from London with girls crying and saying "the light has gone out of the world."  Some folks need to get a grip on reality.

But I've sure had a good time listening to his music over the past few days. He was in a class by himself, and we're the poorer for his loss.

I heard similar when Kurt Cobain killed himself. Overdoing it a bit, yes. But I still remember how I felt when Buddy Holly died. When someone's music has a huge influence in your life, you feel it personally.

[lowend1]

I have great respect for him, but fans floor me. Last night I saw a report from London with girls crying and saying "the light has gone out of the world."  Some folks need to get a grip on reality.

+1

[gweimer]

Bowie was a great artist, to many people who knew him he was not the nicest person on earth. Always in search of inspiration, he had the habit of finding people, befriending them, sucking them out and then discarding them. But great art and a less than Nobel Prize-winning character is hardly a rare combination, more de rigueur if you look at people like Picasso or Miles Davis.

I am convinced my office stereo has psychic powers: Among the 10.000 or so tracks it has, all of the sudden (on random) Bowie's Word on a Wing (or WORDONAWING if you use the STATIONTOSTATION spelling!) comes on, now I feel bad. 

I recall an old interview with Mick Ronson, where he describes Bowie as wandering, trying to find a direction.  I'm convinced that once Ronson was onboard, Bowie realized the importance of the singer/guitarist dynamic, and never worked with anyone that wasn't stellar again.

The other story I recall was the Carlos Alomar connection.  Alomar was doing the sessions for Young Americans (?) and Bowie was pretty strung out.   If I have this right, Carlos took him home and made him a real home-cooked meal, and became Bowie's guitarist over the next decade as a result.

[wellREDman]

He was a massive, massive  influence on the teenage me, for about 6 months when I was 17 I listened to him almost exclusively. I am deeply saddened by his passing but also confused by those who are "moved to tears" by someone they have never met.

It is so like him , when having been given a limited life  expectancy,  to have spent it crafting his musical  farewell to the world , I am glad he managed to see it all through

Farewell  Ziggy , Aladdin , The Thin White Duke and all the others

[Alanko]

I have great respect for him, but fans floor me. Last night I saw a report from London with girls crying and saying "the light has gone out of the world."  Some folks need to get a grip on reality.

I tentatively agree. I think such a public outpouring has only been a think since the death of Diana. It almost seems more important to be seen to be mourning Bowie than to actually be mourning him. The news footage I saw showed a fair number of people hanging around looking like they didn't quite know what to be doing or why they were there. I imagine Facebook feeds in trendy parts of London were aglow with invites to (free!) public mourning events.

I find this all odd, simply, because Bowie was the master of obfuscation, theatrics and somehow drawing attention simultaneously towards and away from himself. He made some crazily good music, but it was usually whilst channeling somebody or something else; be it gonzo rock, industrial music, plastic soul or obscure Japanese theatre. Whilst I love his music, and I greatly admire his ability to perpetually reinvent himself, I'm not sure I ever detect a lot of core personality in his music. I've listened to a lot of his music but I'm really not sure I know the guy, from his music, very well at all. I think for me to have felt any closer to him I would have had to have done a lot of work to cover that ground. Case in point; his hierarchical pay grading of the Spiders from Mars band totally demonstrates that he wasn't Davey Jones, one of the lads in the band, but David Bowie, the theatrical creation who let his pit orchestra come up onstage.

Being something of a Pink Floyd fan, I see a similar level of fandom around Syd Barrett. The guy recorded 1 and 1/2 Pink Floyd albums, a couple of solo efforts and was a virtual recluse from the early '70s on. Yet there are those (especially women) fans that insist they had a special bond with the guy, got him on a deeper level than most and see some sort of hidden message/depth/quality in the music that the rest of us simpletons simply miss.   

I fear I'm sounding overly negative here, so I will add that Live Santa Monica '72 is one of my personal favorite live albums. In fact I probably favour it over Live at Leeds. Sorry guys!

RIP David Bowie. But also, RIP Mick Ronson and Trevor Bolder.

[uwe]

Live at Leeds is overrated and sounds quaintly old-fashioned even for its time! The Who really didn't arrive in the Seventies until Who's Next (but when they did, they did it with aplomb).

We know everything about Bowie's various images, we know very little about the man, I don't think I ever read an interview of his where he let down his guard. He really didn't mingle with other people, certainly not with the musicians of his various bands. His treatment of the Spiders of Mars was pretty much abysmal - his then-manager Tony Defries played a large part in that as a Mephisto-type figure though.



He only reconcilliated with Ronson when Ronson was dying (there were some final recordings), he never did with Trevor Bolder (who in turn did not forgive Bowie that he refused to play at Ronson's commemoration concert in Ronson's hometown Hull because he allegedly did "not believe in memorial concerts" while he played at Freddy Mercury's memorial concert "because it was a larger stage", as Bolder mused). He has never recontacted Carlos Alomar who played with him for ages, etc.


"I'm not sure I ever detect a lot of core personality in his music."

I think it was his songwriting (often weird chord progressions) and his vocal style, those unorthodox, often theatrical, but somehow never kitschy vocal melodies that shine trough on all his work (he'd go down where other vocalists would go up and vice versa), be it as a folkie (thank you Bob Dylan and Lou Reed), as the glam god (thank you Marc Bolan), the blue-eyed soulster (thank you Black Music), the Berliner (thank you Krautrock), the dancefloor hero (thank you Chic), the garage rocker (thank you Iggy Pop, also for your rhythm section), the triphopper (thank you The Prodigy) or as the master of ceremony of his own requiem (thank you Scott Walker). When Bowie sang, you knew it was him.

Of course, that "core personality" you heard in his music was only another projection of his.

[drbassman]

Wow, the wife and I are bummed.  We really liked his quirkiness and inventive flair.  Gonna miss him for sure.  RIP up there Major Tom.

[nofi]

this is the song most of us remember.



if i was asked to describe his current music music to someone who had never heard it i could not do it. i would have to say listen to the drift and make up your own mind.





the scott walker documentary 30th century man i highly recommend if you have any interest at all in the artist.

[uwe]

As I said: It's (very) demanding listening. Bowie however loved it and would write gushing messages to Walker whenever he  released something new. I remember an interview of Walker where he discussed appreciation of his work by other musicians and how Bowie's regular messages meant the world to him.

About once a year (preferably when the weather is bad) I listen to a Scott Walker album in full, it's a task. I feel like a (much) better person afterwards.

[Alanko]

Tilt and The Drift were two of my room clearing albums when I was in college. A friend described it as sounding like a brick in a washing machine. This was when I thought it was a big edgy to blast people with experimental music once they were sufficiently drunk/high/tripping to not be able to do anything much about it.

[Dave W]

I tentatively agree. I think such a public outpouring has only been a think since the death of Diana. It almost seems more important to be seen to be mourning Bowie than to actually be mourning him. The news footage I saw showed a fair number of people hanging around looking like they didn't quite know what to be doing or why they were there. I imagine Facebook feeds in trendy parts of London were aglow with invites to (free!) public mourning events.

.....

It's the way mourning is done these days, thanks to the 24-hour news cycle and social media. For many people, private grief or sadness isn't enough any more, they need to be seen grieving. Some of them are genuinely affected, no doubt.

Anyway, since no one else has posted it...

[patman]

That was the one we played in the old days...that and Fame

[lowend1]

It's the way mourning is done these days, thanks to the 24-hour news cycle and social media. For many people, private grief or sadness isn't enough any more, they need to be seen grieving. Some of them are genuinely affected, no doubt.

Affected - yeah, that works...  but it isn't just the news cycle, social media, or even global warming - some people are just a few sammiches short of a picnic.
I was in college when John Lennon was killed. There was an ersatz Sid Vicious on campus at the time. The day after Lennon's murder, this guy was stumbling around the student center, weeping openly. Within a couple days he had combed his spiked hair down into bangs and was sporting a pair of little round spectacles, ala Sergeant Pepper-era John. He also took to toting a battered acoustic guitar around with him, strumming Beatles songs and whining plaintively.