Hunky Dory

After delving into the bleak material of The Man Who Sold the World, it might be natural to wonder what kind of tone would be in store for the next David Bowie release. The answer? Well, the record is called Hunky Dory… that should be a bit of a hint from the start.

1971’s Hunky Dory has become somewhat of a landmark in Bowie’s career with many fans that look upon it as the best album of the singer’s career. And as it is one of his most pop-oriented albums, perhaps it’s easy to see why this release has garnered such praise. But is it really Bowie’s best album?

Well, it does certainly start off strong. The album begins with the immediately recognizable “Changes,” a poignant pop song about artistic exploration which forecasts a path of reinvention that characterizes much of Bowie’s career. And appropriately, many of the songs that follow keep up the high standard set by the opening track. “Oh! You Pretty Things” is a fun piano-driven song that lyrically returns to some of the ideas relayed in “The Supermen.” “Let me make it plain, you gotta make way for the Homo Superior,” Bowie sings.

“Life on Mars” is perhaps the track that stands just a little bit above the rest of the tracks on the album. Starting off with nothing more than Bowie’s vocals set against piano accompaniment and building to orchestral climaxes, the song is one of the most powerful on Hunky Dory. While the lyrics are admittedly difficult to interpret, the exact meaning isn’t nearly as important as the grandiose imagery that it evokes. “Take a look at the law man beating up the wrong guy. Oh man, wonder if he’ll ever know, he’s in the best-selling show. Is there life on Mars?”

The rest of the album continues to incorporate an impressive variety of songs. “Kooks” is a silly, but sweet song written for Bowie’s newborn son; “Song to Bob Dylan,” “Andy Warhol,” and “Queen Bitch” all pay tribute to his influences of the time (“Queen Bitch” being a nod to Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground); while “Quicksand” and “The Bewlay Brothers” provide some of the more darkly provocative material for the album.

There really aren’t many negative things to point out about this album. “Fill Your Heart,” the only song not written by Bowie, is perhaps not as impactful as some others, but it still is well done, and it provides some lighthearted energy after a more brooding track like “Quicksand.”

Hunky Dory is indisputably a classic album in Bowie’s catalog. The album excels at remaining engaging from start to finish, and there are certainly some masterpieces to be found on this tracklist. I personally wouldn’t go as far as saying it’s Bowie’s greatest album, but it is most definitely among the best work of his career.

My Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Highlights: “Changes,” “Oh! You Pretty Things,” “Life on Mars?,” “Quicksand,” “Andy Warhol,” “Queen Bitch,” “The Bewlay Brothers”
A Very Bowie Moment: Pretty much the whole “Life on Mars” song.
Best Edition: Again, the Rykodisc edition might be the one to go with as it has a number of bonus tracks like a demo version of “Quicksand” and the non-album track “Bombers.”

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars

If Hunky Dory suggested anything, it was that David Bowie was making his way to becoming a prolific singer-songwriter in the avenue rock and pop music. But with The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, it becomes abundantly obvious that he has arrived.

The 1972 album reveals Bowie tackling the first concept record of his career, and it pays off quite well.

The story follows the path of Ziggy Stardust, an otherworldly rock and roll icon who makes it his mission to bring hope to a world on the brink of apocalypse. Rising to messianic heights, Ziggy and his band, the Spiders from Mars, live a promiscuous and risky rock and roll lifestyle until Ziggy falls apart under the weight of his own ego.

Okay, the story sounds absurd when summarized, but that’s not nearly as important as how it plays out through the music.

Starting with the bleak portrait of a city on the brink of collapse, continuing to the shattering impact of Ziggy Stardust making his entrance in “Moonage Daydream,” and ending with the defeated cries of a “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide,” Ziggy Stardust stands as an immortal album from start to finish.

I realize that this is a very brief review of the Ziggy Stardust album, but that’s only because I went into much greater detail and fan boy-gushing in a previous blog entry. If you’d like to see my in-depth review of this record, click here.

My Rating: 5 out of 5
Highlights: …Every last track. Sorry, I can’t be objective about this one
A Very Bowie Moment: “We can’t dance, we don’t talk much, we just ball and play, but then we move like tigers on Vaseline.” (…what?) – “Moonage Daydream”
Best Edition: If you can get your mitts on a copy, I’d recommend the 2 disc 30^th anniversary edition for the inclusion of tracks like a re-recording of “The Superman,” the Jacques Brel song “Amsterdam,” and the non-album tracks “Velvet Goldmine” and “John, I’m Only Dancing.”

Aladdin Sane

After reaching the heights of Ziggy Stardust, I imagine it would have been interesting to see the route David Bowie was going to take as a follow-up effort.

Aladdin Sane, released in 1973, could easily be seen as somewhat of a continuation of the Ziggy Stardust mythos, and indeed it seems like that might have been Bowie’s intention. He has since described the album’s concept as “Ziggy goes to America,” perhaps as a reaction to his experiences while touring the last album.

As such, this record isn’t as much of a conceptual piece as it is a collection of songs that expand upon the idea of the Ziggy Stardust character. Incidentally, this is what makes Aladdin Sane unique and what works against it at the same time.

There are certainly some classic songs incorporated in the album’s scope. “Watch That Man” begins the album with a rollicking party-like atmosphere before sinking into the melancholia of the stark title track which incorporates a very effective and sort of mystical piano accompaniment by Mike Garson. “Panic in Detroit” is an interesting depiction of riots and revolutionaries, and it stands as a simply intriguing guitar-based tune. “The Prettiest Star” is a nice glam-y reinterpretation of an earlier Bowie song from the Space Oddity era, and “Cracked Actor” is a hard-rocking song of sleaze that more explicitly evokes the images of rock excess hinted at during the previous Ziggy Stardust album.

Along with the straightforward R&B track “The Jean Genie,” “Drive-In Saturday” remains one of the more celebrated tracks on the album, and that’s with good reason. The song is delivered with an appealing kind of glam doo-wop style that makes its story (wherein a post apocalyptic race re-learns the idea of procreation by watching old porno movies) come off as oddly romantic.

If Aladdin Sane has one single track to stand out as its centerpiece, it would be the track “Time.” Certainly the most theatric song on the record, “Time” incorporates a sort of cabaret feel with an unmistakable glam rock slant. With Bowie’s outstanding vocal performance, Mick Ronson’s raucous guitar solo as an accent, and the quasi-sing-along that closes the song, this is a piece of work that stands out slightly above the rest in this collection.

Similar to Hunky Dory and, to a lesser extent, Ziggy Stardust before it, Aladdin Sane’s weakest moment lies in its cover song (which doesn’t bode well for the next album… but that’s another story). “Let’s Spend the Night Together” is Bowie’s somewhat smuttier rendition of the Rolling Stones’ classic single that seems like it might have been more effective as a fun live song rather than as an inclusion on a studio album.

All in all, Aladdin Sane is an enjoyably diverse collection of songs, but oddly, that is a quality that also works to its detriment. That is to say, although songs like the opening “Watch That Man” and the eerily romantic closing track “Lady Grinning Soul” are undoubtedly effective, the album as a whole feels somewhat disjointed.

Perhaps this record works best as a simple extension of Bowie’s exploration of the Ziggy Stardust character. There is some great material to be found here, certainly, but as a complete standalone album, it’s slightly less than fulfilling.

My Rating: 4 out of 5
Highlights: “Watch That Man,” “Drive-In Saturday,” “Cracked Actor,” “Time,” “The Jean Genie,” “Lady Grinning Soul”
A Very Bowie Moment: “He says he’s a beautician, sells you nutrition, And keeps all your dead hair for making up underwear” – “The Jean Genie”
Best Edition: Like Ziggy Stardust, the best edition of Aladdin Sane is the 30^th anniversary reissue. This release includes “All the Young Dudes,” the sax version of “John, I’m Only Dancing,” and a number of live recordings.

Stephen Wilger

And I think: Oh god, I’m still alive!”

It’s a Friday night and I have limited time – I’m going to see Django Unchained, and I’ve procrastinated too long. I leave in a rush, fumbling with the volume buttons on my phone, trying to find a place between permanent eardrum damage and the ability to hear over traffic. In-ear headphones help, but it seems I am only able to adjust them in 500 decibel increments.

I resign myself to Shatner-level-tinnitus, and move quickly to the sound of Watch That Man. Tonight I have a clear goal: keep this run to 50 minutes, leaving 10 minutes to cool down, and enough time for a cold shower before the film. Without this, I will sweat like a motherfucker all night.

I pay close attention to the lyrics. Aladdin Sane marks the first 70s Bowie album I’ve only listened to a few times. The prevalent  electric guitar and funky-ass backing vocals on Watch That Man provoke me to run faster. The first time through, the lyrics “he walks like a jerk, but he’s only taking care of the room” are interpreted by my ears as follows:

He walks like a duck, but he’s only takin’ care of the ‘roo

The title track begins, and it takes me some serious time to realise that Aladdin Sane is not just a randomly chosen name. The song is repetitive, but the avante-garde keyboard solo is incredible.

The subject matter of Drive in Saturday doesn’t sound like the bones of a song destined to fail –people of the future have forgotten how to have sex, and “try to get it on like once before”. They learn though, by emulating “the video films we saw.” Through subtelty, though, it succeeds at both the lyrical and music level – with its mix of 50’s prom night doo-wop backings, and Bowie’s clearly enunciated vocals.

Time is one of my favourite tracks from any of Bowies albums. The punctuated keys, all male backing-vocals and lick-driven guitar in the second section is another example of the clear Bowie influence on The Killers’ Sam’s Town – an album I suspect would have gotten a lot more exposure but for Flowers’ grandiose claims. I’d be remiss if I didn’t repeat the most memorable line from the song: “Time, he flexes like a whore. Falls wanking to the floor. His trick is you and me”.

The rest of the album falls well within the gamut of rock-n’roll that Bowie had in the bag at this point. They’re good tracks, with catchy choruses (chori?), and some great lines “He sits like a man but he smiles like a reptile. She love him, she love him – but just for a short while”. Still, from Time through to Lady Grinning Soul, the album lacks originality. I choose not to get snarky, and instead just enjoy the pace of the music, and the way it matches my need to get home. My attempt to enthusiastically speed up the early hills of the run, however, have ensured that I’m stuck at a slow jog for several kilometers after.

Eventually, I feel good enough to get back to a decent speed – about the same time as another standout track begins – Lady Grinning Soul ­– with its sad, expansive piano, distorted melodies and multiple key changes. There’s something about the guitar/key combo that comes in after “she will be your living end” that strikes me as one of the most original things I have ever heard.

The bonus tracks take me through the remainder of the run. When they finish I  stretch,  shower, throw on my clothes, and prepare to see whether Django Unchained lives up to the hype.

Today I read that David Bowie’s “Aladdin Sane” is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, and the album is being re-released.  Can you believe that?  40 years????!!!???

Bowie has always been one of my favorite artists, and every time one of his songs come on the radio, I can’t help but grin all over.  That is why I decided to spread a little bit of that sunshine on to all of you.  For all of my American music-loving blog followers who have never heard of NME, check them out!  You will love having them as a resource, too.  Click HERE for their website.

As for my song of the day, “The Jean Genie” comes from Bowie’s “Aladdin Sane” album.  To honor 40 years of Bowie, the most amazing artist, I have chosen it today for all of you to jam along to.  Click HERE to go to Youtube to listen to “The Jean Genie” and have a wonderful day!

I could bang on all day about his awe-inspiring, before-his-time approach to entertainment, image, performance, reinvention and alter-ego, but you don’t have all day.  Suffice to say he’s a bitchin’ rockstar from Mars.  People (or Martians) like David Bowie don’t come along all that often.  Lady Gaga is the only one who immediately springs to my mind as anywhere near in the same league of experimental, high-concept creativity.  And let’s face it, she is not shy about displaying his influence on her either.  Come to think of it, she’s got lightning bolt makeup in one of her videos, doesn’t she?

Let’s have a quick perve on his Labyrinth look.  That hair!  That crotch!

There are a lot of David Bowie ‘looks’ I plan to recreate, but today let’s talk about the one that I sported for a dress-up party in July 2012.  The pub hosts a dress-up party every time it’s Friday the 13th in any month, and they choose a theme and everyone gets right into it.  The theme for this one was ‘hippies’ but I wanted to be David Bowie on his Aladdin Sane album cover, so I just went right ahead and did my own thing.

Cool, huh?  Here’s how I did it.

1. Watch a handful of tutorial videos on YouTube.

2.  Go!

I used a really pale concealer pretty much all over my face as foundation, which was dense and tight and uncomfortable to wear, and I have since bought an Illamasqua foundation that’s pretty white, which I’ll be using next time I need to go super-pale.  Even paler than I already am, I mean.

One of the instruction videos I watched used sticky-tape to get straight lines, but I found it easier to go freehand  – using a lip brush and pink lipstick for my lightening bolt, and blue cream makeup for the blue accents, I just painted it on in long straight strokes.  Speed and confidence are your secret weapon when it comes to straight lines.  There is gold eyeshadow on my forehead and pink eyeshadow on my eye sockets to set the lipstick and stop it from smearing everywhere.

I had a half-assed go at covering my eyebrows using a gluestick, but this is an area of continued improvement for me.  Haven’t quite nailed the covered-eyebrow yet.

There’s a bit of contouring done at the collarbones, temples, cheekbones, jawline, sides of the nose, chin-bum and above the cupid’s bow/top lip.  For that I used a cheap dark brown bronzer followed by an apricot blush to blend the edges off.  I still wanted the contouring to be quite exaggerated, as in the original David Bowie picture the contrast is quite high.

David Bowie does not have a generous mouth, but it’s more generous than mine so I relocated my lower lipline for the evening with a nude lipliner, and filled in my lips with a beigey-goldy lipstick.

Mullet is stylist’s own.

Stay tuned for more Bowie album cover re-creations, coming soon.

Now 66 years old and still making the world sit up and take notice. Inspiring stuff.

I have long been an admirer of David Bowie – singer, composer, artist, art expert, and actor.

Ziggy Stardust* and Aladdin Sane were the soundtrack for my late teens, that irreplaceable, confusing and alarming period when all the world seems to open up to a body and life has infinite possibilities. Bowie’s music – and even more so, his deliberately obscurantist lyrics – walked with me as I made the unsteady and faltering march into manhood.

Here was a man who had the courage to be experimental with language, who – if he could be believed – wrote lines and lines of lyrics and then cut the pages into pieces and lined the lines up at random to see what would happen. If they “spoke” to him in their new jumbled format, that was how they stayed. I never really thought that was what he did – it was all part of his avant-garde myth-making – but I was just dead impressed that anyone would have the courage to say that’s what he did.

Now, after a career spanning more than forty years in the arts, but after a musical hiatus of more than a decade, Bowie has unexpectedly released a new song, ahead of a new album out in March. It is already an internet sensation, and deservedly so. After what his biographer called “a career marked by continual reinvention, musical innovation and striking visual presentation” the dear old lad has done it again. Wrong-footed us all.

The song, ” Where are we now?” is achingly beautiful, mesmerically entrancing, and at one and the same time both awfully sad and strangely uplifting.

It celebrates, ultimately, love. Well, I think it does.

The love of people and places that lives on when times have changed. The type of complete, overwhelming and ultimately unselfish love that draws one human to another not for a brief moment, but for decades. That draws them to the memory of a person, even when they have moved away from our life, or died. Love that transcends, ultimately, life itself. Love that has a purity that is its own justification, and where purpose has no purpose. Love that simply lights up the Universe.

The song topped the UK iTunes chart within hours of being released and also made it to No 1 in sixteen others around the world, remarkable for a piece of music no one even knew was coming.

This is a song that could only be written after one has lived a life, which Bowie certainly has – he has endured expensive legal battles with various collaborators and managers, his art has frequently been misunderstood or derided, he has battled depression and an inability to separate his real life character from his onstage personas, endured severe cocaine addiction, and a heart attack – in short, he is at a stage, now, when one begins to contemplate one’s own mortality and the meandering route one has taken through life’s vicissitudes, sometimes taking the right path, and sometimes the wrong one, and when one has achieved the wisdom, hopefully, that comes with contemplation and the counsel of the years.

Its lyrics are deceptively approachable, at the same time hopelessly impenetrable, and at the end, charmingly simple. There is nothing synthetic in this song, despite the superb production values that have always marked David Bowie’s work, and the fascinating art-house video which accompanies it. (And kudos to the Director, too.)

I hesitate to say that only Bowie could write such a song, because that would be a burbling nonsense. What is certain is that he has certainly written more of them than most people.

“There’s a magical realism to it,” said Bowie’s friend Tony Oursler who directed the video, which also stars his wife, the abstract impressionist artist Jacqueline Humphries.

“People and friendships have gone sideways, planned projects have not gone anywhere and David wanted to reflect on that. It’s a very, very personal journey he is singing about and the song harkens back to that special time. He is a ‘man caught in time’ as he sings in the video, that’s a life-affirming statement.”

James Lingwood, co-director of influential London arts patron Artangel, which has commissioned work by Oursler, said he was surprised as anyone at the sudden comeback.

“Tony and David have collaborated for years and as soon as I saw the video, you can tell it is very much Tony’s work. It’s a fascinating video – both of them seem haunted by their histories, Bowie by using his Berlin background and Tony returning to his signature method. It’s poignant and plaintive the way Bowie undercuts his mythology while mythologizing himself at the same time. It’s wonderful.”

Here is another song in which Bowie achieved the same myth-making and emotional directness. Rock and Roll Suicide was an anthem that clearly meant a lot to Bowie. It finished the Ziggy Stardust album, and as seen here, it was the last song that he ever performed in his career-making Ziggy alter-ego with the Spiders from Mars band. His caterwauling appeal, intended to be understood both within the song and by his audience, that “You’re not alone!” is a unique moment in rock history, and could only have been written and performed by someone who was already well aware of his own mental fragility.

I am including two versions, the live one above and the recorded one below, simply because the one above speaks to how Bowie mesmerised a generation, related to them in a way few artists have before or since, and the second, below, simply because it’s a better production. It’s interesting to compare them.

What’s interesting about the live version are the atmospherics. The howl of anguish from the crowd when he announces that this was it, finally it, this last night at the iconic Hammersmith Odeon in 1973, for Ziggy and the Spiders.

And at the end, his completely unaffected “We love you.” to the crowd as he walked away, into an uncertain future … morphing into what would become Aladdin Sane, and then his move away from Glam Rock altogether into “plastic soul”, minimalism, blue-eyed soul, industrial, adult contemporary, and jungle. Along the way, his image changed as many times as his musical style … but there was always the love. His “We love you” could have been just one more wanker rock legend sucking up to his audience. It isn’t. Watch it.

Then enjoy the magical production quality – just enough stuff happening, not too much – of the album version.

Scrolling through the comments on YouTube for this song, I came across one which I found especially touching. It said, simply, “I wonder how many suicides David Bowie has prevented with this song?”

I wonder, indeed.

I wonder how many people will discover – or re-discover – love, when they hear “Where are we now?”

*Surely one of the most influential albums of all time, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust is – albeit vaguely – the story of a rock and roll character of whom the album purports to tell the life history.

Ziggy is the human manifestation of an alien being who is attempting to present humanity with a message of hope in the last five years of its existence. Ziggy Stardust is the definitive rock star: sexually promiscuous, wild in drug intake and with a message, ultimately, of peace and love; but he is destroyed both by his own excesses, and by the fans he inspired.

The character of Ziggy was inspired by British rock ‘n’ roll singer Vince Taylor whom Bowie met after Taylor had had a breakdown and believed himself to be a cross between a god and an alien; though Taylor was only part of the blueprint for the character, other influences included the Legendary Stardust Cowboy and Kansai Yamamoto, who designed the costumes Bowie wore during the tour.

The Ziggy Stardust name came partly from the Legendary Stardust Cowboy, and partly, as Bowie told Rolling Stone, because Ziggy was “one of the few Christian names I could find beginning with the letter ‘Z’”. He later explained in a 1990 interview that the Ziggy part came from a tailor’s shop called Ziggy’s that he passed on a train, and he liked it because it had “that Iggy [as in Iggy Pop] connotation but it was a tailor’s shop, and I thought, Well, this whole thing is gonna be about clothes, so it was my own little joke calling him Ziggy. So Ziggy Stardust was a real compilation of things.”

Related articles

• The ch-ch-changing face of David Bowie… new exhibition at the V&A (standard.co.uk)
• Happy Birthday David Bowie: 66 iconic images of the ever-changing star (mirror.co.uk)
• David Bowie Releases First Single In TEN Years! Why This Is Important (graziadaily.co.uk)
• Sixty-six facts about David Bowie (bbc.co.uk)

I’m talking as though this is exclusive to my own town of Walsall, but I guess we are probably not alone.

Like many places, Walsall is facing hard times. High levels of unemployment, cuts to council services and most of the shops are shut because it’s too expensive to park in the town. Plus, nobody has any money. Nobody except our ruling councillors, that is.

The greedy sods, elected by the people of Walsall, this week stuck two fingers up to the residents by voting themselves a whopping big pay-rise. This is at the same time that hardworking council staff face their own cutbacks, many of whom have had wage reductions.

Sheriff of Nottingham Walsall, leader Mike Bird gets an increase of £4,500 a year while Sir Guy of Gisborn (deputy Adrian Andrew), gets an astounding £9k rise. Talk about robbing from the poor.

Despite widespread criticism, the ruling Conservative (in it for themselves) party proposed this outrageous motion. It was widely condemned by other groups and had the opposing Labour party not abstained from the vote, it would not have been passed.

Good going, Labour. When elected, you are given a vote in council and you should be duty-bound to use it. Not these useless bunch of cretins. Basically, Labour played their faces, pretended to say they were against the motion, but did not vote against it. They abstained. Now, they too will benefit from the rise. Nice for them. Well done. Two main parties in Walsall. One failed the people due to their own greed, the other failed by doing nothing about it. Which is worse?

And on the big stage …

There’s a big fuss about benefit reform at the minute. Yes, the system does need an overhaul but seeing the likes of Iain Duncan Smith with his holier than thou attitude, makes my skin crawl.

Iain Duncan Smith, a man so bad at his job when leader of the Conservative party a few years back, his own MPs got shot of him. Now he’s there again in a position of power, sending sick people back to work while telling us the poor can survive on £70-per-week. This is the parasite who spent £39 on a breakfast … then claimed it all back in expenses.

Hope he chokes on his hash brown, next time.

Is this really the best headline a national newspaper could find?

There must really have been nothing going on in the news that day.

Jealous lover, Rob Davey shaved his girlfriend’s prized shih-tzu when he thought she’d been lying to him. He has now, rightly been fined heavily and had his punishment. But this … a major headline?

Okay, I know it’s really not funny, but I can’t help laughing at it. Come on, it’s not like the thing was injured. It’s a bloody dog. And why the hell did the paper black the dog’s eyes out; was it to protect its identity? I think you’d know if you saw it shivering in the street while trying to pee up a lamppost.

Still, I must show some sympathy. Imagine having your canine rights infringed like that. What a bad owner. A right little shi-tzu.

Heroes to Zeros …

Now that I’ve got the political tosspots and stupidity out the way, let’s have some music talk.

When I speak of heroes, one of my greatest has to be David Bowie. From my teenage years, I had the lot. Every new release, then collecting the back catalogue, all of them on vinyl. Heck, I even had the Deram stuff complete with the Laughing Gnome.

So it was with great trepidation that I clicked You Tube to listen to Where Are We Now, his first release in ten years. Well, my fears were not unfounded. David, you’ve done bugger all decent since 1983 (bar a couple of tracks here and there), and this is no different. It’s dire.

Now I know the bandwagon are going to be wetting themselves but the guy is fallible, and has been during all the time I speak of. Yeah, I know it’s good to have new stuff. I often criticise those living in the past but in this case, I think I’ll stick to Aladdin Sane and a bit of Cracked Actor.

And another hero … but this one going out with a bang.

I was really saddened to hear about Wilko Johnson and the fact he’s been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. I can listen to those early Dr Feelgood tracks and still want to lose myself in the intoxication of jumping around the room. I finally saw him and his band a couple of years ago and it was some experience. Wilko has opted not to have any treatment but while he is still able, plans to do a farewell tour this year.

Don’t know if I could go. Bit emotional and I’m sure there are fans far more devoted than me who deserve the tickets to see him play. But … what an performer.

And scraping the bottom of the barrel of music …

A few weeks ago I reported that One Direction karaoke singer, Harry Styles, was dating the beautiful Taylor Swift. Well, it now seems old Harry has blown it and he and Taylor have split up.

What a plonker. I mean, who would want to blow Taylor Swift?

Don’t answer that.

Farewell for this week …

I’m off to register myself as standing to be a local councilor. Don’t want the job but at least this time next year, I can award myself a massive pay rise after doing bugger all to deserve one.

Cheers.

Nick

Well, it happened yesterday, and the interweb was all abuzz, rentanoises babbling incessantly about what it all might mean. Yes, David Bowie had released a single, emerging from the shadows for the first time in a decade, and with an album to follow, too. It is extraordinary how relevant Bowie remains, despite the fact that most people would be hard pressed to name a single song of his after Let’s Dance. Can you? I can, but only because I spent part of my youth working in Our Price, which tells you just how long ago it was.

However good or bad the new material, though, what we all really want from Bowie is less of the experimentation with electronica, dance loops, ambient and so on, and a return to the songwriting which made his name forty years ago. Although I am not hugely taken with what I have heard of the new song, at least it sounds like a return to his earlier style in some ways, and that cannot be a bad thing.

There is a patch of albums in the early 70s, before Germany, dance music and the drugs, which takes some beating – The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars, Aladdin Sane and Hunky Dory – pooling the talents not only of Bowie but also of some great musicians and players. They also showcase Bowie at what I believe was the height of his songwriting ability, taking grand themes and the everyday and mixing and matching them together in dispersed narratives, over music which could rock with the rockiest, veer wildly towards the atonal, or build from the smallest idea to something grandiose and wonderful.

Who loves Aladdin Sane?

Of course, the curse of the rock musician is that you are doomed to play the same songs forever, and people do not want you to change. The Rolling Stones clearly have no problem with this, but Bowie disbanded the Spiders from Mars, and struck off in new directions, uniquely paying almost no attention whatsoever to his public perception. I know that Madonna supposedly trots from style to style, but where Bowie explores areas which interest him, Madge merely displays indecent haste in trying to hitch herself to the latest bandwagon.

Where the new Bowie single is so tantalising, however, is that it promises something genuinely great. Rock music is such a new genre, only just 60 or so years old, and so resolutely geared towards the here-today-gone-tomorrow tastes of the young that we have yet to hear what great artists put out in their old age, and there are very few promises of that situation changing. Mick and Keef seem unlikely to pen some masterwork on what life has meant to them, how it is to be nearing 70, intimations of mortality and all that, but Bowie is the kind of artist, writer and – most importantly – thinker who might just be able to pull it off.

Actually, I tell a lie. We have heard somebody sing of what life is like from the far end, and, although often in other people’s words, it is something unique. Johnny Cash’s last albums, especially Solitary Man and The Man Comes Around are extraordinary works, brilliant not just for the depth and resonance of Cash’s voice, although it gets tired towards the end, but also for the extraordinarily left-field choice of songs made by his producer, Rick Rubin. Cash sings songs by Soundgarden, Depeche Mode, U2, giving them a new meaning which is entirely his own, but it is his cover of Nine Inch Nails’ Hurt which remains in the memory, the video showing the ruined House Of Cash as his ill wife watches him. There is one almost unbearably poignant moment when he closes the piano lid and runs his hands across it, as if to say goodbye for the last time. It is something very special.

Johnny Cash – the original Man in Black.

Fingers crossed that Bowie may be about to put out something similar. I fear that he will not, for we must, as always, be careful what we wish for, but just the possibility is enough to make me hesitantly excited, and millions of others are drawn into this music, and that cannot be bad. Besides, if the new album is terrible, there is always Life On Mars.

But the better question might be “Where has he been?”

Though the 66-year-old never officially cashed in his Bowie bonds and entered retirement, Where Are We Now? marks his first official single in a decade. His absence from the stage has been nearly as long. The legend’s last world tour, for the 2003 album Reality, was abruptly ended in June 2004 in Scheesel, Germany. After the crowd cheered his encore of Ziggy Stardust, Bowie, then 57, collapsed backstage of a heart attack; the remaining dates were subsequently cancelled. A 2009 performance for New York’s first High Line Festival could have marked his return, but the gig was mysteriously cancelled — making his last known performances short guest appearances with friends including the Arcade Fire (2005) and Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour (2006).

And though the occasional Tweet from his wife, Iman, has assured fans that Bowie has been “Healthy & Happy” all this time, the 2000s have missed the man who made pop stardom an art form. He’s been known to pick his young daughter Lexi up from school, attend the odd charity function or film festival (his son, Duncan, is the acclaimed director of Moon), or even do a bit of voice work for a SpongeBob SquarePants special.

But while David Bowie the man has been living out a private life, David Bowie the character has kept resurfacing in pop culture. Here are the top Bowie moments since the real one took a time out.

Flight of the Conchords

What would David Bowie do? It’s a question we all ask ourselves from time to time, and in this 2007 episode of the cult HBO comedy, it’s Bret who’s doing the asking when he starts fretting over his body image. So what would David Bowie do? Bowie himself (as played by Bret’s roommate Jemaine) provides the answer, visiting Bret three times and in three personae — as Ashes to Ashes Bowie, Ziggy Stardust Bowie and “Jareth the Goblin King from the movie Labyrinth” Bowie — before the episode concludes with the Space Oddity spoof Bowie’s in Space.

Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly do Bowie and Bing

“The Christmas holiday thing”

There’s no improving on the 1977 original, Bing Crosby and David Bowie’s odd-couple crooning on Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy. But if you’re as into “the Christmas holiday thing” as the “Boo-ee” household, you probably caught this 2010 Funny or Die line-for-line remake of the clip, starring Will Ferrell as Bowie and John C. Reilly as Bing.

Is David Bowie Dying?, The Flaming Lips with Neon Indian

Underneath layers of hypnotic distortion you won’t find any Bowie conspiracy theories. But the title of this 2011 track, which is also included on The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends collection, features a title that voices what a lot of worried Bowie kids had been thinking since the end of the Reality era.

Prometheus

Nothing could have saved this Alien prequel, not even a very special performance of Ashes to Ashes. Still, director Ridley Scott was quoted in the Daily Mail saying that he based the android character David (Michael Fassbender) on David Bowie’s look. “I liked the idea of having a feminine quality to him for sure,” Scott said.

The Watchmen

In his full Martian regalia, Ziggy Stardust always looked like a rock ‘n’ roll superhero. And, in the opening montage of The Watchmen, there he was with a real pack of them, hanging outside Studio 54 with other ‘70s superstars.

Venture Bros.

David Bowie is so many things to so many people: He’s a rock star, an actor, an artist … a shape-shifting cartoon super-villain. But not just any super-villain. David Bowie is the Sovereign — nemesis of Cartoon Network heroes the Venture Bros. In 2011, a petition was launched to get the real Bowie to voice the character on the show. (If SpongeBob is good enough for him…) Maybe this 2013 comeback will prove the perfect opportunity to relaunch the movement.

Banksy

In May 2012 a painting of a young Queen Elizabeth II struck with the same lightning-bolt face paint as Bowie’s Aladdin Sane appeared on the side of a Bristol shop. Identified in several outlets as a new piece by guerrilla graffiti star Banksy, the painting was as much a celebration of the Queen’s diamond jubilee as Bowie’s continuing reign over pop culture – even while absent.

London Olympics

After meeting with Danny Boyle, director of the Closing Ceremonies, Bowie famously turned down an offer to participate in an extravaganza that would include Queen, the Spice Girls and nearly every British superstar in existence. “I went to meet David Bowie and he didn’t want to appear, he didn’t want to perform; he wasn’t into that performing live,” Boyle told The Times. “But he gave us all the support we needed, which was a big buzz for me because he is of of my heroes.” Still, Bowie’s music was everywhere during the games. His song Fashion featured during a portion of Boyle’s Closing Ceremonies, playing while a goon squad of British supermodels catwalked. And, more strikingly, Team Great Britain selected Bowie’s Heroes as their unofficial anthem.

Tebowie

Late Night with Jimmy Fallon’s contribution to the Tim Tebow meme cycle of 2012 was a recurring gag featuring Fallon in character as a singing hybrid of Tebow, the prayerful NFL quarterback, and Ziggy Stardust-era Bowie. Song parodies, including one of Bowie’s Space Oddity, would suggest the God-fearing “Tebowie” might have trouble accepting the existentialist themes of his namesake’s work.

Photo credit: beatwolf.com

Today, glam-rock veteran David Bowie turns 66 years old.  To celebrate, he broke his media and publicity silence and released his first new song in almost a decade.

The single, Where Are We Now, is available on iTunes and it’s the first song we’re hearing off of his 26^th studio album, The Next Day, scheduled for release on March 12.

If this news isn’t enough to make you run to your nearest A.C. Moore to buy face paint and go all Aladdin Sane style, don’t forget about the David Bowie Exhibition at London’s V&A museum, running March 23-July 28.  The exhibit is set to chronicle Bowie’s contributions to art, fashion, and culture.  Check out Vogue UK’s preview of David Bowie Is.

January 8 is David Bowie’s birthday, so I have decided to dress as up as the infamous Ziggy Stardust. I have looked to re-create his look on the cover of Aladdin Sane.  The lighting bolt makeup was created using red lipstick, blue eye-shadow and black eyeliner.

Photo credit: Holmes

Man’s Chest Piece: Homemade

Black and Gold Chevron Tights: Black Milk

Cobalt Blue Boots: Ruby Shoes

Red Wig: Borrowed from Dungog

Liked what you saw? Why not like me on Facebook?

JANUARY – Gwen John and Celia Paul at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (until 27 Jan).

I saw this in 2012 and loved it so much it gets a mention here too; two amazing artists in a beautiful gallery, highly recommended.

FEBRUARY – Birds, Beasts and Beyond: The ceramic artistry of the Martin brothers in the Arts and Crafts period at Cuming Museum, Walworth, London (5 Feb – 31 Aug)

The Cuming Museum know how to make the most out of their space and resources and I do love ceramics so I’m excited to see this upcoming temporary exhibit as I know it will be well worth a visit. And it is free.

MARCH – Becoming Picasso at The Courtauld Gallery, London (14 Feb – 26 May)

Picasso, Harlequin
http://www.courtauld.ac.uk/gallery/exhibitions/2013/becoming-picasso/

Picasso was one of the first artists I could recognise, I remember being very proud of myself when I went to galleries and could point out one of his paintings and I still enjoy his work today. But it will be nice to see a slightly different side to the images that are so recognisable and the lovely Courtauld Gallery are making this possible with their Becoming Picasso exhibition looking at his breakthrough exhibition in Paris in 1901. Don’t forget the gallery is free after 2pm on Mondays.

APRIL – David Bowie is at V&A, London (23 Mar – 28 Jul)

Striped bodysuit for Aladdin Sane http://www.vam.ac.uk/users/node/17362

MAY - Life and Death: Pompeii and Herculaneum at The British Museum, London (28 Mar – 29 Sept)

In my previous life as an archaeologist (I never got very far!) I dug up a Roman hair pin and that’s about as exciting as it got, I have a feeling this could be a little bit more interesting!

JUNE – Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life at Tate Britain, London (25 June – 20 Oct)

Going to this exhibition is probably an admission I’m not going to get round to going to The Lowry in Manchester anytime soon, or it may be a timely reminder to go there too, we’ll see how the year pans out…

JULY – FABRIC-ATION, Yinka Shonibare MBE, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield (2 Mar – 1 Sept)

Yinka Shonibare MBE, Fake Death Picture (The Suicide – Leonardo Alenza), 2011. http://www.ysp.co.uk/ysp-media/press-releases/uks-largest-ever-exhibition-by-yinka-shonibare-mbe

I love Yinka Shonibare’s ideas, his fabrics and colours and textures and how he puts these together exploring themes such as identity, race and class. So as the UK’s largest ever exhibition by the artist including new and old work I’m pretty excited! July should be a great month to go to Wakefield and explore the sculpture park, but there are many pieces indoors across three galleries as well for when the British weather lets us down.

AUGUST – Zandra Rhodes Unseen, Fashion and Textile Museum, London (12 Jul – 31 Aug)

I’m not as sure about this one, celebrating 10 years of the Fashion and Textile Museum, but that’s a reason why I want to go as just seeing things you know you will love isn’t particularly rewarding and I may come out completely inspired by something new.

SEPTEMBER – Masterpieces: Art and East Anglia, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich (14 Sept – 24 Feb 2014)

I’m from Norfolk originally and never get back enough, but this looks like a great excuse to visit. The exhibition promises to “celebrate the rich and unique artistic heritage of the region, with works from across the visual arts – paintings, sculptures, architecture, ceramics, glass, jewellery, photography, textiles and design – from the prehistoric period to the present day”. I just hope the endless track maintenance on the Norwich-Liverpool St line don’t get in my way.

Lego Star Wars at the Great Western Lego Show

OCTOBER – Great Western LEGO show, STEAM, Museum of the Great Western Railway, Swindon (5 and 6 Oct)

This may be the ultimate geek-fest, held at a railway museum, the show gathers together Lego models built by members of the Brickish Association in the UK. I’m a little scared to be honest, but I’m going to try not to let that stop me going because the lego does look a lot of fun!

NOVEMBER- Turner and the Sea at Royal Museums Greenwich, London (Nov 2013 – Apr 2014)

Turner liked the sea and so do the Royal Museums Greenwich; a match made in heaven and definitely something to look forward to at the end of the year.

DECEMBER- Paul Klee  at Tate Modern, London (15 Oct – 9 Mar 2014)

I love Bauhaus and whenever I see anything related to it I wish I had gone to art school so it will be great to see a major exhibition about one of the teachers, maybe 2014 will be the year I finally enrol!

The Beatles Abbey Road LP cover. Paul will get cold feet not wearing any shoes. Unless he’s already dead of course say the conspiracy theorists. Which he isn’t. I saw him in concert last year.

Part 4/6: Buying The Beatles On Vinyl: Abbey Road’s Misaligned Apples and Sgt Pepper‘s Red Wavy Lines

The story so far: A bet has been struck: Buy a complete set of Beatles records on vinyl for less money than the 2012 Re-issued Box Set. The clock is ticking and the stakes are high…the loser has to listen to a Mariah Carey album. Ten times. Charity shops have produced a blank. And Amazon have reduced their price.

With the 20th October deadline fast approaching I popped across to my friendly local second hand record store – Leigh Records – where I knew that Bob, the owner, would be able to give me some advice. How exactly do you buy The Beatles on vinyl? Is it important just to buy first pressings? Or does it not really make much difference?

Leigh Records

I asked Bob if he thought It was possible to buy a complete set of first pressing Beatles records for less than £300.

“You can – but they won’t be in great condition” was his view: “If you buy the ones with the silver box around the Parlophone label from the ’70s and ’80s you could though – maybe that would be your best bet”

Silver and Black labels are later (’80s) pressings and less valuable to collectors

Bob showed me a great copy of The White Album – number twenty thousand and something. He wanted £350 for it. I felt like I was Hugh Grant in that scene in Four Weddings when he buys a wedding present in an expensive art gallery. “Do you have anything for around forty?” I ventured…

Bob had just the thing. A number up near three hundred thousand, but an original gatefold sleeve, opening at the top and with the black inner sleeves. Discs in very good condition. An early pressing. One problem: No photos.

The Beatles’ White Album – all individually numbered

“What about a rare Abbey Road?” suggested Bob. “This one has a misaligned Apple logo on the back cover”. Looking at my slightly baffled look, Bob explained that some pressings of Abbey Road were rarer than others because of a printer error on the reverse of the cover. It might set me back £25, rather than £20 (or £60 mint rather than £50), but it was a genuine collectors item.

See the position of the Apple underneath “I Want You” on the left compared to the normal alignment below? That vague misprint is worth an extra tenner.

On this sleeve, the apple lines up correctly with the words.

Bob also had a new copy of Let It Be (naked), complete with a 7″ single. I much prefer this version of Let It Be, so that was an easy decision – and it was an original! Another £25, but I had three tricky albums in the bag. The photos? I found a set on eBay, which admittedly had Sellotape marks on the corners, but were clearly authentic and were £15: a lot for photos, but now The White Album was complete and potentially worth more than what I paid.

The photos from my copy of The White Album

That was £105 for the three records. With D-Day approaching, I felt slightly better about the bet. Bob had plenty of stock, but not everything, and I couldn’t quite get under budget. All that was standing between me and the dog-whistle pitched shrieking of Mariah Carey was a couple of bargains, but they didn’t seem to be coming my way.

Southend Record Fair

My hopes were pinned therefore on the local monthly record fair at the local school, which took place on the 14th October – less than a week before the deadline. Bribing the kids with Haribo and the threat of playing Mariah to them, I took them along and began rummaging through one of a huge number of boxes of records all priced at £2 each. My hopes weren’t high, but miracle of miracles, within five minutes I found a copy of Help! The record looked a little worse for wear, and there was no inner sleeve, but the cover was clean enough and for £2 I wasn’t going to argue (see part 2 for a photo of the cover). Boom! I looked through another dozen crates, but to no avail. Four records, £107 – and my first genuinely cheap Beatles record.

I moved on to some other tables. One guy had a small selection, but inside was a copy of Sgt Pepper. Gatefold sleeve. Complete with cut out Sgt Pepper mask.

And, (I discovered later) even better, it had an inner sleeve with red wavy lines – a bit of a rarity.

The original red wavy lines of the Sgt Pepper psychedelic inner sleeve

The record wasn’t perfect by a long way – it had a few visible scratches on the surface, but they didn’t look too bad. I haggled and got the price down from £20 to £10 because of the scratches. This was going well. (It turned out that this was a first pressing – and no jumps).

Another stall had a half price sale. I noticed two copies of John Lennon’s Imagine – one with the original inner sleeve and one complete with poster. The more expensive one (an earlier pressing but with no poster) was £5. This was promising. I asked if I could have the poster from the other one, and the vendor agreed. Result! It was in perfect condition too.

Even better – there were copies of Revolver (£4 – reduced from £8), Rubber Soul (£3), With The Beatles (£2.50), A Hard Day’s Night (£2.50) and The Blue and The Red albums. The latter were £2 each and are best-of double LPs – which I first owned on cassette – the first Beatles albums I ever owned. Not part of the box set, but for £2 each – why not?

I couldn’t believe my luck. I know it is obvious really – that is to say where better to buy old records than at an actual record fair? But to have found six of the albums for just £24 in less than an hour – plus two best-ofs for another £4 and a lovely pristine copy of Imagine for £5. Maybe, just maybe there was hope…

What’s more, I noticed a very clean copy of David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane – and it had an insert inside where you could apply to join David’s fan club. I paid £3. When I looked it up in the Record Guide, it told me it was worth £70 with the insert – as they are quite rare. Although I am sceptical about that price, it was a nice bonus – and it is a great album.

If you have this fan club insert in your copy of Aladdin Sane, it might be worth more than you think. £70 according to one guide…

To take stock: I had nine albums and had paid £129. Well on-budget. The remaining records were:

• Yellow Submarine
• Please Please Me
• Past Masters 1 & 2
• Magical Mystery Tour (LP version)
• Beatles for Sale

The only trouble? eBay had no Past Masters and Bob didn’t have it either. Bob did have a couple of the others though – and Spitalfields Record Fayre was on Friday – the 19th October. It was cutting it fine, but it is a huge record fair in London and I fancied my chances of finding a copy of Past Masters there. In the back of my mind, however, I knew that unless I could find these records, Mariah would be calling me like a kind of Siren-in-reverse luring sailors to their doom. Sirens were terrible beasts who sang beautifully and seductively, whereas….(insert your own joke here).

Click here for part 5: Buying Beatles Records at Spitalfields Record Fayre

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Record #113: The Beatles – It’s Getting Better All The Time (OK – The Wedding Present)

This year I was supposed to go home but thanks to Hurricane Sandy that didn’t happen.

Instead I went to a party hosted by a former rockstar but now he has kids and a family. It was super entertaining. Plus they had a lot of great food and I discovered a pumpkin ale I liked so that was cool.

Can you guess who I was?

Wait for it.

Wait for it.

If you guessed David Bowie/Ziggy Stardust you guessed correct! I actually got a lot of thundercats, which was weird.

Here’s David Bowie and my friend, Mucho Deniro.

Fun times.

Did you guys do anything exciting for Halloween?

See, now it’s obvious right?

And so it begins.

If you don’t know me/ haven’t followed me online since before my birthday last year, then it’s time for me to introduce you to a little project called ‘The Birthday Countdown.’ Essentially, I count down the days until my birthday with photos. You can see previous years countdowns here and here. (Last years was stunted by uni) This year, it’s counting past my actual birthday and it’s got a theme – Bowie.

So bear with me and hopefully enjoy!

(P.s. We had some technical difficulties so today two photos will go up. ALSO, huge thanks to my friend Matt Waymouth for helping me get this together and to Adam for putting up with being in some of them.)

There is certainly something insane about this album. Mick Garson’s jazzy piano throughout is completely bizarre.

The album cover, a photo by Brian Duffy, captures the insanity of the album. Bowie himself described the lightning bolt bisecting his face as suggestive of a sort of schizophrenia. For me, however, one of Duffy’s outtakes from the shoot actually captures this insanity more successfully. Here Bowie has a sort of mad fear in his eyes:

The whole shoot is brilliant. Each photo has such personality:

 
I’ll leave you with my favourite song from the album, Drive in Saturday: