David Bowie

[Alstroe]

Bowie is one of the few artists who's put out consistently good music for what must be over forty years now.

 

[Not Plain Jane]

My heart is broken.

Goodbye Starman, mad, sexy genius

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B5zmDz4vR4

 

[Not Plain Jane]

thanks for posting that jexxica. it's been a difficult week. i am a HUGE bowie fan - saw him live 3 times, went to the V&A opening of the bowie exhibit in london. it's just so difficult to believe, and sad.

 

[softgrey]

i've been in denial all week...

but now it's time to celebrate the man and his music...

...

rebel rebel...
...

you got your mother in a whirl...
she's not sure if you're a boy or a girl...




they named a constellation after him...
doesn't get better than that~!!
woohoo...
...

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/n...o-david-bowie-with-new-constellation-20160116

 

[softgrey]

bowie lived 3 blocks from me...
i never...ever........ever...
caught a glimpse...
and i know where the back entrance is...

but i heard he would just call a car and run from the door to the car...

it's like living in prison...
...

in the past, i would have probably genuflected in his presence...
but, in retrospect...
if i had the chance now, i would just have nodded and kept walking...
OR- i would tell him a really good joke...

if ever a man needed a good laugh...
his notoriety made him a virtual prisoner...
although- the virtual world probably set him free and allowed him private relationships...

 

[softgrey]

truthfully- i also know where he lived before that...
a loved, landmarked, turreted castle in the sky...
even now, as i have passed it, knowing that he hasn't lived there for years - i have gazed upwards thinking of that star man...

i suppose that will not change...
except that my gaze may wander even further upwards...

...

 

[softgrey]

been glued to youtube watching bowie clips and vids...

i really have to get hold of 'the man who fell to earth'...
i don't remember it at all...
...

 

[softgrey]

thanks for posting that jexxica. it's been a difficult week. i am a HUGE bowie fan - saw him live 3 times, went to the V&A opening of the bowie exhibit in london. it's just so difficult to believe, and sad.

lucky you...
every report has said how amazing it is...

i think it should come to MOMA...
they had a bjork show and a tim burton show...
surely they should have david bowie now~!!

*he's been haunting me...
went by his bldg a week after he died and the memorial tokens were all there with people stopping by to pay their respects...

then i went to the dentist - in chinatown- where they usually only have the chinese newspaper but there was randomly some back issue of W mag...
i opened it starting back to front-which is how i read all mags- and it was a spread on the cover inspiration with reference photos-
you guessed it...David Bowie...

then someone invited me to come over and watch matt damon in 'martian'...
i almost never see hollywood films, so this is unusual...
of course- 1/2 way through...

there's a starman waiting in the sky...


it's good...
i like being haunted by david bowie...
.........

 

[eugenius]

One of my favorite Bowie outfits, from his famous SNL performance. Not sure who designed it, though.

His back-up singers, Klaus Nomie & Joey Arias, had to pick him up & move him to his microphone as the bottom of his outfit was sealed shut. Very cool move. So, let's put this in perspective: while a good number of performers of today are all too-willing to take off all of their clothes and prance around the stage in various states of undress, or insist their back-up dancers do that, here's David Bowie, whose entire outfit left only his face exposed, who literally couldn't move in this outfit, and he still outperformed anybody from today.

Of note, his other SNL performance from the same episode had him & his back-up singers wearing Mugler blazers & skirts from the women's section. David's was in purple. Inserts symbols here.

(src: 10magazine.com)

 

[softgrey]

wow- i had forgotten about that!

 

[Teratel]

I started to appreciate the 70's songs more when i got older. But the Let's Dance album takes me back in time. Let's dance became a big hit. One of the songs from that album was China girl and i remember it was a big thing back in the 80's because of the nudity in the video. Co-producer of the album was Nile Rodgers and he was gold in the 80's.
I also like the less popular songs like, Blue Jean and Absolute beginners.
I remember David Bowie in the cult movie The Hunger. And i still have to see Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (great soundtrack by composer Ryuichi Sakamoto.
David Bowie is a legend.

 

[*ana*]

David Bowie: the shifting shaman of the modern age
How the musician came to be a digital presence in the lives of millions.

JOHN GRAY - 18 JANUARY 2016

If your aim is to be original, you will most likely end up looking and sounding highly derivative. Striving for self-expression, you turn yourself into a mouthpiece for the ruling clichés. David Bowie did the opposite. Knowing himself to be – as a matter of fact or fate – utterly singular, he chose to become a clairvoyant who served as a channel for the shifting spirit of the age. Along the way a succession of selves emerged, each of them novel and original. A commonplace view has it that Bowie was a chameleon who kept reinventing himself in order to exploit the turns of fashion. But his changes served a deeper end. By becoming Nobody, he became many people and at the same time himself.

The circumstances of Bowie’s life predestined him to the role of a medium. His early years exposed him to splintered minds. His brother’s mental illness taught him the fragility of sanity, and at some points – when inflamed by too much cocaine – Bowie does seem to have come to the edge of madness. Yet the experience did not leave him less experimental in his art or his life. He used his time on the edge to take more risks and become more fearlessly creative.

He grew up and thrived at a time of upheaval. The Seventies and Eighties were decades when class, sex and gender roles were dissolving and mutating, and for many of us who lived through them these were years that Bowie not only embodied, but also anticipated and enacted. Some may have been seized by panic as social conventions melted down, but not Bowie. He revelled in the metamorphoses that were under way. Many have noted the eclectic craftsmanship with which he mixed art forms from different sources – kabuki and music hall, for example. These transformations did not come quickly; there surely must have been a lot of labour in them. But his changes were not mere exercises in pastiche, however brilliantly executed. Using a method of cross-matching, he created a space in which new forms could appear. When they did, it was as if they came from nowhere. Talk of Bowie being a magician is not all hyperbole.

That there was a streak of streetwise shrewdness in the man cannot be denied. In 1997, foreseeing the financialised economy that was coming into being, he sold $55m worth of “Bowie Bonds” – securities that were backed by current and future revenues from the albums he had produced before 1990. The deal was possible because, unlike many musicians, he owned the rights to his songs. New technologies eroded this copyright and the value of the bonds, which were wound up in 2007. By then Bowie had been active in new media for almost a decade. In 1998, years before YouTube and Twitter were founded, he launched BowieNet, creating what he described as “the first community-driven internet site that focuses on music, film, literature, painting and more”. But here as elsewhere there was more going on than meets the eye.

In the course of his career – if that dated concept can be used in connection with him – Bowie became a digital presence in the lives of many millions. From very early on in its development, he seems to have understood how the new virtual world would become a vehicle for ancient dreams. So he turned the cultural mediumship he practised during much of his life into an internet- enabled practice of channelling images and stories that linked him with his fans.

Whether he was always fully aware of what he was doing cannot be known. From one point of view, the album released just before his death was artfully scripted by him as a cryptic valediction. Yet the premonitory lyrics of Blackstar have a trance-like rhythm, suggesting they came from somewhere beyond his conscious personality. Finally eluding our and possibly his own understanding, Bowie died as he lived, a modern shaman.

newstatesman.com

 

[Not Plain Jane]

i am so glad to visit this thread and see people reminiscing and remembering him; there've been so many wonderful tributes and write ups over the past month....

1. on street art tributes

http://flavorwire.com/561226/the-best-david-bowie-street-art-tributes-around-the-world/view-all

2. on his gothic influence

http://liisaladouceur.com/ashes-to-...l&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

https://theconversation.com/knowled...-recalls-david-bowies-influence-on-goth-53145

3. on his music videos

http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/993-the-case-for-david-bowie-as-music-video-king/

4. on photography

https://i-d.vice.com/en_us/article/...for-40-years-and-counting?utm_source=vicefbca

5. on girls

http://www.npr.org/sections/thereco...hare&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social

6. on tilda!

http://www.vulture.com/2013/03/read...-about-david-bowie.html?mid=fb-share-vulture#

7. on neil gaiman's writing

http://www.neilgaiman.com/Cool_Stuff/Short_Stories/The_Return_of_the_Thin_White_Duke

...and this is but a smattering, of course
hot tramp indeed...

 

[runner]

for the man with the golden moon on his forehead


Encore un de mes pierrots mort ;
Mort d'un chronique orphelinisme ;
C'était un cœur plein de dandysme
Lunaire, en un drôle de corps.

- laforgue

 

[softgrey]

on a cold night in January 2016 at Paisley Park

"Peace, David Bowie," said Prince, quietly and a little unexpectedly, as he was sitting at his piano at Paisley Park. "I only met him once. He was nice to me. Seems like he was nice to everyone." It was a gentle, humble moment.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thereco...-misunderstood-relationship-with-the-internet

 

[softgrey]

i dreamed of david bowie last night...

i saw him in tokyo...
walking along the river with Iman...
he spoke to me...
i asked him not to leave...
he said he had to go...



* he was wearing short shorts, with loafers and a very loose ivory silk p*ssy bow blouse with the scarf part thrown over one shoulder (it was gold lame) with an olive quilted vest (like for camping) and an oversized dbl brstd blazer in ivory- worn open...

he drew applause from people on the street...
iman had her arm around him as if to protect him...
to keep him safe...
he was sick...he stumbled a few times...
i watched silently from a bridge over the river...

once he got to the bridge, he hid from the crowd and practically fell to his knees...
i froze---feeling like a voyeur...
Iman was holding him up...
he shook her off and she stormed away...
that was when he looked up into my eyes and asked if i wanted to trade jackets...
...
i didn't even realize that he knew i was there...
so- of course i gave him my jacket...
which he put on backwards and started after iman...
as he left- there were tears in his eyes...
and mine...
i said- please don't go...
he said- i have to...
and he faded away in the distance...

once he was gone- i realized that he had never given me his jacket...

 

[softgrey]

FASHION!...
turn to the left...

 

[Not Plain Jane]

such a cool cover! the dancers are great and the whole thing gets better and better toward the end too...

 

[rockmuse1969]

Vogue Paris Decembre 2011 - Janvier 2012 ebook30
David Bowie by Helmut Newton in Monte -Carlo 1983

Edited: Please Do Not Quote Images

Incredible! I was at the NY exhibition recently. Incredible.

 

[Perickles]

I listen to David Bowie on a daily basis. I never get tired.

farodevigo.es