David Bowie R.I.P

Facebook told me Elton played life on Mars at a show last week

In a question and answer session on fansite truetoyou.net, Morrissey addressed the truth behind the rivalry calling it simply "ribbing".

"When I made the (2006) record Ringleader of the Tormentors," writes Morrissey, "the producer (Tony Visconti), who is a very close friend of David Bowie, tried to get both Bowie and I together to do our version of You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin', with David doing the deep Bill Medley parts, and me doing the Bobby Hatfield shrieks."

"I loved this idea, but David wouldn't budge. I know I've criticised David in the past, but it's all been snotnosed junior high ribbing on my part. I think he knows that."

You know DBowie's version of "God Only Knows", yeah....

was looking for something and went through my new arrivals and noticed that i still have a pristine copy of Tonight in there for five bucks that i put there pre-death. complete with a sticker! so, i'm listening to it now. but, sheesh, r.i.p. Tonight....

i'm enjoying it right now a lot though just cuz i like hearing his voice right now. even the reggae tune sounded poignant.

gonna put the sticker on the back of our mini-van...

man, I wish that Righteous Brothers cover had happened

for the lol's, possibly, otherwise no.

Morrissey forgot Bowie's cover of "I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday," right

"Vinyls": Bowie knew how to keep up with the times.

way better album than Tonight and three years earlier:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a4/Modern_Romance_-_Adventures_in_Clubland-cover.jpg

he had such good taste. it doesn't make sense. 1984 should have seen some synth/coldwave classic from bowie.

Someone needs to write a book that digs into the mystery of Tonight's existence. It's such a weird anomaly.

EMI needed an album and he had no inspiration. The band he assembled isn't much different from the pre-LD lineup.

he could have just paid some of his fans to help him make a dancefloor classic. heaven 17? new order with arthur baker? human league? they all would have helped.

Yeah, the weird part is he'd become a genius at making shit up in the studio.

his 80's should have sounded more like this. love this by the way:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nKb2JC7Qn0

that's fantastic

I went to see the Professional Bull Riders on Friday night at Madison Square Garden, and the first song the DJ played was "Let's Dance." (The DJ at PBR events plays a whole lot of music you'd never expect. I wrote about it for the Voice in 2010.)

xpost Would have been great if he just put on Let's Dance and danced to it.

Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet: Tramp with Orchestra by Gavin Bryars; Hampton String Quartet, Michael Riesman and Orchestra

This will either drive you up the wall or you will produce some amazing drawings while listening to it. You could probably cook a fish to this as well.

Gathering Storm by Godspeed You! Black Emperor

GYBE are among my, erm, two favourite Montreal bands, Arcade Fire being the other. All Montreal bands have around nine members, I believe.

"Vinyls": Bowie knew how to keep up with the times."

pioneer really. that thing was from 2006.

http://www.bowiewonderworld.com/press/00/0611nokiarecommendp2.htm

it's weird that thing is apparently not from vanity fair or from 2013.

so confusing.

is vanity fair an aggregator now?

i do vaguely remember african-american record people in philly saying vinyls in the 90's. along with "rares". and "grip". and "twelves" for 12-inch singles. a japanese dealer was asking me for twelves last week.

i think someone just put that on their website and attributed it to vanity fair?

this guy. sam. he's from canada.

http://scallemang.ca/

hey that's the guy who posted Bowie's top 25!

It was in Vanity Fair. I remember when it was first published because it was around the time I released The Ascension.

lots of things being posted for a second (at least) time

Branwell, most of those albums date, at the latest, from when DB was much more interested in nailing 15-yo girls than repping for female artists.

ie

http://www.salon.com/2016/01/13/the_dark_side_of_david_bowie_as_the_mourning_goes_on_we_cant_ignore_his_history_with_underaged_groupies_in_70s/

http://www.salon.com/2016/01/13/david_bowie_rock_star_groupies_and_the_sexually_adventurous_70s_labeling_us_as_victims_in_retrospect_is_not_a_very_conscious_thing_to_do/

Just encountered the best Bowie lyric ever (from Tin Machine's 'Crack City'): "They're just a bunch of assholes/With buttholes for their brains"

That 5 years doc was decent, p boring critics imo but wow Alomar, Dennis Davis and Fripp were great. Some cool footage too. Bowie's career arc is pretty perfect up until Let's Dance, then you get a pretty big ellipse of 30 years but I guess that's the way artist stories go - Dylan's narrative is def strongest circa 61-67 too.

god this smokes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2syGy1TjXq0

BBC versions of the Ziggy tracks are mostly better than the originals imo

Wrestling with the Tin Machine albums for the first time ever. The second one is going down muuuuuuch more smoothly than the first did. To the extent that I'll make an early call (still only about halfway through listening) that it's Bowie's best since Let's Dance. The production and arrangements have been tightened up and Gabrels is laying off the WHEEELDLYDEEEEDLYDEEEEEE to an admirable extent. There may be some decent songs on the first album but it's really hard to hear them under the 'David Bowie and some random bar band' soundscape.

Bowie at the Beeb is probably the best double disc set I ever bought for ~5 eur

bowie at the beeb is getting a vinyl pressing soon

Oh wait here's a Tin Machine song with someone else on vocals and it suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks so oh well I guess.

But seriously David. You were so close to having a uniformly good album for the first time in forever. You couldn't have asked this maudlin doofus to sequester his pair of doofy songs to an unrelated single?

You should hear his brother.

Bowie at the Beeb is so great. I love that version of "Eight Line Poem"

I'd previously thought "Real Cool World" was a pretty meh and perfunctory song, but heard in the context of his previous decade's work, it's a real breath of fresh air.

It sounds pretty good.

Absolutely starved of new Bowie in 2012 I finally picked up Tin Machine II and thought it was surprisingly good, but that may have been desperation on my part. Those Sales-sang songs are comically bad, of course. You Belong In Rock 'N Roll was always decent and Shopping For Girls is pretty good, but....blah.

"Goodbye Mr Ed" is a Good Song.

The first time I saw him was a Tin Machine show in 1992, the academy on like 43rd st . Anyone else see 'em?

Hope they give the Bowie at the Beeb Reissue a nicer cover.

Meanwhile..

http://www.clickhole.com/article/7-musicians-talk-about-how-david-bowie-impacted-th-3816

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-ZtpYfNq74

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIy12hhhCm0

The true mystery of Bowie is Never Let Me Down. Pretty much all the other missteps can be explained away. Tonight was a slapdash attempt to cash in on the Let's Dance phenomenon; a case can be made for Tin Machine (although I'm not going to make it); the try-hard 90s albums are OK in their way... but Never Let Me Down is dreadful, just dreadful, despite the fact that he spent a lot of time on it and promoted the hell out of it. At the time he said it was getting back to what he was doing with Scary Monsters! But I defy any Bowie fan to listen to the Glass Spiders monologue without cringing. Getting it so wrong and so right is really Bowie's strange alchemy...