OK, is this the worst piece of music writing ever?

i have no idea what that is for

http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/fewer-clicks1.png

tried reading that on mobile and got one of those full-page 'download this app to proceed' roadblocks. hisssss

In order to fully cognate the textural and lyrical parameters on display
https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fs3-ec.buzzfed.com%2Fstatic%2Fenhanced%2Fwebdr05%2F2013%2F7%2F9%2F19%2Fenhanced-buzz-2038-1373414176-0.jpg&f=1

good lord what is the fucking point of that Coachella poster piece

^^^ btw I've clicked through four pages of it so far :(

You might as well be asking what is the point of Consequence of Sound. There appears to be none.

omg that coachella piece is amazing. the headliners are basically the same. this is like clickhole quality "here's what famous stars would look like if we photoshopped a hat onto them" stuff.

Writer learned who Bowie was via Snapchat a few minutes before getting the assignment

http://www.thefader.com/2016/01/11/david-bowie-obituary-essay

idk if i'm going to regret engaging but: where is the evidence of that

doubt someone who'd just heard of Bowie could have turned his bio into such bizarre prose so quickly

Let's commit to transcendent human specificity

can't decide whether that or the SFJ thing is worse

Keeping this out of the lovely Bowie R.I.P. thread but I found this take by Owen Pallett to be so far off the mark and basically insulting, like he was just waiting to drop his edgy, contrarian hot take that makes no sense whether you love weird Bowie or pop Bowie or whatever.

It’s difficult for me to articulate my love of Bowie’s music without coming off as a hater. My engagement with his music began very young, and through my teens I purchased everyone of his albums, read every book on him, including the song-by-song commentaries, the problematic Angie Bowie autobiographies, and more recently, every single post on the Bowie Songs blog.

What I want to say about Bowie is that he was, essentially, a non-musician. He couldn’t play guitar, couldn’t play piano. He was a fair sax player, but I don’t think anybody learned to play the sax because of Diamond Dogs. He was a grating, irritating singer. In the 80s and 90s, when he mellowed out his voice, he became, essentially, a Scott Walker impersonator. He had no talent for writing couplets, his songs were inconsistent and never really fit on the radio. He didn’t write hooks, he wrote only a handful of highly memorable melodies.

So why is he, along with Ornette Coleman, John Cage, and Missy Elliott, my favourite musician of the 20th century? Is he even a musician? His talent was his charisma, his curatorial skills. He was an extremely talented actor and mime. His greatest ever achievement was convincing the world that his work was worthwhile through sheer force of will and panache.

People often debate “what is the best Bowie song”… objectively speaking, Bowie has lots of great songs. “Heroes”, “Rebel Rebel”, “Fame”, “Let’s Dance”. These "good" songs are, in fact, his worst songs. These are the songs that are functional and that you might hear on the radio.

Bowie at his best is when he’s at his most flawed, his most paranoid, his most messed up. The hippie campfire guitar interlude on “Space Oddity”. The opening track on “The Man Who Sold The World”, which was an investigation into Bowie’s own queerness, and its title, “The Width Of A Circle”, referred to the diametrical differences between a vagina and an anus. The ten-minute title track of “Station To Station”, with its paranoid, xenophobic yelps, and his most messed-up lyric ever: “It’s not the side-effects of the cocaine / I’m thinking that it must be love”. Or his second most messed-up lyric, from “Breaking Glass”: “Don’t look at the carpet / I drew something awful on it.” It’s his most incandescent vocal performance, on “It’s No Game”, where he screams his way through a duet with a Japanese woman doing spoken word. His best moments are challenging, and confound you.

Bowie was the fly in the ointment. All his greatest musical achievements belong to his collaborators, Mick Ronson, Tony Visconti, Mike Garson, Brian Eno, Nile Rodgers, Erdal Kizilcay, Gail Ann Dorsey, Reeves Gabrels, Zach Alford. Bowie was the charisma, the icon, the ego that took their contributions and destroyed them. He turned a lack of musical ability into an asset, he made “musical talent” a liability, he made a stab in the dark beautiful. He was not a creator, he was a destroyer. And he was the best destroyer that ever lived.

Is there a source for that beautiful turd, sir?

An ilxor posted that on fb. Definitely doesn't belong on this thread.

oh right

. He couldn’t play guitar, couldn’t play piano. He was a fair sax player,

All three of these statements are wrong, he was a shit sax player for a start.

Oh it was already attributed.

I think Bowie would be the first to tell you that he needed his collaborators to execute his vision. That's one of the coolest, most modern things about him. Also, as much as he benefitted from the help of others, he was generous with his own talent and celebrity.

lol wtf y'all

Hey this isn't the thread for moaning about other people's opinions

That is a good post and MFB is bad at reading

also it's not published music writing!

sic otm

I read that OP tribute on FB and thought it was great.
That said, I always thought Bowie could play guitar.

I thought the OP post on Facebook was wonderful, and it summed-up an awful lot about Bowie. He's not a musician, not the way Hendrix or someone else like that is. But that's not the point.

He's not a musician, not the way Hendrix or someone else like that is.

Not too many musicians in the world then.

That's an extreme example, obviously. But he doesn't strike me as being a musician the way McCartney is, or Kate Bush, for instance. And I'm talking from a place of complete ignorance because I don't play a note on anything, but his music is often really awkward; his melodies don't seem to flow like (some) other people's do. You see The Beatles being compared to Schubert or whoever for harmonic reasons, but I've never seen anyone talk about Bowie quite like that. It's not that him being a 'non-musician' is a bad thing, or a pejorative, or a criticism, it's yet another part of what made him who he was, and brilliant.

Like Lennon or Dylan maybe? I know what you mean and I know what OP meant but, as I said, he actually could play guitar and piano, and better than he could play sax!

Yeah, Lennon and Dylan I guess, but also Lou Reed, or Iggy Pop, or Mark Hollis, or PJ Harvey; it's a punk thing, isn't it? Anyone can be a pop star, you don't need to be a musician.

And I assumed OP was exaggerating for effect, because, you know, it's emotive prose about a relationship with a hero, not an essay for citation in a journal.

idk i really like bowie's sax playing on black tie white noise

I took him to mean that Bowie's no virtuoso, but idk we knew that already? Plus, NLMD excepted the records on which he plays the most instruments and jams with the band are often his best records.

Also: I love his lead guitar on DD and The Idiot.

his music is often really awkward; his melodies don't seem to flow like (some) other people's do.

Yep. This is a point that the Bowie blog makes often: his incongruous wtf chord progressions.

as much as this makes me the person pissing on everyone's piss parade I doubt obituaries, unless they're obviously ill-intentioned ("bowie sucked and you suck YEAH I SAID IT COME AT ME BRO") are the best target for this sort of thing

Personal facebook posts are definitely not.

his music is often really awkward; his melodies don't seem to flow like (some) other people's do.

Yep. This is a point that the Bowie blog makes often: his incongruous wtf chord progressions.

i thought owen's post got at something really essential in bowie's music

Scuse me a sec I just need to go click "like" on something

hmm
http://consequenceofsound.net/2016/01/david-bowie-lives-the-cunning-exit/

i thought owen's post got at something really essential in bowie's music

ditto. i wasn't phased at all in reading it by the fact that i could summon up caveats and counter-examples (inevitable in most any Bowie music-related assertion, after all).

Bowie was the fly in the ointment. All his greatest musical achievements belong to his collaborators, Mick Ronson, Tony Visconti, Mike Garson, Brian Eno, Nile Rodgers, Erdal Kizilcay, Gail Ann Dorsey, Reeves Gabrels, Zach Alford. Bowie was the charisma, the icon, the ego that took their contributions and destroyed them. He turned a lack of musical ability into an asset, he made “musical talent” a liability, he made a stab in the dark beautiful. He was not a creator, he was a destroyer. And he was the best destroyer that ever lived.

Eno is an odd one as he is known for what OP is describing - also known as a non-musician. Its like OP is making an argument for Eno rather than Bowie as a specific kind of pop artist.

Eno was really the guy that couldn't play anything, was a lot more conceptual in his thinking etc., borrowed from a possibly wider range of sources.

Um, was 0w3n's post public on facebook or private? Because that might need a moderator redaction if private.

And tbh a ban also.

arguing that Bowie couldn't play guitar or piano is ridiculous, dude thoroughly knew his away around chord structures on each

that being said I don't think Owen is entirely wrong in general about Bowie's virtues

the whole "extremely talented musical artist was no virtuoso" angle in general is tiresome and not very interesting imo, as a lead-in to larger points sure i guess it can work and pallett's piece is fine but usually that angle makes me think of fucking stephen stills saying dylan is "no musician" after he played all the blood on the tracks songs in front of him

lol yes

Page Hamilton on Bowie

What is Bowie like?

Great. He was probably the most intelligent person, along with Elliot Goldenthal, that I’ve ever been around. You just knew and felt that you were in the presence of greatness. Like, ‘OK, he’s not like me.’

Really?

He’s smart, he’s just… Well, first of all, he opens his mouth and that voice is going into your ears, and you’re like, ‘OK, that is not normal.’ That’s an incredible instrument. And I know the records, I know the songs, I know the lines, lyrics… I remember saying to him, ‘Quicksand, OK, what were you thinking? The descending progression with the diminished chords, and then this incredible melody over the top of it -- what were you thinking?!’ He said, ‘Oh, I just thought I was so clever.’

Ha!

It’s like, ‘Fuck off,’ you know? Are you fucking kidding me? How’d you come up with a thing like that?! I mean, that’s some heavy jazz harmony going on in there. He was amazing.

Bowie was the fly in the ointment.

so David Bowie is John McClane?