David Bowie R.I.P

so many thoughts going through my head - listening to first Blackstar, then Hunky Dory, now Station2Station in the office. What a variety of emotions, ideas, creative thoughts he was able to communicate, so many great collaborations.

can't help but feel very sad that I never got to see him perform, a dream since I was a teen and I had made a promise to myself I would fly anywhere in the world with my little brother to see him

Gosh, this was unexpected. He was a huge favourite when I was young and also my mom’s absolute favourite artist. Many happy memories of listening to Bowie with her, especially taking her to see him in 2004.

When I heard that Lemmy had died I was at work. But when I got home the first thing I did was play 'Ace of Spades', because it's so obvious, what else do you do?
I was wondering earlier this morning which Bowie track to play and couldn't come to a decision. But I settled on the title/opening track of 'The Next Day', and it feels like a fitting send off to listen to that album and then 'Blackstar' all the way through.

^^^ I put on Station to Station as it's my favourite DB album, but how can one record possibly sum up his career? Even his missteps (of which there were many) were at the very least interesting, and he has left such a wealth of material, a real embarrassment of riches.

this news really sucks. am genuinely much sadder than i ever expected. and im not even a huge mega fan (though i own about 75% of his albums). never suspected cancer. so sad. never saw it coming at all.

Listening to them in the order to which they came to me.

Which was a little odd, starting with Let's Dance (I was 13 when it came out, OK?) but adult ears are a lot kinder to that record.

I have had much of "Blackstar" running through my head this past week. It's an album that's made a big impression on me. I think the melancholia of "Dollar Days" the most.

It's 6 am where I am. Too early to be up. Was having an intense dream and woke, picked up my phone to scan Twitter just to break the dream's grip when I came across all these Tweets referring to Bowie in the past tense. What a shock this is.

Goodbye, great and inspiring soul.

Side 2 of Diamond Dogs :(

waiting to see if morrissey says anything.

Yeah, they were sort-of mates..

I knew for a year this was the way it would be.

I am devastated by this. He meant so much to my young friends and I when music was everything to us. He was an emblem by which we identified ourselves. We couldn't imagine a life without his music.

I was driving back home tonight. I had to pull over... I'm sad and not sad - if anyone could ascend/transcend, it would be him.

I bought Scary Monsters the week it came out. I was 13. It's always been about that album. It's never not sounded like one giant step into the future. I just put it on now and it's still like that. I'm freaked out that Blackstar is still sitting in the unplayed folder.

RIP

Don't really need to hear David Cameron talking about 'Hunky Dory' tbh.

Can't adequately put into words how important Bowie was when I was growing up. Always seemed like Glasgow (and environs) was especially insane about Bowie, a real Bowie Town, and from Bowie to Lou Reed, the Velvets, Iggy, Orange Juice, JAMC, Pastels etc etc etc.

I've got my older sister to thank for introducing me to Bowie (Lou Reed, the Velvets and so on). So thanks to her and thanks to David Bowie. RIP.

I'm freaked out that Blackstar is still sitting in the unplayed folder.

^^^

I'll listen to it this afternoon. I like to be in the right mind space when listening to any new album, but with this more than anything.

Discovering Ziggy Stardust was... discovering music. As a teen there were many important artists that expanded my idea of what music could be, what emotions it could produce, what iconography it could make available. Bowie was the nazz.

Feel very connected with other Bowie fans today, he somehow made a community out of an existential outsider-role (and made it work as music). Finding out that a friend shared this connection to Bowie always made me happy - it was never an exclusive club, but a hint that we understood each other emotionally.

RIP.
I'm stunned, and will be for a while

One of the real titans of music. So sad.

This is possibly ghoulish and grotesque but one angle that is really weird to think about is that Angie Bowie is on Celebrity Big Brother at the moment, and won't know.

Wendy Leigh (gossipy Bowie biographer) on BBC earlier this morning in an eye rolling tribute started with more even-handed adjectives, genius, chameleon, then notched it up with "he was also psychic and a wizard, he planned the time of death, it was all planned out so that it would hit exactly when Britain was waking up"

Oops, sorry, not wizard, *magician*

"This is possibly ghoulish and grotesque but one angle that is really weird to think about is that Angie Bowie is on Celebrity Big Brother at the moment, and won't know."

im sure they will let her know - would prob be good for the drama

His debut is maybe the worst album I've heard from '67, no joke. To not only come back from that but to have a subsequent decade of nigh-unimpeachable albums, several of which are unquestionably among the greatest of all-time, is an astounding feat. After that, the dude got a lifetime Stevie Wonder/Francis Ford Coppola pass to do whatever he wanted after bringing it so hard. So many amazing songs that hold up to listen after listen. 'Five Years' seriously makes me teary pretty much every time I hear it. Don't know if I can hear it today.

I'm really devastated and keep crying at work. I'm sort of surprised by how hard this has hit me because it's not like I've ever identified as the #1 Bowie fan or anything but my God if he wasn't a phenomenally talented powerhouse of a magical person. It's so sad. Surely he should be immortal. RIP.

was not at all expecting to wake up to this, what an awful shock

RIP

He and Lemmy in the same year is surreal. Rock isn't dead, but we are certainly in a different era.

Technically not in the same year but yeah - we're on the cusp of a wave of boomer-era rock 'n roll deaths.

"All the Young Dudes" is too much right now.

im sure they will let her know - would prob be good for the drama

They're going to tell her in private, off camera. Even Channel 5 has limits. I'm not an Angie fan, but this sounds like an unbelievable situation. Although my thoughts are much more with Iman and his two children.

His debut is maybe the worst album I've heard from '67.

It certainly isn't.

fuck

couldn't believe it, rip

I dare say Angie will leave the show.

I'd been having a heavy Bowie phase for a few weeks, & was shocked & bummed when I woke up and heard. Was maudlin on the train in to work, but then was walked up from Charing Cross, listening to 'Station to Station", & by the time I'd hit "It's not the side effects of the cocaine…" and it's galloping along, I was just thinking what a thing to have made, what a great life, just what an amazing way to have spent 70 years in the world. RIP, thank you.

i've had bowie-fever for the last several weeks as well, this latest bout kicked off by the amazing blackstar video.
RIP David Bowie. :(

dont even know what to say. people at work saying "I can't even name a single David Bowie song"...where the hell have they been?

oh man, what a thing to wake up to.

I just went to the record store to buy Blackstar yesterday, they were out of the CD.

RIP genius

xpost Depending on their age and general interest in music, I guess I can believe it. I was mostly only aware of him as the dude from Labyrinth who had some hits in the '80s until I actively sought his stuff out. Classic rock stations seem to have always unfairly slighted his work.

i would guess they would recognize several of his songs but just don't know they're Bowie - hell I was a fan of him for a while and didn't know "Golden Years" was him

i routinely confused him with billy idol until my mind was blown by station to station sometime after i went to college

I first heard him as a kid, because "Let's Dance" was a big pop hit at the time, and I can distinctly remember the video for "Dancing in the Streets". In high school, listening to classic rock radio, they really only played a handful of songs ("Space Odyssey", "Changes", "Fame" off the top of my head) -- he occupied this weird space where I always knew who he was, but he was somehow still "underground".

What would the average (American) person on the street know of his '70s work? 'Space Oddity' definitely, 'Changes' probably, 'Heroes' maybe. I'd be inclined to say something from Ziggy Stardust but I don't actually know how culturally ubiquitous those songs are. The riffs are probably more recognizable than the songs. 'All The Young Dudes' seems likely.

Honestly, I remember when I was a teenager (in the early to mid 90s), the general consensus (among teenagers) seemed to be that David Bowie was a washed up wannabe (old dude trying to be hip by touring with nine inch nails, etc.). It was only when I got into my 20s that I started buying his older albums that I got into his music.

I occasionally meet people my age who still have this mid 90s image of him.

Anyway R.I.P., one of the greats of all time.

devasted.
I think for a lot of people he was a beacon, especially for people who felt different or outcast. which i can't say was ever really true for me, and the bowie i first knew was the "let's dance" era, in his more corporate pop phase and well done at that.
but as someone who had such a desire to consume music as much of as i could, i can't think of anyone else outside of maybe zeppelin who made albums that suggested more possibilities in music, and in albums i could buy in the cornfields at Musicland. in the 80s and 90s in the midwest stick, the non-pop stuff on, say, "Heroes" was like a transmission from another galaxy, in an age when me even hearing about or being able to get a Harmonia album would have been literally impossible. just so much of it, the ryko reissues of ziggy and changesone, and diamond dogs and then the germanic dreadful soul of station to station, like i grew on ROCK BANDS like ac/dc and CCR and the stones and anything i listen to now that is remotely avant garde i heard an echo of in Bowie, even though he was able to make it accessible to me and make it something that i could understand but that weird "otherness" around the edges of his best work was a gateway to so many thing and i thank him for it.

Like, I bet a lot of people would say both 'oh I know recognize this song, cool riff' and 'what the hell is a 'Queen Bitch'?'.

"the general consensus (among teenagers) seemed to be that David Bowie was a washed up wannabe (old dude trying to be hip by touring with nine inch nails, etc.)"

this would have been around outside. that may have been the impression among some narrow age group but I was in college then and it clearly was not the impression of anyone else.

What would the average (American) person on the street know of his '70s work? 'Space Oddity' definitely, 'Changes' probably, 'Heroes' maybe. I'd be inclined to say something from Ziggy Stardust but I don't actually know how culturally ubiquitous those songs are. The riffs are probably more recognizable than the songs. 'All The Young Dudes' seems likely.

"Fame"