David Bowie R.I.P

I can distinctly remember the video for "Dancing in the Streets".

This was my first exposure to both Bowie and the Stones, and consequently why put off listening to either of them for a very, very long time.

Madonna ✔ @Madonna
So lucky to have met you!!!! Hot Tramp I love you So! ❤️ #rebelheart
4:06 AM - 11 Jan 2016
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CYbYsUPW8AAo87t.jpg

RIP

"We can be heroes, just for one day"

#rebelheart

liked this post from Momus very much: http://mrstsk.tumblr.com/post/137085985233

Not having much luck at work today. I've been less upset about the deaths of people I've actually known.

I'm sorry but can someone please explain to me why Madonna's post is so objectionable in a way that other artists making fannish posts talking about meeting Bowie or being hugely influenced by him are somehow not?

Actually, on second thought, just don't.

ILX wouldn't be ILX without someone being dickish on an RIP thread would it now.

RIP

Regarding Madonna, ending her tweet with a hashtag plug for her new album is in questionable teaste.

I'm more having trouble because I'd much rather ignore work to focus on listening to all of Bowie's albums than try to work with all of Bowie's albums playing in the background.

not sure what's "dickish" abt my post but ok

Finding myself having an odd reaction to this given that he's been so uncharacteristically low profile for the past decade. It's sort of a slow sadness sinking in rather than shock. And now Blackstar is sitting there to be poured through.

Regarding Madonna, ending her tweet with a hashtag plug for her new album is in questionable teaste.

i figured it was a "rebel rebel" ref

not sure what's "dickish" abt my post but ok

I think Branwell explained it quite clearly, but in case you didn't get it, it's dickish to deride Madonna for reminiscing his acquaintance with Bowie and not the kazillion male musicians/celebrities who've done the same.

Madonna puts that hashtag on all her posts, it barely means anything anymore.

The one where she talks about Bowie being the first ever concert she went to is pretty sweet.

tribute show at Carnegie Hall, 3/31

http://www.carnegiehall.org/Calendar/2016/3/31/0800/PM/The-Music-of-David-Bowie/

The one where she talks about Bowie being the first ever concert she went to is pretty sweet.

I bet you it wasn't though. What's Bono been saying?

This is completely ridiculous, I know, but I just got a little sad realizing that we'll never get another Nathan Adler album.

Thanks Tuomas! Didn't realize I was disrespecting the women of the world, will try harder next time.

moving on, daughter was pretty shook up this morning and wore her Aladdin Sane shirt to school. She's 13 and her obsession has been planing at a peak for the past year, makes this somehow sadder and weirder here for me....

also that's not even her in the picture, it's suzanne somers, American comic actress

You're not alone, RR. Outside meant the world to me in college. Blackstar seems to have a lot of that record in it.

chameleon is a weird compliment for bowie, he's much more a peacock

It never ceases to amaze me, listening to Man Who Sold The World and Hunky Dory back to back, the astronomical leap that he made in a single year from a decent artist with some interesting ideas to something akin to a pop/rock deity. Everything gets tightened up and streamlined and perfected and then he just rides that train for ten years.

Madonn has said often over the years that the Ziggy concert was her first, and she inducted him into the HOF. She's open about his influence on her.

*Madonna

What the fuck? No. I refuse to believe it.

RIP... what a life.

When I heard that James Brown died, I was not able to process it: how can someone like James Brown die? How is that physically possible?

Feeling the same way about Bowie right now. In a certain way, I don't think I really believe it (or I'm not allowing myself to believe it).

Yeah for real. Boulez died last week at 90 and I am still processing that, reading old interviews and articles and stuff, the force of his thought and aesthetic and just like the USEFULNESS of his WAY make it too hard to grasp that he could no longer be acting on earth.

This feels just like that minus the 'well but 90 years old' consolation. How could Bowie be gone at 69? How could Bowie be gone at all?

Same as Boulez though Bowie will not be gone, maybe not ever. The usefulness of his way will be there for everyone who needs it for their lives and art and people are always gonna need it.

Bowie seemed like someone who would have figured out how to will himself to live to 120, and would have managed to stay relevant and on point the entire time.

visconti says that he knew for a year this was how it would be, and Blackstar was his final gift to us. i have no idea why but I've never felt better about my own mortality for some reason, just in the way that he left. and i genuinely appreciate that there was no warning, publicly at least. that there was no endless stream of photos of bowie, weakened, coming in and out of hospitals. that for the past decade he's just decided to make some music here and there and live privately after being such a public icon. and i also appreciate that, from all i know and i could be wrong of course (please wait to tell me contradictory stories later), he was a super decent and soft spoken and relatively (to his career choice) humble and kind man.

just found out, totally shocked by this tbh

Very surreal and overwhelming to listen to Blackstar for the first time on my way to work this morning. Driving in total darkness, knowing he was gone, hearing a really beautiful and vibrant album from one of my all time favorite artists was too much. RIP.

honestly, with all the new material, I was expecting the next thing Bowie would do was announce a tour (or at least some kind of live performance).

I wish I could say with a straight face that I'd seen him in concert, but it was a Secret Machines concert and I just saw him sitting up in the balcony at the high line. Still feel lucky though.

profoundly bummed by all of this. what a terrible loss

First thing I ever stole in my life was a cassette of ziggy stardust from the record store in Rosedale. Not a tribute I'm proud of...

Love that he did this; he called out MTV's racist programming policies during an on-air interview in 1983:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CYbtVYJWMAA6x7o.jpg:large

xpost nomar absolutely right on the decent and kind front. He certainly projected that. All the shape-shifting genius stuff is inevitable and fair comment, but I was always amazed at what a thoroughly affable character he seemed. Don't know how he managed to be both the most far out and latterly the nicest and least affected of the old rock superstar dudes.

Hilton Als obit:

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/postscript-david-bowie-1947-2016?mbid=social_twitter

Als mentions this performance, backing Iggy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7hzBEBXEC0

some surprises here and there

http://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/david-bowie-s-official-top-40-biggest-selling-downloads-revealed-__2854/

oddly "As the World Falls Down" is iTunes' fourth most viewed Bowie video.

I can't even process this, it doesn't seem real

Playing "Fantastic Voyage" a lot, title seems apt.

so, i just want to make sure everyone is as surprised by this as i am. did anyone at all see this coming? or even know his health was failing?

thought there was talk of him being pretty sick a year or so ago, but i kinda figured he had gotten better since he suddenly seemed so busy.

tony visconti has posted on facebook :

He always did what he wanted to do. And he wanted to do it his way and he wanted to do it the best way. His death was no different from his life - a work of Art. He made Blackstar for us, his parting gift. I knew for a year this was the way it would be. I wasn't, however, prepared for it. He was an extraordinary man, full of love and life. He will always be with us. For now, it is appropriate to cry.

― mark e, Monday, January 11, 2016 4:48 AM

what does this mean? is he hinting that bowie timed the release to coincide with his ailing condition? or just that he intended it to be his final album?

I fear conspiracy theorists will walk this around the park, I'm already seeing stuff about the line in Girl Loves Me “Where the fuck did Monday go?” and something about a Metal band called Lazarus Blackstar (or vice versa)

Suspected for a long time he might be ill, didn't Flaming Lips do a track called "Is David Bowie Dying?", or something similar?

i sang "happy birthday" into tony visconti's cell phone three days ago. this is truly disorienting.

http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2016/01/tony_viscontis.html

Yassassin.