David Bowie R.I.P

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.

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

― Anyway, it's not a three, it's a yogh. (Tom D.), Monday, January 11, 2016 12:16 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

When "Where Are We Now" came out, Dave Grohl was on WTF. I don't remember exactly what he said, but he was real hesitant: I think ... I think he might be dying.

ugh i knew dave grohl would show up eventually

was extremely shocked when I heard this last night at exactly the time I was going to bed. though strangely i had less of an emotional reaction than i was expecting, such an exotic and glamorous figure that it's difficult for me to picture him as a regular joe. his demigod status didn't make me expect him to be immortal, but it makes it strange to think of him undergoing something as mundane as sickness and death. a huge, inescapable cultural juggernaut in the uk, ad an influence on pretty much every significant indie act in the first decades after punk. thankfully I was more than happy regarding this ubiquity. there are countless significant and non-significant moments of my life where bowie's music played a part. my wife cutting my hair with blunt scissors when we first started going out with diamond dogs on the turntable comes to mind immediately. we have a blown up print of him playing cello in the hunger on our living room wall that i started at as i ate my breakfast this morning. not sure there is any pop cultural figure whose passing will seem as significant as this.

How can a song like 'Life On Mars?', that's nearly 50 years old and that I and many others are super familiar with, still sound so goddamn fresh and amazing and modern?

(Probably going to be "live blogging" my journey through DB's discography throughout the day.)

You can play this game throughout his recorded works. I'm still waiting for the music world to catch up with 'It's No Game'.

out of respect to everyone i will withhold the Streisand cover of "Life on Mars"

German Foreign Office:

"Good-bye, David Bowie. You are now among #Heroes. Thank you for helping to bring down the #wall."

i don't even know how to think about this. he was such an immensity in my life from the time i was a teenager. i must have played "heroes" thousands of times by now.

xp oh wow

https://scontent-lax3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xat1/v/t1.0-9/940842_10153839081943610_917113864734352321_n.jpg?oh=46a12c1b591ef8e6fd83473348385861&oe=570E8AC2

the final string chord of "rock'n'roll suicide" has the power to bring me to tears on a normal day, i don't think i could handle it at the moment

oddly one of the first things i was moved to dig up when i heard the news was the video for "forbidden colours" and was surprised to see that bowie isn't in it at all!

http://ohyouprettythings.com/

Still very much unbelievable and surreal. Grinded through work today, not really willing to listen to anything else than William Basinski and Ambient 4: On Land on repeat.

Was just about to post Eno's take above as well, found it very moving.

It's his German version of Heroes, Helden, that I can't get enough of today.

weird popular guy that loved performance arts and was really into making music

wrote a few good tunes. condolences to his family.

A few good tunes!?

https://www.facebook.com/gordon.wilson.921/videos/vb.1847187167/10203940174905208/?type=2&theater

if you love Bowie (though I expect that's why you're on this thread) but haven't watched The Prestige yet, treat yourself soon!

Can't sing. Can't act. Balding. Can dance a little.

https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.top10films.co.uk%2Fimg%2Fintothenight.jpg&f=1

if you love Bowie (though I expect that's why you're on this thread) but haven't watched The Prestige yet, treat yourself soon!

good Pilate

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5hvHu8gHUc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=214&v=jv6mEv_rDdE

Also suddenly saddened by the thought of no more Agent Phillip Jeffries!

^^^

oops

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv6mEv_rDdE

The Christopher Priest magic thing? He's in that? Still haven't seen.

he plays Tesla, one of the best bits in the film

https://soundcloud.com/steve-nieve-official/steve-nieve-plays-life-on-mars

A few notes of farewell to a great artist and fellow musician. Your work will never cease to inspire us all.

In the 80’s before computers made it possible for everyone to be a keyboard player, I had constant work with Clive Langer and Alain Whinstanley. Clive and Alain produced the soundtrack for Absolute Beginners, and I was involved on several tracks, including playing the string synthesisers on David’s title song "Absolute Beginners".
My Royal College of Music mate Rick Wakeman added the final piano flourishes. At the same moment in time, the huge concert Live Aid took place, Elvis was asked to appear solo, but thankfully I was involved by playing on Bowie and Jagger’s “Dancing in the Street”.

For this session I played bass piano on the backing track, which was an incredibly exciting studio moment. Jagger arrived unexpectedly early in the recording room as we were running down the track, and began dancing around us, whipping the music up several notches in the process.

The song was played round and round to his dancing, many many times before the record button went red, by which time the vibe was truly red hot. After this there was a killer scene in the control room with Bowie and Jagger, out starring each other, and me, all the musicians on the track, Clive and Alain, listening back. They overdubbed their voices two takes each. We all stood listening back takes A+B of David’s vocal and the best lines were compiled. Then Mick took the the chair beside Clive listening line by line. Each time the room was asked A or B? If the concensus was for take A, Mick insisted on take B.

This went down for the entire song. “It sounds pretty wonderful now” says David to the whole room, “does anyone have any ideas for overdubs?”. Although the quiet one in situations like this, I said instantaneously “Yeah I have a vox organ here, I can bring it in, it would add a cool flavour”. “Go get it then” said David, and I headed out through the door.

As I headed by Mick I heard him quip “That’s the sound I hate the most in the whole world”… I immediately looked at Bowie thinking to myself “what a catastrophe" but David smiled at me and I will never forget this smile that we all love so much. Needless to say the Vox Organ never made it to the mix.
But I will always remember how David made everyone feel at ease and brought out the best in people, even the contrary Mr Jagger.

Quickly a final mix was played back, I recall Bowie actually leaping over the mixing desk. He was standing behind the desk between the back and the control room window and in one seemingly effortless and elegant kick of his leg he just seemed to fly over the desk and landed right beside Clive and I. Later we all went down to Docklands to watch Bowie and Jagger shoot the video, once again, two megastars determined to out dance the other.
Brilliant.

that's a pretty great story about an unfortunate record

yep

It's his German version of Heroes, Helden, that I can't get enough of today.

That German version of Heroes reminds me of the day I stopped listening to 6 Music, because they played it and the stupid DJ talked over half of it with his lame Bowie "impressions"

Reading that Eno tribute, I'm hoping the terrific circumstances of Bowie's death spur him and many others to do something similarly extraordinary when facing the final curtain.

Although death comes too quickly for many, this kind of death, the slowly approaching train, is an horrendous curse upon the soul, to be wished upon nobody, and it speaks of the man's magnificence how he has wrung this blessing from it.

I thought you didn't like him much?

The new album is amazing and my favourite thing he's done

i... i have never heard this German Heroes before!

Bowie was someone it actually took me a while to get into, and he's still not in my most personal pantheon, but I love a lot of his music and he was a fascinating person. Man Who Sold the World gave me a way in through it's classic rock riffage, but I think my real conversion experience on him was watching Ziggy Stardust, and in a way it was as much people's reactions to him as it was him that changed my feelings about him, just the energy between him and his audience that made me feel that he tapped into something unconscious in people and that this was really, really important to them at that historical moment.

i can cosign most of that there

i also really admire the savvy and intelligence of good showmen, and then you put the musical innovation on top of that.

I think it transcends that moment and that is why people are so upset right now. He was an androgynous icon, a weird alien shapeshifter, someone who rocked SUPER HARD but did so in a way that always subverted the machismo of rock and was always hovering from the sidelines to throw a dash of weird into the status quo.

The amazing thing about Bowie is he puts on a huge front but is one of the few artists that actually delivers. Discovering his albums for me was like discovering Beatles albums, constantly exclaiming "He wrote THIS TOO???".

The collected instrumentals album (lions share of which comes from the Berlin trilogy obv) is so perfect, I want to go for long walks in its world