Anticipate David Bowie's BLACKSTAR

There are so many albums where 'oh my god he's telling us he's about to die' and it didn't happen.

Some where the whole thing was artistic, some where the person, um, got better.

Surprisingly, the song with the live drum & bass beat is my least favorite on the album (and the slow songs are the best by far).

Did anyone in a review anywhere predict what happened?

closest thing i've encountered so far was my roommate after the album leaked, coming out of his room and being like "dude, some of these lyrics..."

hours is certainly a worse album than BTWN. Hours has only 'thursday's child' and maybe 'survive' on it, the rest is terrible. some good b-sides though.

Some similarities?

Les Marquises (English: The Marquesas) is Jacques Brel's thirteenth and final album. Also known as Brel, the album was released 17 November 1977 by Barclay (96 010). This was the singer's first album of new songs in ten years and was released a year before his death from lung cancer. The album's themes include death ("Jaurès", "Vieillir", "Jojo"), parting ("Orly") and in several songs Brel evokes his career in the 1960s ("Les F..", "Jojo", "Knokke-le-Zoutte Tango", "Vieillir"). The album was recorded live in Studio B at the Barclay Studios on Avenue Hoche, Paris. With his health failing, Brel was only able to record at most two songs per day. Brel returned to the Marquesas Islands shortly after the recording sessions.

The album was treated with great secrecy before its release and was delivered to reviewers in a reinforced metal box with a timed, electronic padlock to stop them listening to it before its release date. No airplay of the album was allowed and no singles were released until after its release, and there were no interviews or promotion given by Brel regarding the album.

my dad was convinced he was dying when he heard it on Saturday. told me on Sunday that he'd be dead in a year. he nailed it... ever since The Next Day, with the allusions to Alzheimer's on "Where Are We Now?" and the cut-out album cover, and the David Bowie Is exhibition last year, I was convinced he was already dead and this was all a performance piece. mentioned upthread but Courtney Love and Dave Grohl intimated in 2013 that he was seriously ill... after the disappointing last record and hearing how exciting and modern and totally singular Blackstar is, i thought he was on a new roll...

dead *within a year...

closest comparison i immediately made was Zevon's 'The Wind', but that was a different kind of farewell.

there have been lots of albums where 'the specter of death' 'hangs over the proceedings' as 'so and so grapples with their own mortality' and everyone is like "my god oh no". that happened to neil young too, maybe around the time of prairie wind? i don't remember now. and since then of course he's released fifteen more albums and hooked up with daryl hannah.

hours is certainly a worse album than BTWN. Hours has only 'thursday's child' and maybe 'survive' on it, the rest is terrible. some good b-sides though.

i like "if i'm dreaming my life" if i remember it's playing

and since then of course he's released fifteen more albums and hooked up with daryl hannah.

yikes

i hate "dated" as a pejorative but i have to say "the pretty things are going to hell" sounds more dated than all of earthling

whammy bar!

you know I hate 'dated' too but the only definition that works is if it sounded horrible at the time ("The Pretty Things..." did).

i love the changes in the drums in the first 1/3 vs. last 1/3 of the title track. they're skittering at the beginning, then they go away into the weird zone of the middle 1/3, and when they return everything is in simple lockstep, like they've undergone a conversion.

it took me 3 minutes to realize I had two different Bowie youtubes open at once..
'Blackstar' and 'The Heart's filthy lesson'

I don't know what time I started them both but it did overlap quite nicely

Lol

i would start a thread for hours but also there's literally no reason to start a thread for hours. anyway i've listened to it a few times recently bc parts of blackstar remind me of it, as described upthread; disc two of its 2004 reissue is really illuminating, what with the different mixes of "survive," "seven," and "something in the air" which while they don't exactly make the songs feel complete at least fill them out a little; the omikron mixes are pretty uniformly superior to what ended up on the album, probably because hours is kind of the platonic example of an album so overworked it sounds unfinished. at least two of the b-sides ("we shall go to town" and "we all go through") are better and more propulsive and coherent than anything on the record. anyway: huh

i don't remember now. and since then of course he's released fifteen more albums and hooked up with daryl hannah.

― nomar, Tuesday, January 12, 2016 12:56 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

But if you know what life is worth
You would look for yours on earth - Bob Marley

, the song with the live drum & bass beat

there are several songs with "live" drum&bass rhythm section, no?

this isn't an adequate summary of the album but it sounds to me very much like bowie is taking elements from a variety of his past approaches (d&b rhythms, wailing 80s sax, wanking 70s guitar) and mixing them up. i mean i suppose those are all things in his skill set, so it's possible he just 'arrived' at that particular mix, but knowing what we (think we) know about bowie it's hard to imagine this wasn't self-conscious.

also given how some of the reviews emphasized how 'experimental' this album was, some even likening it to recent scott walker, i was surprised by how pop it is, long songs and all (the vocal melodies, the way his voice is mixed, etc etc). that's neither a criticism nor an accolade, it's just my impression.

Listening to the lovely I Can't Give Everything Away this morning, and the ending where he repeats the title over and over, it struck me how there are several readings of the phrase, e.g.:
- there is a limit to how much I can give
- I must not reveal the big secret
- I can't (or don't want to) relinquish this life
- I'm not going to explain what all of this means

And, the way he sings the line, the word "Away" becomes separated, so in the end that's the final statement in itself: "Away... away..." It's really beautiful.

"i am so rich i literally cannot rid myself of this tall coin"

one listen in : bloody hell i enjoyed that.
not so sure i can listen to it again for a while given just how obvious it is his 'goodbye' album, but it's very special stuff.

there are several songs with "live" drum&bass rhythm section, no?

i meant Sue (Or in a Season of Crime), that's the only one Mark Guiliana really Guiliana-s out.

It's weird, I haven't listened to Kaddish by Towering Inferno for a long time so my memory of it is sketchy, but I'm getting some kind of odd compulsion to dig it out and revisit because of this record, like my subconscious is telling me they would make great bookends.

one listen in : bloody hell i enjoyed that.
not so sure i can listen to it again for a while given just how obvious it is his 'goodbye' album, but it's very special stuff.

― mark e, Wednesday, January 13, 2016 8:12 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

keep noticing more and more things

like from Sue (or in a Season of Crime)

"The clinic called
the x-rays show
I brought you home"

;_;

yeah, stuff like that hit hard.
but damn, what a final statement.

I'm on the nth of many listenthroughs and I just keep noticing all the little clues Bowie peppered throughout. I can't imagine the pain he must have been in while recording it, working so hard for it to be released before the inevitable came.

just a really cool album. first bowie album I've listened to all the way through.

however it is really dark

i haven't really listened to much late bowie, but this is really tremendous

the title track is pretty much consuming me atm, not in a ghoulish way but because it's such an accomplished and original piece of work. i can't even think what to compare it to apart from maybe islands-period king crimson.

cosign

still giving the rest of the record time, don't dislike it but I am sort of thrown off by the jazzy "live d&b" arrangements. Interesting choice anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0Jkv1cs6PE

'Tis a Pity She Was a Whore is a killer fucking song

The drum geek in me is jealous of the drum part on the first section of Blackstar, it's one of those perfectly conceived for the song studio parts.

man 'blackstar' is sold out everywhere on vinyl. i paid $50 to some random amazon vendor because i can't wait anymore. only heard it once at a friend's (before DB passed) and i was blown away -- besides latterday scott walker it really evoked 'the idiot' and 'lust for life' for me if not directly sonically then vibe- and quality-wise. (i guess the sax sort of reminds me of 'fun house' which i realize bowie had nothing to do with but i can't help associating the stooges in their entirety with him.) making dying a final art project is such a generous parting gesture that it seems disrepectful to even point out the obvious. i mean this is some serious 'fuck you' to the gallows, 'ballad of reading gaol'-style. thanks dave wherever you are!

I ordered it from Soundstage Direct but might have gotten there too late- now listing as "awaiting repress"

when i got my shipping confirmation email i felt serious relief. i'd been on a trip where i really didn't have the opportunity to get it, and upon returning when i tried to buy it at my local record store tuesday morning they just sadly shook their heads. but whatever -- however much the wait sucks i'm glad there's all this interest

The prices its going for on eBay are just ridiculous.

just spotify and chill

I missed the final vinyl copy in my local store by about 10 minutes, at 1145 on Monday morning. Ordered it on Amszon with a shipping date of Jan 22, then got a "delayed - awaiting repress" mail later in the week. Was persuaded to go for the vinyl on the atrength of Visconti's recommendation in Mojo - he took personal responsibility for the vinyl mastering and raved about the sound quality.

bought the cd, it's great too! 2016 is going to be my cd year

I went to buy the LP the day it came out but the record store didn't have any copies - I don't think many were initially pressed. Obviously impossible now for a month or two.

Target had plenty of CD copies, I noticed.

Vinyl repress should be ready in just about another week according to Sony, at least in UK. It went out of stock with them on Monday 11th with last stock reaching shops Tuesday/Wednesday. Repress takes about 2 weeks.

HENRY ROLLINS: BOWIE'S BLACKSTAR IS ON THE LEVEL OF LOW AND HEROES
http://www.laweekly.com/music/henry-rollins-bowies-blackstar-is-on-the-level-of-low-and-heroes-6481055

Target had plenty of CD copies, I noticed.

Good to know; I'm making my bi-weekly Target run tomorrow, and that's where I do most of my CD shopping anyway. I'm kinda hoping they've brought in other stuff of his as well; I want the 3CD Nothing Has Changed. (If they don't have it there, I'll get it from Amazon - I know they have it in stock again now.)