RIP David Bowie

[editor]

Blackstar still grows as a fucking magnificent album....

 

[editor]

So the Brixton show was a total sell out - I could have probably sold the place out all over again such was the demand in the end. We had a great night and raised over £1,100 for local music charities.

In photos: David Bowie charity benefit night at the Brixton Dogstar, Sat 6th Jan 2018

And here's the latest update about the Brixton Bowie shrine:

David Bowie’s Brixton memorial: photos of tributes and messages seen during December 2017

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Two years in the blink of an eye

Mation, Frau Bahn sends her love too.
x

 

[Mation]

Two years in the blink of an eye

Mation, Frau Bahn sends her love too.
x

Thank you - that's really lovely. Please give her a hug from me x

And yes - where the fuck did 2 years go? It's still just as weird, him not being in the world.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Will do!

 

[RainbowTown]

Blackstar still grows as a fucking magnificent album....

It's a deep, dark, strange and quite beautiful work, made even more remarkable by the fact that Bowie knew this was The End. He's staring Death right in the face on Blackstar yet his gaze and focus is unflinching and uncompromising. He could not have exited with a more brilliant finale. It really is an amazing album to me. One of his very finest.

 

[editor]

It's a deep, dark, strange and quite beautiful work, made even more remarkable by the fact that Bowie knew this was The End. He's staring Death right in the face on Blackstar yet his gaze and focus is unflinching and uncompromising. He could not have exited with a more brilliant finale. It really is an amazing album to me. One of his very finest.

And how many artists with a career spanning multiple decades manage to bow out with such a career highlight?

 

[editor]

As our chat wound its way to a natural conclusion I felt a hand gently touch my shoulder and a familiar, unnervingly polite voice interject with the words: ”Sorry to bother you, do you speak Welsh?”

Turning around I was met with the sight of an immaculate-looking Bowie, dressed in box fresh suit, a trace of stubble and his blonde hair faultlessly constructed into a quiff that was quite the feat of engineering.

He looked every inch a star. I was hypnotised in his piercing gaze - the man who I had grown up listening to thanks to my sister’s albums, had stepped out of my subconscious into the room.

Smaller than I had expected, but with a presence that loomed as large as his fabled status, I nodded affirmatively to his question, my mouth drying out as my head spun woozily.

He informed me that as he was in Wales he wanted to attempt to speak the native language – and relying on the Welsh O Level (the older and infinitely more difficult to pass version of GCSEs kids) I had passed two years previously, I was to be his teacher.

The day I taught David Bowie Welsh

 

[Kaka Tim]

just come across this - a really quite wonderful - and very moving - version IMHO. (apols if its already been posted)

 

[editor]

just come across this - a really quite wonderful - and very moving - version IMHO. (apols if its already been posted)

Nice version!

I'm sure it's been posted before but just listen to the passion and the emotion in Bowie's vocal take. All in one take.



And the lyrics are fucking beautiful:

Pushing through the market square, so many mothers sighing
News had just come over, we had five years left to cry in
News guy wept and told us, earth was really dying
Cried so much his face was wet, then I knew he was not lying
I heard telephones, opera house, favourite melodies
I saw boys, toys electric irons and T.V.'s
My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare
I had to cram so many things to store everything in there
And all the fat-skinny people, and all the tall-short people
And all the nobody people, and all the somebody people
I never thought I'd need so many people
A girl my age went off her head, hit some tiny children
If the black hadn't a-pulled her off, I think she would have killed them
A soldier with a broken arm, fixed his stare to the wheels of a Cadillac
A cop knelt and kissed the feet of a priest, and a queer threw up at the sight of that
I think I saw you in an ice-cream parlour, drinking milk shakes cold and long
Smiling and waving and looking so fine, don't think
You knew you were in this song
And it was cold and it rained so I felt like an actor
And I thought of Ma and I wanted to get back there
Your face, your race, the way that you talk
I kiss you, you're beautiful, I want you to walk
We've got five years, stuck on my eyes
We've got five years, what a surprise
We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot
We've got five years, that's all we've got

 

[editor]

I forgot what a good piano player he was. And what a song!

 

[Mation]

I put a self-indulgent poem together using his lyrics from various songs:

Don’t Fall Apart Now

David, what shall I do?
I’m in tears again
Living nostalgia

The weather’s grim
My heart’s in the basement
And I close my eyes and tighten up my brain
Wait until the crowd goes

Well I said hello and I said hello
I asked for an autograph
It was long long ago and I can’t touch your name
Where do we go to now?

Never saw in all my life a more shining jewel
Somebody special looking at me
I believe my little soul has grown

Seems that everywhere I turn
I hope you're waiting for me
The stardust trail leading back to you
Gone through a crack in the past
Gets you when you're down

Incurably ill
He really had to go
Someone like you should not be allowed

Memories flutter
Earth keeps on rolling
For in truth, it’s the beginning of nothing
The vacuum created

Don’t fall apart now
Nothing ever goes away
They never die
They just go to sleep one day

What do I know?
Angels in a ton of sound
I miss you
I absolutely love you
Bye bye love

--

Nicked the idea from a lovely tribute someone left at the mural in Brixton yesterday, also using his lyrics.

 

[Sprocket.]

Nice version!

I'm sure it's been posted before but just listen to the passion and the emotion in Bowie's vocal take. All in one take.



And the lyrics are fucking beautiful:

Pushing through the market square, so many mothers sighing
News had just come over, we had five years left to cry in
News guy wept and told us, earth was really dying
Cried so much his face was wet, then I knew he was not lying
I heard telephones, opera house, favourite melodies
I saw boys, toys electric irons and T.V.'s
My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare
I had to cram so many things to store everything in there
And all the fat-skinny people, and all the tall-short people
And all the nobody people, and all the somebody people
I never thought I'd need so many people
A girl my age went off her head, hit some tiny children
If the black hadn't a-pulled her off, I think she would have killed them
A soldier with a broken arm, fixed his stare to the wheels of a Cadillac
A cop knelt and kissed the feet of a priest, and a queer threw up at the sight of that
I think I saw you in an ice-cream parlour, drinking milk shakes cold and long
Smiling and waving and looking so fine, don't think
You knew you were in this song
And it was cold and it rained so I felt like an actor
And I thought of Ma and I wanted to get back there
Your face, your race, the way that you talk
I kiss you, you're beautiful, I want you to walk
We've got five years, stuck on my eyes
We've got five years, what a surprise
We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot
We've got five years, that's all we've got

Poetry. It meant so much to me as a teenager.
I know Placebo did a cover and I understand Bowie was a good friend and supporter of them. I recall Bowie and Placebo covered Bolan’s Twentieth Century Boy at the Brits and it was amazing.

 

[editor]

This was a nice touch

David Bowie Brixton event honours Space Oddity and Hunky Dory album designer

 

[editor]

So Peter Murphy from Bauhaus emerges as a bit of a twat

Q: Does the world feel vastly different, less meaningful to you without David Bowie?

A: No. He was always an overhanging presence. I love him, but his death wasn’t a loss of a superstar. It was death. We all die. It wasn’t really working. Even his last album, the two singles were good but the rest of it was rubbish. I let him go years ago. He was a bit of a twit if he talked too much. It was a bit tiring, this whole cosmology of David Bowie. He was a spark. But it was time to bugger off. And he did bugger off.

Pop Quiz: Peter Murphy resurrects Bauhaus, says Bowie needed to ‘bugger off’

 

[RainbowTown]

Awww, poor Pete Murphy, always a third rate David Vanian.

Maybe the drugs has turned his mind to mush.

Bela Lugosi's Dead for sure. Just like pretty Pete's career has been since, what, the mid 80's.

 

[Sprocket.]

But John, I’m only dancing!

 

[editor]

I'm still playing Blackstar regularly. The last two tracks are beautiful. Sad to think of all the other songs we'll never now hear.

 

[JuanTwoThree]

David Byrne teamed up with Choir! Choir! Choir! to cover Bowie's 'Heroes'

I'm not crying. I've got a cold.


"There is a transcendent feeling in being subsumed and surrendering to a group. This applies to sports, military drills, dancing… and group singing. One becomes a part of something larger than oneself, and something in our makeup rewards us when that happens. We cling to our individuality, but we experience true ecstasy when we give it up. So, the reward experience is part of the show.”

 

[editor]

David Byrne teamed up with Choir! Choir! Choir! to cover Bowie's 'Heroes'

I'm not crying. I've got a cold.


"There is a transcendent feeling in being subsumed and surrendering to a group. This applies to sports, military drills, dancing… and group singing. One becomes a part of something larger than oneself, and something in our makeup rewards us when that happens. We cling to our individuality, but we experience true ecstasy when we give it up. So, the reward experience is part of the show.”

here it is:

 

[D'wards]

Well chuffed with my latest impulse internet purchase- they're a total blam-blam

 

[Guineveretoo]

I have reported this before, but anyone who can get to Aylesbury on 25 March...

This statue is near the site of Friars Aylesbury, which was the first venue Bowie played Ziggy Stardust (I was there!). It is also the site of the market square in the first line of the Five Years song.

I am going to be at the unveiling, meeting up with some of the school friends who went to the Bowie concerts with me.

David Bowie statue set for Aylesbury - Marillion to headline benefit show

Or this one

World's first David Bowie sculpture to be unveiled in Aylesbury

 

[editor]

It was pointed out to me that my Bowie t-shirt had turned into a glam Tommy Cooper when I was sat down!

 

[editor]

I have reported this before, but anyone who can get to Aylesbury on 25 March...

This statue is near the site of Friars Aylesbury, which was the first venue Bowie played Ziggy Stardust (I was there!). It is also the site of the market square in the first line of the Five Years song.

I am going to be at the unveiling, meeting up with some of the school friends who went to the Bowie concerts with me.

David Bowie statue set for Aylesbury - Marillion to headline benefit show

Or this one

World's first David Bowie sculpture to be unveiled in Aylesbury

I'm not quite onboard with the artwork...

Some great pics in that article though. And lucky you for being there! #jealous

 

[Guineveretoo]

There is a video circulating which was taken at that first conference, and one of my friends reckon she can see me in it.

But I’ve watched it, and all the girls have got long hair and glasses, so I’m not at all sure if it’s me!

I’m attending the statue unveiling with some of the people who were there, too, though - I’ll ask them what they reckon.

I would love to be in the video, as the 14 year old I was, so I need to be careful that I don't just imagine it’s me.

I’ve studied every photo I can find of all the concerts I was at (and not just the Bowie ones) but have failed to identify myself.

 

[Guineveretoo]

I’m still hoping to be at the statue unveiling, but I’ve been ill all week, so might not make it.

I hope to meet up with some of the school friends who were with me when Bowie launched Ziggy Stardust in Aylesbury.

But anyway, it’s being live-streamed.

FACEBOOK LIVE: Watch live as world’s first David Bowie statue is unveiled

 

[editor]

The sculpture is awful but then so is this graffiti artiste

 

[Guineveretoo]

I quite like the sculpture, although I’ve not seen it in the flesh (as it were) yet.

 

[elbows]

 

[editor]

Download Bowie's handwriting font here

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