the bowie thread

[petergunn]

Peter, you beautiful magnificent bastard. Thank you. I read that interview and thought this would plague me till the end of my days - now you say it, it makes perfect sense. Cant believe I didnt think of it myself.

and...



So he invented jungle AND digital dancehall.

ha thanks!

nice one too, re: the eventide harmonizer, i always remember seeing interviews w/ Visconti talk about how he processed tracks on Heros with it, never put 2 and 2 together that it was the same thing used for the pitchstretching type sounds on jungle...

 

[droid]

The harmoniser was used primarily on Low I think.

https://valhalladsp.com/2010/05/07/early-pitch-shifting-the-eventide-h910-harmonizer/

Well done again. A moment of genius. The find of the decade.

 

[Sectionfive]

omg

 

[droid]

So he preceded jungle, invented digi and introduced me to ambient. Thats the three cornerstones of my musical universe right there.

 

[Sectionfive]

maybe he really was from outer space eh?

 

[droid]

Lads on various Bowie forums saying this is like the death of an uncle or close friend. Seems ridiculous to be personally aggrieved by the death of a celebrity. Certainly never happened to me before.

I think Bowie fans may be more sensitive/obsessive than average, plus he generally got his hooks into people during their teens, with all the baggage that goes with that. He also seems to have been a genuinely nice guy. Myself - probably listened to a Bowie tune about once a week for the last 25 years or so. Wore my C60 copy of Low out. A perennial companion - and as I said - I wouldnt consider myself a 'proper' Bowie fan. Never owned a poster.

 

[droid]

theoretically at least - yes - dylan, mccartney, jagger/richards. but i simply can't imagine getting upset at any of their passing.

blackstar is really extremely good isn't it. i heard it last week too.

Makes for very difficult listening now. Extremely raw. Has anyone else ever self consciously produced this kind of swan song?

 

[Sectionfive]

further to his auteur status

 

[droid]

further to his auteur status

Think it was the other way round, but what the hell.

IIRC Tim Barr talks about the relationship in his book. Kraftwerk liked Bowie and wanted to work with him and were grateful for him popularising their stuff, but musically it was all one way.

 

[droid]

Great Zhao bait though.

 

[Sectionfive]

lol, maybe, though it's post-Trans Europe Express Kraftwerk would be have been the real influence on Techno and HipHop. How much credit could be attributed to Bowie is another story.

 

[baboon2004]

I think Bowie fans may be more sensitive/obsessive than average, plus he generally got his hooks into people during their teens, with all the baggage that goes with that. He also seems to have been a genuinely nice guy.

For me, so much of what Bowie communicated in his songs was pure affect, rather than communicating through the literal/metaphorical meanings of the lyrics, which were so often so obtuse (a complaint of many who dislike him, but to me that criticism misses the point). Using words as vehicles for pure emotion, more than almost anyone else I can think of. And that can have the effect of making the music feel so much more personal/magical - at least that's my theory on the raw power of what he managed to do.

Plus I think it's right that his winning personality played a big part. Let's face it, it's hard to feel any kind of comparable warmth towards that strange young man called Dylan...

 

[droid]

Its the tone of his albums that gets me. Every one seems like a perfectly realised self contained little world.

 

[petergunn]

For me, so much of what Bowie communicated in his songs was pure affect, rather than communicating through the literal/metaphorical meanings of the lyrics, which were so often so obtuse (a complaint of many who dislike him, but to me that criticism misses the point). Using words as vehicles for pure emotion, more than almost anyone else I can think of. And that can have the effect of making the music feel so much more personal/magical - at least that's my theory on the raw power of what he managed to do.

Plus I think it's right that his winning personality played a big part. Let's face it, it's hard to feel any kind of comparable warmth towards that strange young man called Dylan...

it's true. like the lyrics for Life On Mars are not very good at all, reading them on paper i feel nothing, but when you hear the song, the overall effect is one of deep deep emotion...

 

[Benny Bunter]

The harmoniser was used primarily on Low I think.

here's how it went down...

 

[droid]

Big fan of that. If you can stand it, Adam & Joe have some great Bowie moments on their old podcast. Guess they'll never get to meet him now...

 

[droid]

it's true. like the lyrics for Life On Mars are not very good at all, reading them on paper i feel nothing, but when you hear the song, the overall effect is one of deep deep emotion...

Five years is another one. Lyrically awful, but very effective. Love this version:

 

[baboon2004]

That's a great version. Five Years does make more literal sense than most of Bowie's songs (as with most of Ziggy, for obvious reasons), but is indeed rubbish on paper:

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

but heard in context, those lines make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and I couldn't even say why for sure...

PS That Sleng Teng/Hang On to Yourself is one of the best musical links ever...having listened again, they're too similar for it not to be true

 

[droid]

My brain hurt like a warehouse will never, ever make sense to me.

 

[Woebot]

One of those guys that was such a constant and so prolific that you just assumed he would be around forever. A real icon

i met tony visconti in the late eighties. a family friend was associated with him and i was set to do a stint working in his studio (aged 19). i did go down there and look around the studio but despite my hanging round staying with her in the suburbs for a fortnight - checking daily - the job never happened. it was all tied up with this funny religious cult. they used to do these dances in the morning. so eventually i fled.