Going it alone

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
In fairness he was sleeping with men before he was rich or famous
we're not really talking about who he did or didn't actually fuck tho

we're talking about strategic public deployment of queerness

obv idk what was truly in his heart, I only know what he did, and what it looks like is what I originally said - a (basically) straight guy wields queerness as a tool to craft his pop mythology then strategically retracts it - i.e. the famous "I was always a closet heterosexual", discarding of androgyny, etc - when it's no longer useful - by his own admission, when he foresaw it hurting his career in America. which is the absolute definition of privilege.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
what you could say in fairness is that plenty of queer people eulogized him as a queer icon

I certainly don't but it's a view some people take

the real heroes to me are all the queens, femmes, butch dykes, trans women, etc who stood up to NYPD at Stonewall and said "enough", and everyone else who fought and sacrificed to gain acceptance of queer experiences as valid

Bowie to me is just some asshole who came along and climbed on their backs to sell records. but, some people disagree.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
we're not really talking about who he did or didn't actually fuck tho

we're talking about strategic public deployment of queerness

obv idk what was truly in his heart, I only know what he did, and what it looks like is what I originally said - a (basically) straight guy wields queerness as a tool to craft his pop mythology then strategically retracts it - i.e. the famous "I was always a closet heterosexual", discarding of androgyny, etc - when it's no longer useful - by his own admission, when he foresaw it hurting his career in America. which is the absolute definition of privilege.
I was responding absolutely specifically to the claim that BoxedJoy made that he (Bowie) was insulated by his fame from the very real risks of being publicly bisexual (or however he defined himself) - which is not true.
But yeah In general I am very careful not to argue what Bowie's sexuality may have been or what was in his mind or whatever.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I'm sure he was pretty cynical about that (and everything else) but I feel the criticism should be made using the facts rather than from erroneous claims.
 
Don't like his voice which rules out the vast majority of his music for me. Also, I always felt people were lying about how great he was, something insincere about the fandom. or maybe people like him conceptually, his morphing artistic approach etc. but the music never hit me. this is an interesting takedown on these last few pages, i'll pass all these ideas off as my own quite soon i think. thanks!
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
he doesn't succeed on his terms of being pop. he's basically deconstructed rock of the 70s. we would have hated it back in the day. Like all his queer affectations, his trend jumping, his flirtations for nazism, all were there to sell an image to an angloamerican public post-68 who were exhausted and wanted to find solace back in the lone artistic genius. But a fundamental crumb of marxism will suffice to dispell this: geniuses, leaders and heroes fade away.
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
In that sense motown was fundamentally more capitalist and also more prefigurative of communism simultaneously. the shell of the new in the old, etc.

It's why I have a problem with a lot of beatnik music, inherently. too much focus on the human condition means you start looking in the wrong places and formulate your critics/concepts/whatever in the wrong way.

The rockism vs poptimism binary must be overcome.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
as i have said before i much prefer Madonna to Kate Bush. She revels in her decadence whereas Bush is ultimately conservative, she tries to elevate pop to something it is not. Art pop in general is miles away from the aspirational shirts and shoes rare groove crowd. Cultivating capital through a false (and misunderstood) sense of high culture, whereas black american pop has mostly been about snatching the high life whilst it lasts, which i find to be a much more honest portrayal of the form of pop. It's within those rules that the developments in pop happen, that there is so much standard universal stuff calibrated to global industrial worktime that when the forms are stretched or disintegrate or a new ingredient is added into the mix, it can be epochal - case and point timbaland who probably listened to more Todd Edwards and Bollywood than he did jungle.

My rebuke to art pop people is always, go make serious music like Ligeti or Ornette Coleman or whatever. If that is what you want in the end.
 

blissblogger

Well-known member
on the thread subject, as opposed to Bowie-aversion -

one of the reasons why solo careers of people who once in a great band are often disappointing that because they are famous or established, they can assemble a new band by calling on the best players around / their famous mates - or they will just make a record using session musicians (again superskilled professionals who can do anything they are asked to do)

whereas with the original band, it'll have come together almost always through happenstance - often people in the neighbourhood or school - and it'll be an odd motley bunch of people of differing abilities, who'll then grown up musically together (as well emotionally and in terms of navigating the business) .. and that's how the chemistry comes about, that leads to a distinctive band-sound

it's very hard to create that kind of spark, or identity-through-limitations, when you are consciously selecting musicians - even more so when they actually play whatever is demanded of them (and are also effectively your employees, rather than your comrades in arms)

Bowie actually was very good at picking people to create an ersatz band energy / sound-identity, he had a run of successful quasi-groups (the best being the one with Carlos Alomar in) but that run ended when he formed Tin Machine and went through this earnest pantomime of it being a real band, a four-man combo in which he was just another bloke who happened to be singing. even insisted on doing interviews with all members present (much to the chagrin no doubt of the journalists, who only wanted to hear from DB, but had to politely converse with Reeves Gabrel or whatever he's called, the guitarist).
 

luka

Well-known member
part of the ennervating quality could be attributed to cocaine which is a drug that drains the reality out of reality
 

luka

Well-known member
a huge amount of the reality which should be distributed throughout the field is drawn up into an inflated self
 

luka

Well-known member
you can make compelling art from this qliphothic zone, i think a lot of the strung out electric miles stuff does but that is becasue it doesnt add the corn syrup of mawkish sentimentality
 

yyaldrin

in je ogen waait de wind
i've never heard a song by david bowie. at least not consciously. just one of those names that for me don't feel worth listening to.
 
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