the bowie thread

Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
luka said:
Rubberdinghy was the right person to start the thread cos he is famed here for his ferocious defence of the middlebrow. He has a real affinity for it and refreshingly he's completely open and unashamed about it.

It's a counterpart to Mr teas compulsion to always leap to the defence of middle England, I consider them spiritual twins
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Ha, I was thinking about this just as I read luka slagging off Bowie as 'middlebrow'.

I'm reminded of the time nomadologist said all the old-time regulars here are like an elderly married couple who finish each other's sentences all the time.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I really love the ascending, musical-style chord sequence in the bridge to 'Life on Mars?'. Looked it up and found out:

There's quite a bit of interesting musical history behind "Life On Mars?" The song is a parody of the famous Frank Sinatra hit "My Way," which was written by Paul Anka. Before Anka wrote "My Way," David Bowie had already written his own set of English lyrics to the same tune, originally a French song called "Comme d'habitude." Frustrated that "My Way" had crowded out his composition "Even a Fool Learns to Love," Bowie penned "Life On Mars?" as a kind of parody.

Thus, "Life On Mars?" rocks out to the same chords as "My Way." The only differences are some chord inversions and the fact that "Life On Mars?" is in a different key. The chord progression is your classic descending jazz chord progression. But, you'll notice, this song is anything but classic jazz.

The song plays as a radio-friendly Broadway finale, not unlike songs featured in the 1973 rock musicals Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar (disregarding the lyrics, of course). Two distinctive features of the song, the guitar solos and the string arrangement, are guitarist Mick Ronson's inventions. And then there's David Bowie's voice. Against the deeper orchestral hits in the chorus (on "Sailors," "lawman," and "Mars?"), Bowie belts out notes at the very edge of his vocal range. (They're B flats, if you wanted to know. As one's voice naturally deepens with age, Bowie no longer sings these notes quite so high.) The effect is that Bowie's voice harmonizes with the much lower notes of the orchestration to create a huge, full, and powerful chord on those notes.
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http://www.shmoop.com/bowie-life-on-mars/music.html
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Just yesterday I was listening to the album he (Walker, I mean) did with Sunn 0))). It's really good.

I was at the gym at the time. Er.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
Me- http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...g-just-latest-sordid-list-NRL-atrocities.html

Craner-Sicko. I am pleased that I feel so appalled, as I often worry about my moral standards. DROID wasn't so wrong in his first salvo

Me-I knew that would have struck a nerve lol

Craner-But I'm only looking for love!

Me-Yeah I was thinking of starting a dissensus thread for that HELP CRANER FIND LOVE

Craner-Every word in the first post was justifiable except decrepit - I didn't get that, I'm only 37 and still full of vim apart from the morning hangovers
It was like, now your just throwing in random words Droid

Me-Malign accretions orbiting a void was the best bit

Craner-That was quite good, but a gyre of the self was spectular, chanelling Yeats and Freud in one compact clause.

Me-Yeah it didn't make sense though. I marked it down cos of that

Craners -It was poetic.

Me-Yeah but... How to interpret it?
It's an inscrutable sentence
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
That's two /d/ threads and FB in, what, half an hour? And I haven't even looked on twitter today. You really can't get enough of piss-drinking, dog-fucking subhumans, can you?

(edit: which is why you spend so much time on here, hyuk hyuk!!)
 
D

droid

Well-known member
Damn it. Now I'm too flattered to launch my attack on the ironic synecdoche inherent in Luka's 'gauche, overreaching' post.

...I thought 'decrepit' ably described the ongoing decay of Craner's facade of confidence in his ludicrous political beliefs. Maybe 'jaded' wouldve been better - seemed too obvious...
 
C

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
rubberdingyrapids said:
as i imagine you inhaling all music media 24 hours a day, i am expecting that you already know he was listening to TPAB while recording blackstar (which might explain the over prominent drums and bass in the mix, or is that my bad mp3 rip, i dunno).

as for the bisch thing, i remember seeing SW being interviewed and thinking it was the kind of thing mistersloane might say (might as well get into the slagging everyone off spirit of this post...). HOWEVER, maybe he too was listening to kendrick (or maybe kendrick was listening to scott, idk which came out first that year).

http://genius.com/Kendrick-lamar-money-trees-lyrics
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Yeah, I saw Greg Tate crowing about it. Considering Tate is spending a good time of his life making myopically crap jazz rock it made sense he'd spend half a year fawning over TPAB.

That's actually not implausible as far as Scott hearing Kendrick, I think Bish Bosch came out a year before maad city (I remember an article in either Spin or Village Voice putting that and Future's Pluto at odds with each other, which... interesting schism). I don't think Kendrick would check for Scott though, his taste in 'rock' usually tends to LA-based indie.
 
C

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
subvert47 said:
it's rock music (sort of), crap lyrics are standard - why would anyone even listen to them?
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Its not rock music, its pop music with rock trappings really.

Bowie was incapable of making good "ROCK", he tried that with Tin Machine and I dare you to find a more laughable experience. Plus Mick Ronson was the greatest collection of moronic riff cliches, no different than Sweet or Slade.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
Damn it. Now I'm too flattered to launch my attack on the ironic synecdoche inherent in Luka's 'gauche, overreaching' post.
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Sort of assuming this means I'm a gauche overreacher but it's not easy to figure out even with reference to both dictionary and Google
 
R

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
CrowleyHead said:
Its not rock music, its pop music with rock trappings really.

Bowie was incapable of making good "ROCK", he tried that with Tin Machine and I dare you to find a more laughable experience. Plus Mick Ronson was the greatest collection of moronic riff cliches, no different than Sweet or Slade.
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Watch That Man
lets spend the night together
jean genie
diamond dogs
rebel rebel

these arent good rock?
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
CrowleyHead said:
Its not rock music, its pop music with rock trappings really.

Bowie was incapable of making good "ROCK", he tried that with Tin Machine and I dare you to find a more laughable experience. Plus Mick Ronson was the greatest collection of moronic riff cliches, no different than Sweet or Slade.
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I disagree, I think pretty much all of Bowie's more guitar-driven stuff qualifies as rock, it just isn't RAAWK!!! (which I think you're partly acknowledging with the capital letters and quote marks). It's far more arch and knowing and theatrical than most other rock, either from the same period, before or since, but I don't think that means it isn't rock. It's also very pop, at the same time.

Where did this idea that pop and rock are two non-overlapping sets or opposite poles on a spectrum come from? Is it Simon Reynolds's fault?

Edit: also, what RDR said. His glam stuff is totally rock.
 
D

droid

Well-known member
CrowleyHead said:
Plus Mick Ronson was the greatest collection of moronic riff cliches, no different than Sweet or Slade.
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This is harsh on Ronson. He was no Iomi or Page, but he's no Dave Hill either. He's somewhere in between. Id rate him above Bolan definitely. TMWSTW was essentially Ronson's album and for all its faults it has an anthemic pseudo-metal thing going on in parts. He was also a decent arranger and producer.
 
W

worrior

Well-known member
Was listening to Blackstar last night and girlfriend thought the melody in the great middle section sounded familiar. After a bit of searching worked out it has close affinities with Stevie Wonder’s “Someday at Christmas”. Playing on a Black (xmas) star perhaps?
 
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