Month: October 2005

The paintings are all your own… (Mainly)

With a little help from mum and dad, Lexi has produced a Sun Rising lunchbox (see small detail above) for the Food Bank NY and The Lunchbox Fund. (Click on the shortcuts for more information on both.)

You can click on the image above to place a bid on the celebrity’s lunchbox eBay auction which begins on October 14, 2005, at 9:00 p.m. EST.

Every magazine on every shelf…

There are a few bits in some of the latest rock publications that will no doubt interest many of you.

First up, the publishers of Q and MOJO have produced The Complete Guide To Downloading which has various Bowie bits peppered throughout its pages. A two-page spread which suggests an Alternative Best Of (see above) kicks off with this standfirst: “Glam rock, gender-swerving pop and industrial noise… Exploring the Thin White Duke’s critically revered but rarely heard album tracks.”

And these are the fifteen David Bowie tunes they settled upon:

01 The London Boys
02 Janine
03 All The Madmen
04 Quicksand
05 Moonage Daydream
06 Aladdin Sane
07 Big Brother
08 Somebody Up There Likes Me
09 Stay
10 A New Career In A New Town
11 Sons Of The Silent Age
12 Because You’re Young
13 I Can’t Read
14 Survive
15 New Killer Star

Needless to say, the comments for each track are complimentary…for example, here’s what they say about the first and the last songs on this pretty cool collection…

The London Boys (1967) – The first sign of Bowie’s strength in melody and a saga of one suburban lad’s move into the pill-popping mod scene of Soho. Resembled a strange union between Suede and The Jam.

New Killer Star (2003) – Bowie’s last epistle dug into a treasure trove of old styles while sounding strangely fresh. On this, the curtain-raiser to 2003’s Reality, he replicates the Scary Monsters blueprint, albeit in a mature style as befitting a man in his mid-fifties. As the old advert slogan proclaimed: “There’s old wave, there’s new wave, and there’s David Bowie.”

The magazine also lists what it considers to be the best ten songs of every year since 1970…Our man faired far better than any other artist with seven songs that have a Bowie credit and one other with a production credit…here they are:

1971 Changes1972 Starman – All The Young Dudes (Mott The Hoople) – Walk On The Wild Side (Lou Reed)
1974 Rebel Rebel
1977 “Heroes” – Lust For Life (Iggy Pop)
1980 Ashes To Ashes

Elsewhere Bowie songs are also chosen in categories as wide-ranging as UK Rock ‘n’ Roll pioneers, Electronica, accoustic classics, air guitar anthems and more. Finally there’s a great half-page picture from David’s appearance at Net Aid in 1999 illustrating a feature about the future of digital music. Phew!

If you don’t get such things in your area you can order online here.

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The November issue of MOJO has a cool half page pic of DB with Arcade Fire in Central Park in the What Goes On Section.

In the same magazine’s regular All Back To My Place feature, Katie Melua is torn over her favourite Saturday night record: “The Scissor Sisters album is so good. Or maybe Space Oddity or Ziggy Stardust by Bowie, or Brown Eyed Handsome Man by Chuck Berry. Retro, but I don’t care.”

Further down the page, head Bunnyman, Ian McCulloch, is a little more certain when he responds to the “What is your all-time favourite album?” question, thus: “Hunky Dory by David Bowie. It starts with Changes and ends with The Bewlay Brothers, and when I listen to it I think, ‘Have I ever got anywhere near those songs?'” Apparently the first album he ever bought was Ziggy Stardust: “Me mum got me it… she was going into town, so I said, ‘Mum, here’s me £2.45, get me Ziggy Stardust’. She got it from Rushworths in Liverpool, even though she was worried that if I got into Bowie I’d end up looking weird. She bought it under duress.”

Following that, you won’t be too surprised to learn that the musician Ian would most like to have been other than himself would be: “Kind of an amalgam of my heroes… Elvis, Bowie and Lou Reed. Not vocally, but in terms of cool, attitude and mystery.”

In this month’s Hello/Goodbye section, of which Trevor Bolder was last month’s subject (see Thursday’s news), Goth God Pete Murphy of Bauhaus talks about the genesis of his band:

“November 1978 I met Daniel Ash at Northhampton Comprehensive and was fascinated by him.

In 1971 we discovered this wonderful creature called David Bowie when we heard Hunky Dory drifting out of the art room, and Danny started to learn the guitar and we messed around with me on bongos. When school ended he went off to art college and I got a job at a local printer as a bookbinder, singing Bowie and Iggy songs at the top of my lungs.”

Those of us old enough will remember that the group’s biggest hit was a cover of Ziggy Stardust which reached #15 in the UK charts in 1982. They also had a very stylish cameo in the vampire movie, The Hunger, when they performed Bella Lugosi’s Dead in a nightclub scene, as David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve‘s characters scoured the darkness for beautiful young things to suck dry.

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The November issue of UNCUT has reprinted a picture of DB strolling through New York holding the 100th issue of the magazine. The same shot was used in the UK tabloid press a few weeks back. The picture is a particularly intrusive paparazzi shot and having had the dubious privilege of viewing the complete series of these shots, I can tell you that the photographer was relentless in their attempt to get an unnecessary amount of pictures of David.

David calmly and very subtly signalled his displeasure in an attempt to get the uncommonly rude snapper to desist. An act reflected in the UNCUT caption to the picture which read: “”Then another finger…” yes, you’re in the top 100, Mr Stardust.” …the latter part of the caption being a reference to the fact that Mr Stardust was not only in the top 100, but indeed, the top 10 as we reported at the time. (08.08.2005 NEWS: ZIGGY LP IN TOP TEN MOST SEISMIC EVENTS EVER)

Dictionary.com has the meaning of paparazzi as: “A freelance photographer who doggedly pursues celebrities to take candid pictures for sale to magazines and newspapers.” There is a shorter description of these types, which is an anagram of the very magazine this picture appears in!

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The Diggin’ For Gold section of the November edition of Record Collector highlights the 1990 numbered 7″ Spanish promo of Ashes To Ashes/Starman. This collectable 45 was pressed in an edition of 500 to promote the CHANGESBOWIE album release.

The magazine values the record at £50, but I don’t see it on eBay with anything like the frequency it used to come up… methinks that fifty quid is probably a bit on the conservative side, and with the prices that rare Bowie vinyl seems to be fetching these days I wouldn’t be surprised to see it go in future for at least double that figure.

If you haven’t already, you can read about the Bowie content of the November issue of Q magazine in Wednesday’s news. (10.05.2005 REMINDER: HEROES ON THE BBC SHORTLY AND IN Q NOW)

I’ve got Friday on my mind…

I’m sure everybody remembers very well the lovely Emm Gryner who shared a spot on stage with Holly Palmer as backing vocalist and multi-instrumentalist in the Bowie band at the turn of the millennium…indeed, who could forget the angel-voiced beauty?

Well, she’s been selling her wares in Dublin this past week and plugging her latest album release, Songs of Love and Death, which is described thus:

“Produced by Emm Gryner, this CD is a unique collection of songs by contemporary Irish artists including Thin Lizzy, The Undertones, Virgin Prunes, The Corrs, Gilbert O?Sullivan, Therapy?, The Thrills, and others. Features Kate McGarrigle on banjo, Dana Feder on cello and Charles Dumont on drums. Recorded by Emm at her own studio in Montreal.”

There’s still time to catch her before she travels back to the US for some shows. She’ll be on Today with Pat Kenny at 10:00am local time, Friday morning, when she will perform two tracks and be interviewed.

At 5:00pm on Saturday she’ll be doing an In-store at Tower Records in Dublin, more details of which you can find on Emm’s tour page.

If you don’t manage to catch her while she’s over this time, she’ll be back in Dublin for more shows from November 24th and across the sea on November 30th for a set at The Marquee in London.

You can find out about all of this and more on aforementioned tour page.

So where were The Spiders?

Ex-Spider From Mars, Mick ‘Woody’ Woodmansey has launched a new site on the web (pun intended) which, strangely enough, can be found at woodywoodmansey.co.uk. The site is fairly basic right now, but there are plans to expand it with more information, pictures, press articles and the like.

Go take a look and while you’re there check out what Woody is doing these days, such as the album he’s recently finished recording with new band Sueshe.

Thanks to BowieNetter Steve Smith for the pointer, and to Woody and June for the correspondence.

Meanwhile a couple of other Spidery things that I almost let slip under the radar, but are worth mentioning here, have appeared in recent publications…

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First up, Trevor Bolder is the subject of Hello Goodbye in the October issue of MOJO magazine. The piece is accompanied by two photos of Ziggy with The Spiders, the first is an almost half page shot of the famous Brian Ward colour picture where Mick is pointing at a fluffy toy on the floor.

The other picture, sadly much smaller and less familiar, purports to be from the final show at Hammersmith Odeon…a strange choice of picture considering the feature’s subject, as Trevor is the only Spider not in shot! Anyway, here’s an excerpt of what the outrageously sideburned bass man had to say about his entry and exit from the band.

Hello November 1971 – I was in Hull, playing in a band called Ronno with Mick [Ronson] and Woody [Mick Woodmansy]. After about six months Bowie called asking them to play on a John Peel session.

We all got in a van and drove to London, We arrived at Bowie’s place, and it’s the ground floor of this big Victorian mansion. You couldn’t have met a nicer bloke. It was a bit odd for me, because it was the first time I’d been to London, and Bowie was trendy as anything… he had a loose shirt on and very baggy pants. We were sat around, having a cup of tea when all of a sudden he tells me I’m playing bass on the Peel session!

Bowie decided we were going to be a band. He was really into A Clockwork Orange, and we were meant to look like that, with our boots and everything. After we did a rehearsal for `Top Of The Pops, we were hanging round the BBC canteen and people kept asking us if we were off the Dr Who set. He sat down with us to discuss the make-up. He said it was “theatre”, and we didn’t have to wear much… took us a while to agree… three Northern lads… “Bloody make-up? You must be joking!”

Goodbye July 1973 – It was great in the beginning, because we were a band. Bowie would ride with us in the van to gigs, and we all lived together, ate together, went to the pub together, and we were mates. When he got really big, he ended up staying in hotels with these hangers on, and we wouldn’t see him ’till he arrived on stage.

We were in Japan, and Woody quit after an argument with Tony DeFries, (Bowie’s manager). Mick managed to convince him to come back so we could do a UK tour, which ended up being fantastic… we did two shows a night for seven weeks. The last gig of the tour was at Hammersmith. That’s where he “retired” Ziggy. We certainly didn’t know the band was going to be broken up on-stage just before the last number, Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide.

As soon as it was over, the first thing I did was shave off those bloody sideburns.”

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Finally, the late Mick Ronson appeared halfway through the latest UNCUT Legends special: The 100 Greatest Guitar Heroes, accompanied by the brilliant, if not a little overused, (see above) Mick Rock shot from 1973 of DB going at Mick’s guitar with his harmonica.

Here are just a few of the words with which Stephen Dalton paid tribute to the blond guitar god:

“Ronson called in his former Hull rhythm buddies Woody Woodmansey and Trevor Bolder to flesh out Bowie’s flamboyant new sci-fi sound. The Spiders From Mars were born.

The suite of landmark glam albums which followed, especially the epochal The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars, propelled Bowie to global superstardom atop Ronson’s supercharged, overdriven riffs. The press devoured carefully staged images of rock’s new alien emperor performing simulated fellatio on his androgynous sideman’s fretboard. But behind such gimmicks Ronson proved to be a gifted arranger, master of melodic hooks, and one of the premiere rock stylists of his generation.”

Here’s the Top Ten Greatest Guitar Heroes countdown which includes at least four guitarists who have worked with DB to some degree or another:

10 Pete Townshend
09 Jeff Beck
08 Angus Young
07 Johnny Marr
06 Eric Clapton
05 George Harrison
04 Neil Young
03 Keith Richards
02 Jimmy Page
01 Jimi Hendrix

Here’s a few more from the Top 100 countdown who have also had some musical Bowie involvement…

94 Lou Reed
91 Robert Smith
78 Frank Black
74 Phil Manzanera*
56 Marc Bolan
55 Stevie Ray Vaughan
53 Robert Fripp
47 Ron Asheton
34 Brian May
30 Nile Rodgers
29 James Williamson
27 Steve Jones
24 Slash**

(* OK Phil Manzanera was just wishful thinking… ** Slash doesn’t strictly belong on the list either, but there is strong evidence to suggest that DB may have tucked hin in as a nipper once or twice. It’s a long story!

Anyway, I’ll leave you with a less familiar Mick Rock shot of the much-missed Ronno taken from the legendary lenseman’s Moonage Daydream, of which, much more at the weekend…

Speaking of ex-Bowie band members…

We can be Heroes for ever and ever…

Just a brief reminder that David Bowie’s song “Heroes” is the focus of the first part of a new BBC Radio 2 series, Classic Singles, which airs tonight at 22:00 to 22:30 GMT.

As I mentioned in my previous news piece, (09.24.2005 NEWS: “HEROES” SINGLE EXAMINED BY DEBBIE HARRY AND BBC) the show, which is presented by Debbie Harry tonight, aims to “explore in detail the most popular and influential singles ever released”.

Most of the interviews are from the archives, but Tony Visconti has done some new stuff that promises to be very interesting.

You can listen online to Classic Singles, here, and if you miss the initial broadcast you can use the same link for the listen again feature.

Q magazine is currently running a similar series with its The Story Behind The Song feature. This month’s edition (which has two different covers celebrating what would have been John Lennon‘s 65th birthday with a free CD of different artists covering Lennon songs) also focuses on “Heroes” for the sixth part of the series.

The feature is unlikely to tell you anything you didn’t already know, but it is a great tribute to a true classic.

Elsewhere in the magazine there’s a photo section called injury corner which includes a shot of DB with bandaged hand performing Life On Mars? at Fashion Rocks.

In another feature that asks how different celebrities relax at home throughout the day, head Dandy Warhol, Courtney Taylor-Taylor, has this to say about David Bowie’s attempts to spread the word of the music he likes: “Friends recommend stuff. David Bowie is really aggressive about his favourite bands. He gives me albums by bands like The Killers and The Walkmen and asks me what I think. I guess I don’t give him the right answers, cos he quit doing it so much.” Hmmm, personally I read aggressive as enthusiastic and passionate.

Speaking of recommended listening, this month’s Q Essential Playlist is the ten best Beatles‘ covers. Naturally, there’s a Bowie song in there. No, it’s not the live version of Love Me Do or even This Boy. It’s the Young Americans song, Across The Universe, of which Q says this: “Lennon dropped by to add guitar to Bowie’s soulful take on his own underrated masterpiece.”

This item is illustrated by the shot above, (sorry about the scan quality, the original was titchy) which is one of those pictures of David which is quite hard to put a date to…But, why don’t you give it a try anyway?!

There are more mentions of our man in Q, but, if I don’t end this item now, the reminder will be redundant!

That crazy Balance Palace of my mind…

I’m sure most of you remember Tony Visconti‘s piece about DB working with Danish band Kashmir on their song, The Cynic, that we posted last month. If you didn’t see the original piece it’s worth a look as there’s also a great pic of David with the band that Tony took. (09.02.05 NEWS: TV TALKS ABOUT KASHMIR’S SPECIAL GUESTS)

Well now, thanx to pointers from BowieNetters lightfeather and RaMOANa, you can listen to snippets from the album No Balance Palace, (out this week) by clicking on the image above. Scroll to the third track for a 90 second snippet of The Cynic.

I’ll leave you with the full tracklisting…

Kashmir – No Balance Palace
01 Kalifornia
02 Jewel Drop
03 The Cynic (Featuring David Bowie)
04 Ophelia
05 Diana Ross
06 Curse Of Being A Girl
07 She’s Made Of Chalk
08 Ether
09 Snowman
10 Black Building (Featuring Lou Reed)
11 No Balance Palace

Stay tuned for a competition to win No Balance Palace here on BowieNet.

Beauty shrieks “beast in booties”…

Out today is the soundtrack to the film Kinky Boots, which includes David Bowie’s original 1970 version of The Prettiest Star featuring Marc Bolan on lead guitar. The 45 was also the first Bowie single to bear a Tony Visconti production credit.

Nina Simone‘s rendition of Wild Is The Wind is also on the soundtrack, the very version that inspired David to record the song for the 1976 Station To Station album.

You can here snippets from the soundtrack (released via Hollywood Records) here. Click on the CD cover above to get to the Kinky Boots website.

Kinky Boots is inspired by a true story from the makers of Calendar Girls and it goes on general release nation-wide in UK cinemas this week.

Well I am just a modern guy…

The Sunday Times in the UK has a page in its STYLE section illustrated with a beautiful Mick Rock shot (above) that asks the important question: Where would modern men be without Bowie?

Here’s an excerpt from the piece in which Colin McDowell attempts to answer the question.

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The Sunday Times – Style – Colin McDowell’s fashion moment: David Bowie

Where would modern men be without Bowie? As a sexual trailblazer, his importance can?t be exaggerated. His 1972 album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, was a first, in that the image was even more influential than the music. Although Bowie quickly killed off Ziggy Stardust as a musical alter ego, the influence of his creation continued, not because he wore jump suits, shiny platforms and red hair, but because he came to personify changing attitudes to dress and sexuality.

A good five years before the new romantics, Bowie had spearheaded a fresh approach to the male psyche. After Ziggy, young men ? mainly teenagers ? realised that a flamboyant appearance didn?t necessarily mean effeminacy. Perhaps more significantly, their girlfriends didn?t think so, either.

It is a form of subversion that continues today. After all, without Ziggy, Brandon Flowers of the Killers might never have discovered eyeliner.

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Subversion indeed. My English teacher at school didn’t take too kindly to me sitting at my desk sporting my approximation of the woodland creature outfit knitted by mother!* Anyway, you can read the full Sunday Times article here.

Speaking of Ziggy’s influence on The Killers, the band have been ending their recent shows in style with a very convincing version of Moonage Daydream, apparently much to Brandon Flowers‘ obvious delight.

*This tale is based mainly on lies.