Geoff Maccormack Interview Podcast On Goldmine

We had a friend, a talking man…

Bowie fan Noah Fleisher, of US collector’s magazine Goldmine, has interviewed Geoff MacCormack in relation to his Genesis Publications’ book, From Station to Station, Travels With Bowie, 1973-1976.

You can read a heavily edited version of the interview here, or listen to the complete thing as a podcast here.

If you’ve still not picked up a copy of the book, you really should stick it on your Christmas list. Don’t take my word for how good it is. Here’s a line from the Goldmine review of the book: “This is a gorgeous volume, a must-have for hardcore Bowieheads, featuring MacCormack?s firsthand account ? with just enough of the juicy stuff thrown in to give you a sense of what lies beneath ? of his travels with his lifelong, childhood friend.”

Finally, please do contribute to our questions for the upcoming BowieNet Geoff MacCormack interview, we need more…perhaps listen to the podcast first to get some inspiration and then send your question to me here.

Only One Signed Keanan Duffty Bowie Item Left

This is our last chance…

As we told you a couple of weeks back, (11.15.2007 NEWS: SIGNED KEANAN DUFFTY BOWIE CLOTHES ON EBAY) David Bowie recently signed a few of Keanan Duffty’s designs from the Target BOWIE range for the 7th On Sale charity auction.

Well there’s only one item left to go now, the T-shirt above, and though the bidding currently stands at $127.50, if the four items sold so far are anything to go by, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it go for double that at least.

David Bowie Says Goodbye To Victoria Newton

Time takes a cigarette…

Editor of The Sun newspaper’s Bizarre pop column, Victoria Newton, has edited her last for the popular tabloid among a flood of tributes from rock and pop personalities around the globe.

David Bowie, who met up with Vic backstage at the 2005 Fashion Rocks event (above) proffered this goodbye message…

?The last time I met Vic I had just given up smoking and I mentioned making the casual decision to start smoking at 13 years old as being possibly one of the worst moves of my life, though the artwork on some of the packets was brilliant and kept me buying them just to flash the pack around.?

The ever-present pack of Gitanes in The Thin White Duke‘s waistcoat pocket (above) during The Station To Station Tour of 1976 is a good example of that.

As you can see from the inset in the above picture, it’s a beautifully designed pack and apparently the work of one M Ponty. Ponty was a man responsible for many gorgeous Art Deco illustrations and he shouldn’t be confused with French phenomenological philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty. That really wouldn’t do.

Anyway, good luck with whatever it is you’re doing next Victoria.

Happy Thanksgiving From David Bowie

I’m so thankful…

As I post this it’s still the fourth Thursday in November in the USA, which means it’s still the first day of Thanksgiving.

If you’re outside of the USA and wondering why your American friends aren’t playing online much today, it’s for that very reason…and by now, they’re most likely unconscious on a sofa surrounded by friends and family and stuffed to the gills with poultry.

Anyway, David Bowie has the following message for those of you that do celebrate Thanksgiving…

“Eat that turkey and eat it now. Happy Thanksgiving to one and all.” – Sailor

For those of you not familiar with it, the picture above isn’t Ian Hunter…it’s David Bowie slicing into a large turkey in the winter of 1969 when life probably became a little easier financially for our hero following the world-wide success of the Space Oddity single a mere 38 years ago!

Bowie At Coachella 2008…not

Wishful Beginnings or Don’t fake it baby…

It’s that time of year when folk start speculating on just who might be playing at next year’s festivals around the globe. This speculation has now taken the form of faked posters taking wild guesses at line-ups and festival dates.

Well, before you spy one of the above elsewhere and start selling your house and kids to finance your indulgences, I should point out that the posters are 100% fake.

I can’t speak for any of the other proposed acts, but I can tell you that David Bowie is not performing at Coachella 2008.

In the event that he does decide to resume live work in the future, you’ll hear about it here first…anything else is just rumours and lies, etc.

Rex Ray Book Signing In La Tonight Plus New Mini-site

Put the blame on me and Rex Ray…

Rex ‘I can bounce a quarter off my ass’ Ray has a delicious new book out via Chronicle Books entitled: REX RAY ART + DESIGN.

Obviously there’s a spread regarding Rex’s design work for David Bowie. See the image below, supplied by Rex himself, complete with obligatory empty vodka bottle, full ashtray and crap feet.

Anyway, this ugliness aside, REX RAY ART + DESIGN is a thing of true beauty. The cover at the top of this piece really doesn’t do it justice. It’s one of those books I find myself flicking through a few times a day just to give me a lift. Honestly, it’s that good.

Obviously you needn’t take my word for any of this. Check out the Chronicle Books/Rex Ray minisite where you can order the book and other related goodies. There’s also a contest to win an original Rex artwork and five Rex Ray gift packs.

Rex, (real name Sofonda Cox) will be signing copies of REX RAY ART + DESIGN at Jonathan Adler on Melrose Ave in Los Angeles between 5 – 7pm this evening.

Check out the EVENTS section of aforementioned minisite for further details of this and other related events, including an exhibition of new paintings and collages at Gallery 16 in San Francisco that runs until December 30th, 2007.

Finally, stay tuned for our own Rex Ray contest in which we will be giving away incredibly rare customised David Bowie prints each signed by Rex and DB and each a unique artwork in its own right.

If you do go along to see the sickeningly talented bastard tonight, please lick his head for me.

Philip Glass Version Of Heroes Used For Eurostar Ad

Tomorrow belongs to those who can hear it coming…

This is no doubt already familiar to many of you in the UK as it’s been showing on TV all week. It’s the latest Eurostar advert in celebration of the opening of the refurbished and quite breathtaking St Pancras International.

The station is the new home for Eurostar and November 14th saw the first 2 hour 15 minute, carbon neutral, run from London to Paris. Taking this train to Paris or Brussels from London produces just a tenth of the carbon emissions that the same journey by plane would, earning Eurostar the right to their slogan: Eurostar For Tomorrow.

Today is a beautifully shot ad that uses the equally beautiful Philip Glass version of David Bowie’s “Heroes”, taken from 1997’s “Heroes” Symphony. Here’s what Glass had to say about the work at the time of the album’s release:

“Heroes, like the Low Symphony of several years ago, is based on the work of Bowie and Eno. In a series of innovative recordings made in the late 70’s, David and Brian combined influences from world music, experimental avant-garde, and rock and roll and thereby redefined the future of popular music.

The continuing influence of these works has secured their stature as part of the new “classics” of our time. Just as composers of the past have turned to music of their time to fashion new works, the work of Bowie and Eno became an inspiration and point of departure of symphonies of my own.” – Philip Glass

You can read more about the new service from St Pancras International and view the advert at fortomorrow.eurostar.com.

Footnote: Some of you youngsters may be scratching your head trying to place today’s lyric quotation. Well, it’s actually the slogan that was used during the promotion for David Bowie’s “Heroes” album thirty years ago…so it seemed quite appropriate on more than one level for this piece.

Bowienetter Wins Bowie Mug Shot On Ebay For $2.5k

There’s more than money moving here…

The police ‘mug shot’ taken of David Bowie on March 25th 1976 that we told you about last week (11.10.2007 NEWS: ROCHESTER PD BOWIE MUG SHOT UP ON EBAY) has fetched an incredible $2,556 in an eBay auction that finished moments ago, just before midnight UK time on Sunday evening.

The photograph was purchased by a BowieNetter, the very lovely postmodernlover, who I just had a brief transatlantic chat with.

She told me that her high bid was considerably higher than the closing amount, so determined was she to win the item in this true once in a lifetime opportunity. And the life-long fan also wanted to be certain that the photograph went to a good home.

The bidding was no doubt helped by the online publicity the picture received and by the press reports that have appeared. The excellent Guardian piece above and the Mirror article below to name but two.

In the end, the picture was always going to fetch a high sum, if not only because, as The Guardian puts it, David Bowie “was and always will be the hippest man ever to walk the earth”. And this “immaculate” shot of The Thin White Duke only serves to further illustrate that point.

The previous holder of the coolest mug shot of all time, Frank Sinatra, would no doubt have found it more than a little ironic that the man often mistakenly reported to be lined up to play him in the biopic of his life outcooled even him in the end.

Low Makes Guardian Essential Listening List

You’ve got to wait to die…

Over the next five days, The Guardian newspaper in the UK will publish a five-part supplement (part one above) listing the 1,000 albums that, in The Guardian’s opinion, you should hear before you die.

Well, I reckon the majority of you reading this can slash that figure to a mere 999, as I’m pretty sure you’ve all heard the Bowie album that made the list: Low.

Here follows two of the four Guardian rules for picking the 1,000.

First, no single act can appear more than once – though where an artist has collaborated widely, they might pop up all over the place, as Brian Eno and Damon Albarn do.

Second, where there was a good alternative to the blindingly obvious album, we went for the alternative. After all, who needs to be told, yet again, to buy Revolver or Pet Sounds?

You can read the rest here.

Here’s the entry for Low, accompanied by the front-page blurb from the newspaper….

———————————————————————————————————————–

David Bowie – Low (1977)

The first of Bowie’s three Berlin albums, Low is the sound of a legend at ground zero. Side one swells with sharp, metallic pop, Bowie’s glam dynamics filtered through the influences of krautrock and Kraftwerk. Side two’s extraordinary instrumental panorama, all disembodied voices and dark electronics, is a perfect requiem to the divided city in which it was made.

———————————————————————————————————————–

Hmmm…Paris was about the nearest city to where Low was made. A divided city? Perhaps it is…but I think The Guardian is most likely concluding Low was recorded in Berlin…seeing as how it was the first of three in the ‘Berlin Trilogy’?

In the supplement, the above review for Low is accompanied by a quite irrelevant, but jolly good 1974 live shot.

Db Spongebob Episode Attracts Record 9 Million

Dive In Saturday…

PR Newswire has reported that the SpongeBob?s Atlantis SquarePantis episode has netted the series’ biggest ever audience, with almost 9 million viewers tuning in on Monday. (11.11.2007 REMINDER: LORD ROYAL HIGHNESS ON TV MONDAY)

You can read the full Newswire piece here.

For those of you that haven’t caught the episode yet, here’s the synopsis to prepare you for the emotional roller coaster that SpongeBob’s Atlantis SquarePantis takes you on…

————————————————————————————————————-

In “Atlantis SquarePantis,” SpongeBob finds the missing half of an ancient medallion believed to be a relic from the lost city of Atlantis and brings it to the Bikini Bottom Museum where the other half is on display. The two sides are reunited, and suddenly a magical van appears that beckons to take SpongeBob, Patrick, Sandy, Squidward and Mr. Krabs to the legendary city of Atlantis. Upon arrival they are greeted by Atlantis’ king himself, Lord Royal Highness (voiced by David Bowie), who spares no time in taking the visitors on a tour. Atlantis proves to be even more wonderful than anyone could have imagined, particularly for SpongeBob and Patrick who encounter the Oldest Living Bubble. But when a flash from Patrick’s camera causes a mishap, SpongeBob, Patrick, Mr. Krabs, Sandy and Squidward must run from the Atlantean Guards or find a way to make amends.

————————————————————————————————————-

SpongeBob SquarePants: Atlantis SquarePantis is now available on TurboNick and on DVD from Nickelodeon Home Entertainment and Paramount Home Entertainment.

You can also tune in to Nickelodeon to watch this episode again on Saturday 17th. (See advert above)