Month: December 2008

We’re painting our faces and dressing in thoughts from the skies…

If you’re still deliberating whether to attend tonight’s BOWIEBALL in NY after yesterday’s news piece, (12.05.2008 REMINDER: BOWIEBALL IN NEW YORK CITY ON SATURDAY NIGHT) then don’t take our word for it. Read this item from The New York Times by Melena Ryzik which includes a few words from BOWIEBALL organiser Deryck Todd, who is pictured far right in the montage of pictures from the January 2007 BOWIEBALL, above…

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THE NEW YORK TIMES – AROUND TOWN – BOWIEBALL

The economy is tanking, the winter doldrums are setting in, and the tourists and the family are descending, but don?t let that bring you down: pull yourself up by your skinny jeans and hit BowieBall, a glittery, wild-haired, wild-eyed party in honor of the Thin White Duke, in all his gender-bending glory.

Deryck Todd, an artist, fashion designer and David Bowie lover, came up with the idea a few years ago when he was casting about for a party theme. (?I?m a big fan of alliteration,? Mr. Todd, 28, said.) It was an instant hit: by the second ball, at Don Hill?s, there was a line around the block, and the event has been attracting the zip-up-jumpsuit crowd ever since. ?It?s gay, it?s straight, it?s bi, it?s hipster, it?s people who are trying to get in with a fake ID, and people who saw Bowie in 1968 in London,? Mr. Todd said. He added, ?Bowie gave a voice to so many people, to inspire them to be individuals, to challenge who they are, to pretend they are from other planets and get away with it.?

So far, there have been no actual Bowie sightings, but doppelgängers abound. This year?s ball, the sixth, has a half-dozen D.J.?s ? including the downtown mainstay Michael T. ? burlesque and drag performances, and appearances by people in the Ziggy Stardust orbit, like Earl Slick, Mr. Bowie?s original guitarist.

For the first time there will be a fashion installation, with mannequins decked out in Bowie-inspired garb by designers like Stephen Burrows and Richie Rich; Stella B. Zotis, a contestant on last season?s ?Project Runway,? will serve as a host. There is, of course, a dress code: the themes are Warholian superstar, young American heroes or Goblin Kings. Though the doorman can be fierce, there are options for the casual ?Space Oddity? fan ? the party offers a glam makeup station (think major applications of eye shadow and lightning bolts.) ?If you come and you?re not wearing any pleather, and for some reason you?re wearing pleated khakis? which I really hope they?re not ? they can get a makeover and fit in for one night,? Mr. Todd said. ?Fit in with the un-fitters.?

Saturday from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m., Santos Party House, 100 Lafayette Street, at Walker Street, Lower Manhattan.

Melena Ryzik

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Don’t forget, if you do attend, please send us what you remember of the evening in the morning…if anything!

Well, how come you only want tomorrow…

Deryck Todd has been in touch with details of the latest BOWIEBALL in New York, which is the third in less than a year. (06.12.2007 REMINDER: BOWIEBALL IN NYC ON FRIDAY…TV’S THERE, DB’S NOT & 01.15.2008 NEWS: TWO MORE BOWIE BASHES IN LONDON AND NY THIS WEEKEND)

This increasingly more popular event takes place tomorrow (Saturday 6th) at Santos Party House between 10pm and 4am.

I’m sure those of you likely to attend received your invites long ago and have conceived your wardrobe well in advance with the utmost care.

However, it’s not too late to join in proceedings if this is the first you’ve heard of it and if you can’t quite make out the details on the back of the flyer below, you will be able to at the official www.BOWIEBALLNYC.com site.

As you can see from past BOWIEBALLS via these pictures on Flickr.com, Santos Party House really is the place to be for any self-respecting Bowie fan tomorrow night.

If you’re attending and can supply us with a brief report and a few pix of proceedings that we can use here on BowieNet, we’ll show our appreciation with something nice.

It Ain’t Easy…

I’m sure many of you have now seen The Ziggy Stardust Heddon Street Out-Takes calendar published by Slow Dazzle and hopefully you agree it’s a pretty special thing.

Well now we have five copies to give-away in the first of five weekly contests that will take us into the new year. That’s five different contests with five different types of prize…though all the prizes have one thing in common: They will all be signed by David Bowie!

This first contest is pretty simple, even if it’s not the easiest we’ll be running.

You may remember a news piece back in October regarding the above hitherto unreported diamante bird brooch that you can just make out in a couple of the Ziggy out-take shots. (10.15.2008 NEWS: DB REMEMBERS ZIGGY STARDUST BIRD BROOCH)

It has now come to light that this wasn’t the only time Ziggy wore the brooch and in fact BowieNetter KarmaMan has provided photographic evidence to prove the fact.

Now all you have to do to be in with a chance of winning one of these signed calendars is the very same thing. In other words: You need to locate a picture of Ziggy Stardust (other than any from the Heddon Street session) or David Bowie at any point in his career sporting the brooch. No PhotoShop trickery, pictures must be genuine.

When you’ve found the required image, send it to me, or, if you don’t want to e-mail an image, simply send me the URL of the file.

Send the file or URL to me here before midnight NY time on Wednesday December 10th.

The winners will be announced here the next day at the same time as the second contest goes live.

Usual BowieNet rules apply: Only one entry per BowieNet account per week, and please remember you must enter using your BowieNet e-mail or at least supply your BowieNet user name. If you do neither of these things you won’t be eligible to enter.

Good Luck, kidz.

You can’t afford the ticket…

It seems that Monday night’s presentation of David Bowie’s videos at MoMA by Thurston Moore was a huge success with the second batch of tickets selling out in minutes and queues of people hoping for last minute returns.

I have even heard whispers of some kind of touting with tickets selling for many times their face value as if the evening were actually a David Bowie concert.

Thurston gave a fairly lengthy introduction that was by turns humorous and heartfelt and had Bowie fans of a certain age nodding in agreement when he recalled how hard it was at first to get any sort of glimpse of this mysterious man David Bowie, let alone see films of him.

The evening was attended by some of the video’s directors including: Mick Rock, Mark Romanek and Sam Bayer.

BowieNetter Shammy was one of our lucky winners and she kindly sent in her impressions of the evening which you can read below…

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Hey Blam…Thanks so much for the tickets. I had a great time. Got there nice and early and saw many many people waiting for tickets on a stand-by basis. (Hopefully they all got in).

Thurston talked quite a bit for his introduction. He spoke about how important magazines were back in the 70’s as our link to all things rock ‘n roll…he mentioned blasts from the past like “Circus” and “Cream” and how you could pick them up at your local grocery store…and at first you’d only get snippets in the backs of the pages on people like Bowie and Iggy and Bolan…but after the “hippy era” the magazines got on track with putting people that dared to be different on the covers. After all the long-hairs of The Allmans, ELP, etc…it was a shock to see an Alice Cooper with eye make-up running down his face…or a strangely dressed looking person with orange cropped hair on the covers…he felt it was the first time he had to hide magazines from his mother.

Thurston also spoke about living in rural Connecticut during the 70’s – which was about an hour and a half away from NYC…so he still felt the “edge” and the enticement of it all. He said you NEEDED to get in there (the City)…go to the shows…check out Max’s Kansas City or any of the other spots the rockers were frequenting (this I could definitely relate to having been living in rural long island during the mid 70’s)…you felt the allure of it all…and you wanted to be a part of it.

He mentioned how Sonic Youth played with Bowie at his 50th birthday bash at Madison Square Garden and thought to himself… “damn…the man is 50 and how it must suck to be 50 but he still had such a passion for his music”. Thurston said he now has turned 50 himself and is thinking.. “fuck! I’m 50…and the bad part is I have to keep reminding myself that I’m not 15”.

Thurston talked about having children and how he “had to watch Labyrinth” over and over and over again with the kids. But after watching more than once or twice, he could realize just how great some of the stuff was in it.

As for the show itself… of course it’s wonderful to see Bowie up on a big screen and get that infusion of music into your system. I think I might have chosen a few different videos and would have loved to see the full Blue Jean as opposed to the short one (but I realize there were time constraints). I personally find it very hard to even sit still when the music is going…at first everyone seemed unsure as to what to do when the first video ended…by the next one and subsequent others, you had people clapping at the end of each.

Those early videos are just plain sex to me! I mean?that face…That bone structure?androgyny to the hilt and I just absolutely love it to death! Thanks again for a great night BowieNet.

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Thanx Shammy, glad you had such a good time. Thanx also to Jimmy King for the pictures here, all of which he took on the night.

It seems the programme will be shown again at MoMA on Friday, December 19th at 6:00pm, though it’s unlikely to be presented by Thurston Moore this time around.

I’ll leave you with a reminder of the videos screened on Monday evening…

1972 JOHN I’M ONLY DANCING 2:49
Director: Mick Rock
1972 JEAN GENIE 4:02
Director: Mick Rock
1973 LIFE ON MARS? 3:55
Director: Mick Rock
1977 “HEROES” 3:27
Director: Stanley Dorfman
1979 DJ 3:58
Director: David Mallet
1980 ASHES TO ASHES 3:33
Director: David Mallet & David Bowie
1983 CHINA GIRL 4:03
Director: David Mallet & David Bowie
1984 BLUE JEAN 3:17
Director: Julien Temple
1986 AS THE WORLD FALLS DOWN 3:41
Director: Steve Barron
1990 FAME 90 3:33
Director: Gus Van Sant Edited By: Edouard Lock
1993 JUMP THEY SAY 4:00
Director: Mark Romanek
1995 THE HEARTS FILTHY LESSON 4:58
Director: Sam Bayer
1997 DEAD MAN WALKING 3:49
Director: Floria Sigismondi
1997 I’M AFRAID OF AMERICANS 4:25
Director: Dom + Nic
1999 SURVIVE 3:29
Director: Walter Stern

With your silicone hump and your ten inch stump, Dressed like a priest you was…

The January 2009 edition of The WORD magazine has a page on the best ever gimmicks in rock and roll.

Among the twenty or so entries are Hendrix‘s burning guitar, Alice Cooper‘s snake, Kraftwerk‘s robots, Cameo‘s codpieces, Pete Burns‘ scary eyepatch and Marilyn Manson‘s gammy eye…the latter three being ‘gimmicks’ David Bowie had already used along the way.

The piece concludes with the entry above which ends on a question with a pretty obvious answer…Yes!

Though the item is tongue-in-cheek, I have to say I never thought of Bowie’s identity changes as pre-conceived gimmicks, but rather natural progressions triggered by a curious and easily bored imagination.

And don’t even get me started on chameleon!

And me I’m on a radio show…

EMI is releasing several classic John Peel sessions via iTunes today. Here’s the official blurb…

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EMI?s greatest artists meet the BBC?s greatest DJ on this series of digital bundles. Featuring original sessions taken from the legendary John Peel vault and performed by multi-platinum selling artists: David Bowie, Syd Barrett, Jethro Tull, The Specials and The Stranglers, the bundles feature a mixture of hits, live favourites and classic cover versions ? highlights include David Bowie?s rendition of the timeless Velvet Underground track, ?White Light/White Heat? and Syd Barrett?s album gem, ?Effervescing Elephant?.

Accompanying the audio bundles are five video collections of classic BBC Top Of The Pops performances from Blondie, Roxy Music, The Human League, The Stranglers and Marillion. Each video bundle presents a unique look at these artist?s biggest hits captured in the moment of their greatest success ? all in the nostalgic environment of the world renowned television programme.

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Sadly, there is no Bowie TOTPs bundle as of yet and I don’t know at this stage if there are plans for one.

However, here are the details of the Bowie Peel Session that is available from today…

Artist: David Bowie
Title: Original John Peel Session: 23rd May 1972
Release Date: 01/12/2008

Digital Tracklist:

1 ~ White Light/White Heat
2 ~ Moonage Daydream
3 ~ Hang On To Yourself
4 ~ Suffragette City
5 ~ Ziggy Stardust

I feel duty bound to point out that this session is already widely available in it’s entirety as part of the Bowie At The Beeb release.

This session remains one of my particular favourites on account of it being the first Bowie radio session I ever heard…albeit five years after the original broadcast.

I taped it from the radio with a hand-held mic onto a somewhat stretched C120 when John Peel aired it again along with a session by Chelsea in June 1977.

It remained the only source of a Bowie version of White Light/White Heat for me until the 1983 RCA issue of the Ziggy Stardust Motion Picture soundtrack release in 1983…ignoring a couple of unofficial releases along the way of course.

On a final self-indulgent note, you’ll hopefully forgive me for boring you with the irrelevant tale that a John Peel session I did with my own band in 1980 turned out to be recorded in the very same Maida Vale 4 studio with the same engineer in Nick Gomm as this Bowie session. I thought I could feel the influence of special ghosts at the time.

Come to the show tonight…

If you’re in the New York area you can’t fail to have noticed the above poster advertising tonight’s presentation of David Bowie’s videos at MoMA by Thurston Moore.

Don’t forget a number of tickets are available today from the Museum’s Lobby Information Desk.

Ticket Admission prices: Adults $10; MoMA Members $8, Seniors (65 and above) $5; Students (with valid I.D.) $5.

The public may call 212/708-9400 for detailed Museum information.

If you are attending, please feel free to send in a report of how the evening goes…and that includes you lucky BowieNet winners who all have a plus one on the guest list.