Month: November 2009

Thursday’s Child…

Looking for a different way to mark Thanksgiving this year, (I got bored with the turkey angle…it’s silly) I thought it would be cool if we could all join in the celebrations…well us Europeans feel a bit left out. Don’t know about the rest of you.

So, every Thursday right up to Thursday December 31st we’ll be running a contest for BowieNet members and the majority of the prizes (if not all) will carry David Bowie’s autograph!

First up is the 2010 official calendar signed by both David Bowie and Mick Rock…as above.

We’ll keep this first one very easy as half of you are possibly too stuffed to move or hog-whimpering drunk…or both!

All you have to do to be in with a chance of winning one of these hugely collectable and breathtakingly beautiful babies is identify the shot on the cover above.

The venue, the month and the year will suffice.

E-mail your answer to me here. We’ll run this one until midnight New York time next Wednesday December 2nd, with the ten winners being announced the next day.

Usual BowieNet rules apply: Only one entry per BowieNet account 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.

Rumours and lies and stories they made up…Part 386

The Mail Online has posted a piece suggesting that David Bowie is “considering an offer” to appear at next year’s 40th anniversary Glastonbury Festival.

Sadly, there is absolutely no substance to this story.

So I felt like an actor…

OK, more competition results. We posted this contest last month (10.20.2009 NEWS: YELLOWBEARD AVAILABLE ON REGION 2 DVD – WIN ONE NOW) in which we gave members the chance to win one of five Yellowbeard Region 2 DVDs courtesy of Optimum Home Entertainment.

All you had to do to be in with a chance of winning was identify the six shady characters above, including the films associated with each one of them and the name of the characters portrayed therein.

Here’s what you should have concluded from left to right…

The Last Temptation Of Christ / Pontius Pilate
Il mio West (aka Gunslinger’s Revenge) / Jack Sikora
Absolute Beginners / Vendice Partners
Basquiat / Andy Warhol
The Man Who Fell To Earth / Thomas Jerome Newton
Into The Night / Colin Morris

And these are the five BowieNetters that The Random Generator chose to smile upon today…

Arabia
m.art
motherofsephy
peterbraster
unicorn

Well done folx, please furnish me with your name and address and you’ll have your DVD before you can say Bernie from B.U.S.T.E.D.

On a final note…I do always say with these contests that you must enter using your BowieNet e-mail or at least supply your BowieNet user name…and that if you do neither of these things you won’t be eligible to enter.

Well the chap on the right in the picture above, Johnny Vann, was selected as somebody who had supplied all six answers correctly…however, he didn’t use his BowieNet e-mail or supply his BowieNet user name.

I do try to be fair in these things, so I called him and he explained that he wasn’t in fact a member but just liked to take part in the contests anyway!

As a consolation prize I agreed to post the above picture of him meeting David Bowie in March 1987 while filming the video for Underground in Stratford, East London…which must have been a prize that’s pretty hard to beat!

Brilliant Adventure…

I know there are a few of you who follow The Venture Brothers and the exploits of The Sovereign…The Sovereign being the secret identity of criminal overlord, David Bowie!

As you know, The Sovereign has been a character since the season 2 finale, Showdown at Cremation Creek (episode 26) in 2006, when he appeared with Iggy Pop and Klaus Nomi as his villainous sidekicks.

The appearance of David Bowie in the popular toon even made the New York Daily News last year.

Anyway, He’s back and you can view his latest appearance over at Adult Swim in The Revenge Society, wherein Watch and Ward alert The Sovereign to the treacherous actions of the Phantom Limb while also reassuring Bowie that ‘hours…’ is a fine album.

Mental.

Listen to me…

Speaking of popular Bowie recordings, (see yesterday’s news item) due in March next year is the third edition of 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die by Robert Dimery and Michael Lydon, the latter being the founding editor of Rolling Stone.

As you probably guessed, 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die is a musical reference book and the current second edition consists of a list of albums released between 1955 and 2005, though next year’s third edition will be brought up to date.

The book is arranged chronologically and each entry in the list is accompanied by a short essay written by a noted music critic. Each entry also has pictures, quotes, and additional information such as the album’s running time and producer.

David Bowie has seven albums listed, equalled only by The Beatles and Bob Dylan. Here they are…

Hunky Dory (1971)
The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars (1972)
Aladdin Sane (1973)
Young Americans (1975)
Station To Station (1976)
Low (1977)
“Heroes” (1977)

Here’s an excerpt from the Ziggy Stardust entry (pictured above) written by Robert Dimery himself…

Joining the Bowie albums are three from Iggy Pop: Raw Power (1973), The Idiot (1977) and Lust For Life (1977) and a couple of Lou Reed albums: Transformer (1972) and Berlin (1973). As you know, Bowie had a hand in the making of four of these albums to a lesser or, more accurately, greater degree.

Go here to check out the full listing.

The Times they are a-telling…

It’s all in the headline…and here’s what The Times had to say about Reality, which made #46 in the list…

Reality – David Bowie (Columbia, 2003) A melancholy, unvarnished collection of simply fine songs in which the pop chameleon reveals something of his true colours at last. This perfectly distils the formidable songwriting wisdom of a great artist in the autumn of his career.

Hard to disagree with that. I know Reality has its detractors, but perhaps it’s time you gave it another spin if you’re among them…New Killer Star, Pablo Picasso, Never Get Old, The Loneliest Guy, Looking For Water, She’ll Drive The Big Car, Days, Fall Dog Bombs The Moon, Try Some, Buy Some, Reality, Bring Me The Disco King…to name but eleven of the great tracks on this album.

You can see the full list at timesonline.

And I hid under blank tiles…

OK, sorry for the delay on these contest results folx, but they will all be announced over the following week with a few more great contests to come.

See the original contest if you’re not sure what this one’s all about (10.07.2009 NEWS: ‘hours…’ IS TEN – WIN SIGNED PRESS FOLDER AND PROMO CDs) suffice to say that you were attempting to win the stuff above with the answer below…

The great majority of you got this right though a couple of you actually managed to identify six missing tiles somehow!

Anyway, BowieNetter Stevie identified the correct five missing tiles: A4 , A5 , C1, D2, D4, as in the solution above.

Stevie has already been informed…better luck next time to the rest of you…the next time (for another signed Bowie item at least) being very soon.

You’ve really made the Grady… (Sorry Kevin)

Editor-in-Chief and Creative Director of LEMON, Kevin Grady, was interviewed over on Lost In A Supermarket last month. Here’s a snippet…

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As you?re an obvious fan of Bowie, did you discover anything cool/weird/intriguing about him while putting together the issue?

Keanan Duffty (fashion designer, musician and TV host) said that Bowie told him he doesn?t consider himself as someone who?s particularly interested in fashion, or something to that effect. That was a pretty surprising thing to hear.

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Aside from the interview, Kevin was asked to make Lost In A Supermarket a soundtrack to the new issue of LEMON. This is what he came up with….

?Life on Mars?? Seu Jorge
?Bowie? Flight of the Conchords
?Sound and Vision? Matthew Dear
?Heroes? TV on the Radio
?Major Tom? Shiny Toy Guns
?Kilometer? Sebastien Tellier
?Daft Punk Is Playing at My House? LCD Soundsystem
?In Dark Trees? Brian Eno
?Queen Bitch? David Bowie
?U Can Dance (featuring Bryan Ferry)? DJ Hell

You can hear the tracks and read the interview here.

We ARE still running our contest for signed copies of LEMON, (10.18.2009 NEWS: LEMON HEROES SIGNED COPIES – LEMONLAND.NET WINNERS) and, as bizarre as it sounds, I can tell you we will be running it from December 17th…all will be revealed.

Lift off…

As we told you back in September, (09.22.2009 NEWS: SPACE ODDITY RELEASE MOVED TO NOVEMBER IN USA) the Space Oddity 40th Anniversary Edition is released in the US today.

The album is issued in the same formats as it has already been released elsewhere…those formats being 2CD set, heavyweight vinyl in gatefold sleeve and digital download.

The album was originally released in America as MAN OF WORDS/MAN OF MUSIC on the Mercury label with a completely different sleeve to the original UK version.

However, it did utilise the George Underwood painting, The Depth of the Circle, on the reverse, albeit a smaller version. (See above)

I’m planning to do a round-up of all the variations of this album in the near future…please get in touch if you think you have something regarding it that may be of interest.