Month: April 2013

 

“So I picked on you-oo-oo”

 

Well, if life begins at forty, Starman is one year old today.

Released this day in 1972, it still sounds as good now as it did way back then.

The proof is here.

 

“New York’s a go-go and everything sounds right”

 

Next Sunday (May 5th), three very talented men with special ears (responsible for the production duties on almost two thirds of David Bowie’s studio albums), assemble in New York for the Red Bull Music Academy Classic Album Sundays Bowie Special.

Here’s a bit about it

 

RED BULL MUSIC ACADEMY MEETS CLASSIC ALBUM SUNDAYS: A DAVID BOWIE SPECIAL

Three classic Bowie records. Three iconic producers talking about their making.

 

12pm – 2.30pm: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust & the Spiders from Mars – w/ Ken Scott

3pm – 5.30pm: Heroes – w/ Tony Visconti

6pm – 8.30pm: Let’s Dance – w/ Nile Rodgers

 

Classic Album Sundays is about challenging the way we listen to music in the 21st century and bringing cultural milestones to life on some of the world’s best high-end audio systems. For this special Red Bull Music Academy edition we invite the men who recorded and produced these albums to tell the behind-the-scenes stories along with the acoustic treat: Chic mastermind Nile Rodgers, Tony Visconti (one of the driving forces behind Bowie’s “Berlin Trilogy”) and Ken Scott who’s also known as one of the main engineers for The Beatles. This is a rare chance to get inside three pivotal albums from the career of one of music’s most singular artists.

 

Check out the Red Bull Bowie Special page here. 

 

“The solid book we wrote cannot be found just yet”

 

One of the more intriguing exhibits during the Bowie Weekender at the V&A over the last couple of days, was the installation of Paul Morley at a desk with a laptop, a pile of reference books, Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies and a screen behind him with a live display of the mammoth task he has undertaken.

All is explained on a label on an adjacent pillar:

 

Paul Morley is writing about David Bowie

10:00 – 17:30

Join legendary rock journalist Paul Morley as he writes a book about David Bowie in a weekend!

 

On the same desk is a box to collect contributions from visitors in postcard form. (See inset. Thanks to Merlin Adams for main picture)

Paul has risen to the challenge and has dutifully remained at his post observing the comings and goings and comings back again.

Nobody is sure what form the final document will take, but, rest assured, with Morley’s involvement it will be something special.

However, if you’re not particularly familiar with Paul’s brilliant work across the years, don’t take our word for just how good he is. Here’s a quotation from aforementioned super-brain, Brian Eno:

 

“Paul Morley is the greatest thinker/writer/social critic/TV presenter since Plato/Keynes/Duchamp/Betjeman.”

 

We’ve had the very good fortune to receive the first fruits of Morley’s labour sent directly after close of play yesterday.

We’ll leave you with these excerpts and we will hopefully return with more of the same tomorrow, with Mr Morley’s blessing.

 

 

09.55 a.m.

Notes for a book about David Bowie to be written by me in a weekend in the Grand Entrance of the Victoria and Albert Museum as a kind of temporary writer in residence at the David Bowie Is exhibition   – perhaps, more exactly, notes for a ‘book’ to be written about ‘David Bowie’ in a weekend at the V and A. Perhaps the weekend should itself be ‘the weekend.’ I do feel as though I am also inside inverted commas, although not sure how to write that down. Maybe later, a photograph of me working at this desk, with some inverted commas elegantly draped around me.

               First of all, I must explain more fully where I am and what I can see around me, to fully capture the moment, the reality of how for whatever reason I have ended up in the position of being expected as one version of an expert on the ways of Bowie to complete a book in a weekend.  This situation is perhaps the equivalent of me going to work, from 10 to 6, and this is my wonderfully ridiculous office, filled with glossy marble, monumental columns and the larger than life light of the Gods. I am sat to the side of the Grand Entrance, and opposite me, hanging down many metres from the vaulted cathedral-like ceiling is Dale Chihuly’s alien-dramatic Rotunda Chandelier. Made in Seattle in 2001 from tangled, convoluted blown glass and steel, it could easily be a representation of something David Bowie would have worn at some point in 1972 to represent his subversive show off mind. On the other side of the ticket and information desk is the ghostly Medieval and Renaissance Galleries, 1350 to 1600, known to V and A staff as the Med and Ren. I had been warned not to enter these galleries before I began work, as I would be arrested. I took this warning seriously.

               To my left, hanging below a majestic golden gothic altar, three large, tinted photographs of David Bowie overlook the ticket and information area. He seems to be licking his fingers with something that is not quite relish, not quite pure, deviant flirtation, looking both out of place and very much at home in the spectacular entrance, mocking the very idea he should be hanging in such a place, making it very clear this is exactly where he belongs.

       

11.14 a.m.

Adrian Deakes, a Performance Education Manager from the learning department of the Victoria and Albert Museum, passes my desk and tells me that he has been doing a study project with pupils from the secondary school in Bromley where David Bowie went as a youngster in the early 1960s. It was Bromley Technical High School when Bowie attended as David Robert Jones; it is now Ravens Wood School, although Adrian says Bowie would still recognise it as the school he went to, the same halls and corridors, and, no doubt, similar smells and sounds. “The same view over the playing fields to the large white houses beyond, the house opposite the school entrance, proudly stating ‘built in 1875.’ The 2012/13 teenagers were very taken when they visited the exhibition and heard the young Bowie, someone previously not that familiar to them, a distant rumour at best, how when he talked he sounded just like they did. He has travelled so far away from that time and place, through so many other times and places, sometimes to the other side of space, experiencing the illuminating, and deforming, white heat of fame, but he was still there, with them, for them, close by, as relevant as anything in their lives, ultimately, more so. They have made a film about their experience getting to know about someone they were delighted to discover actually went to their school. They have called the film ‘David Bowie is one of us.’

               “David Bowie is a person who did exactly what HE wanted to do,” said one of the students, Jack Gordon, “Now look where he is . . . “

              

11.23 a.m.

There are those who are treating me sat at my desk as a kind of installation, as some sort of museum guide, asking where the lifts are, where the ladies is, where, indeed, ‘Is’ is, and once or twice they decide I might even be a psychiatrist or, perhaps, on the other side, a patient in need of treatment. Someone who wishes to be known only as Helen and is very alarmed when I asked her real name lives around the corner in South Kensington, and seems to use the V and A as her local, a convenient place to visit when she is bored at home or the builders are in. Maybe she comes here to forget all the things going on around her. In just a few minutes she fills me in on her life, her husband in Geneva, her kids. She asks me directly what is it about David Bowie, then. Why are you so interested ? She had an accent that turns out to be part Polish which makes her question sound a little sinister, like the pair of us have just entered a demented detective mystery directed by Roman Polanski. I mean, she says, he was beautiful as a young boy, but what was that film ‘Labyrinth’ all about ? As far as she was concerned, nothing he had done that was great could ever make him recover from this most peculiar affair. It turns out she is critical of the exhibition itself. ‘Pretentious, no?” she decides, in a way that intends to make it difficult for me to disagree. I make a defence of the very idea of pretentiousness, that without it there is no possibility of creative ambition, of the kind of risk taking that can lead to genius. She abruptly dismisses this line of thought, and says she has to nip back home to take delivery of some new radiators for her kitchen.

               Later, fortysomething Wendy from Sussex gives me more of a fans view, and tells me about an amateur performance she had seen in her local hall just a few days ago that almost seems like she made it up. It was a musical about someone called David Jones, who is not David Bowie, but who identifies very closely with Bowie, was born on the same day, and dreams of being as successful. The more successful Bowie becomes, the more of a failure David Jones becomes, losing sight of himself as he obsesses over Bowie, and he turns to drugs and crime, falling so far into grubby lonely obscurity it seems all that is left is death. I cannot quite work out what happens next, except that he is saved by hearing ‘Rock and Roll Suicide’, and there is a relative form of a happy ending, and a band comes on and play some of Bowie’s greatest hits.

               For Wendy, more than Helen, who I realise is probably more of a Med and Ren person, David Bowie has changed her life, and she tells me of the experience she had at school as she was growing up that I recognise – how you could tell looking around at what some fellow pupils had done to their uniforms, or their hair, or make up, just the way they walked, who were the Bowie fans, outsiders on the inside of something they felt was special, and who were not. You could see minds opening in the way a skirt or blazer had been given a little personal, home-made touch of colour, in how their hair had been treated, twisted, touched up. More and more visitors of all shapes, sizes and ages pour through the Grand Entrance on their way to experience the dispersed, concentrated traces of David Bowie haunting various sectors of the museum,  and many of them like Wendy look like they are making a pilgrimage, into their very own past, shared with their very own Bowie, when everything was possible, or a future they still believe in, that can still, surely, be about change, for the better.

 

12.23 p.m.

               And then someone comes up to my desk to ask me to fix their phone. And then someone comes up to my desk to ask me to turn the music down – there is a DJ in the Entrance, playing music by and inspired by Bowie, which just happens to be my favourite, from Magazine and Joy Division to Philip Glass turning ‘Heroes’ into a symphony made of blown glass and steel. It all sounds perfect to me.  She is livid; her world is falling apart, busted by the decadence of these rude intruders into her calm, collected and soothing sanctuary.

               I do not want to be too rude and suggest that of those in the museum she is on the older side, but she is not shall we say the type who will talk of the moment she first discovered David Bowie. She has yet to discover Bowie. She is right now not in the mood to ever discover Bowie. “We don’t expect this racket in here !” she explodes during the particularly sensational and for some legendary Mike Garson piano solo on ‘Aladdin Sane.’ I toy for a moment with trying to explain why the music should not be turned down or off but UP, especially during this particular beautifully beserk solo, which is joyously harmonising with the light pouring from the skies into the vast entrance, but decide she looks in the mood to have me deported if I oppose her in any way. Bitterly disappointed that I am in fact of no use to her, she charges off to search out those in control who might get rid of this horrific noise, so that she can enter the Med and Ren, and appreciate all those quiet, settled centuries without Garson’s startling piano. A few minutes later a young lady in a scarlet Bowie wig wearing cut off denim shorts draws the attention of everyone in the Grand Entrance by dancing the slowest, look-at-me-but-don’t-look Moonage Daydream daydreamy movement to ‘Moonage Daydream,’ as though this is actually a happening, a wonderful breaking through decades of tightening formality, and I think that by now the older lady not wearing the scarlet wig and threatened by Garson’s piano is planning her own counter-revolution, or feeling that she is sitting in a tin can far above the earth.

               The changes began forty odd years ago in small halls in small towns around the country by Bowie and his company of mavericks and showman militants have eventually reverberated all the way through to the moored, supervising spaces of the Victoria and Albert museum. I watch a little girl walk past my desk with a red and blue Aladdin Sane flash painted across her eye, which looks exactly right, and it seems like the Ziggy zonked outsiders led by their glorious, pacesetting and inspirational ringleader still believe they can make a world of difference.

 

“Who knows how it could be, be tomorrow”

 

A couple of days ago we told you about the Bowie Weekender which kicks off with a Bowie Flash Mob on the steps of the V&A tomorrow.

After the Flash Mob fun, the evening commences with the V&A’s regular Friday Late event, with an insanely busy schedule which sadly means it will be physically impossible to get to all of the events.

Go here to try and decide on your very own plan of action.

 

#DavidBowieis

 

“And I’m busting up my brains for the words”

 

American novelist and short story writer, Rick Moody, (possibly best known for his 1994 novel, The Ice Storm, which featured a specially re-recorded version of I Can’t Read on the film’s soundtrack) has successfully persuaded David Bowie to contribute 42 words for a “sort of a work flow diagram for The Next Day”.

Moody has used the words in an incredible 14,000-word critique, “produced in two short weeks”, of The Next Day for The Rumpus. If you have a fair few minutes to spare, you can read the whole thing over on therumpus.net.  

Meanwhile, we’ll leave you with Mr Moody’s astonished realisation that he alone managed to get David Bowie to contribute something, anything, on the subject of The Next Day, followed by the 42 words Bowie supplied. 

 

 

 

Now, Bowie, the artist who no longer has anything to prove, has indicated that he is unavailable for comment about The Next Day, because there is only the work, and anything beyond the work is sort of what this album is about, “The Stars (Are Out Tonight),” viz., in which a preoccupation with celebrity is some kind of devastated pathology, one with which Bowie feels oddly sympathetic in the song (and the video, which you have to see, because it’s like a little movie it’s so good), despite having formerly been a “star” himself. Onto the “stars” we project our confusions and desperations, onto the “stars” we project the lives we do not lead. Ergo, there is only the work now, and the silence is part of the work, the work is otherwise complete, the way it is complete with Thomas Pynchon, and the way it was with J. D. Salinger, but, that said, and I can hardly believe it is the case myself, I have somehow persuaded David Bowie to part with a few words on the subject of this album.

 

I mean, I persuaded Bowie, somehow, to give me a sort of a work flow diagram for The Next Day, because I wanted to think about it in light of what he was thinking about it, I wanted to understand the lexicon of The Next Day, and so I simply asked if he would provide this list of words about his album, assuming, like everyone else waving madly trying to get his attention, that there was not a chance in hell that I would get this list, because who the fuck am I, some novelist killing time writing occasionally about music, and yet astonishingly the list appeared, and it appeared without further comment, which is really excellent, and exactly in the spirit of this album, and the list is far better than I could ever have hoped, and it’s exactly like Bowie, at least in my understanding of him, impulsive, intuitive, haunted, astringent, and incredibly ambitious in the matter of the arts; Bowie is a conceptual artist, it seems to me, who just happens to work in the popular song, and he wants to make work that goes somewhere new, and this is amply demonstrated by the list.

 

What I propose here is that I use the list to make a few observations about the incredible excellence of The Next Day, as a way of explaining what I think he’s after, or as a way of collaborating with the ideas in play, and in this way will a really great album be illuminated, given the opportunity to blossom further, later into the season, etc.

 

So here’s what David sent me (and I should thank him for doing it, and so I fervently thank him here):

 

Effigies

Indulgences

Anarchist

Violence

Chthonic

Intimidation

Vampyric

Pantheon

Succubus

Hostage

Transference

Identity

Mauer

Interface

Flitting

Isolation

Revenge

Osmosis

Crusade

Tyrant

Domination

Indifference

Miasma

Pressgang

Displaced

Flight

Resettlement

Funereal

Glide

Trace

Balkan

Burial

Reverse

Manipulate

Origin

Text

Traitor

Urban

Comeuppance

Tragic

Nerve

Mystification

 

“I’ve got Friday on my mind”

 

If you’re kicking around London’s South Kensington on Friday evening, all dressed up as David Bowie but with nowhere to go, you would be mad not to take advantage of some V&A fun with the chance to win something cool for your efforts.

To kick off the Bowie Weekender, the V&A is encouraging fans to dress as, or be inspired by, Bowie for a flash mob photo opportunity on the steps of the Cromwell Road entrance to the V&A.

They are keen to get as many would-be-Bowies as possible in the photos and will be gathering people from 18.00 on Friday (apparently it normally takes 30 minutes to get everyone together), and then the David Bowie is Exhibition co-curator, Vicky Broackes, will pick her favourite look and you could win a year’s V&A Membership for you and a friend, plus an exclusive David Bowie is a Face in the Crowd Exhibition goody bag! Two runners up will get a pair of exhibition tickets.

All this before the regular Friday Late activities kick off at the V&A. Go here for more.

 

+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – +

 

STUDY DAY: Join experts, fans and collaborators including, Kevin Cann, Paul Gorman, Dana Gillespie, Toby Manning and Holly Johnson to unpack Bowie’s unique style, sound and staging.

STUDY DAY #DavidBowieis SPECIAL OFFER: If you’re still capable of free movement on Saturday morning, you might want to take advantage of the Study Day #DavidBowieis special offer as you can now get 2 full price tickets for the price of 1.

The study day event commences at 11:00am and continues through till 16:00. Book using promo code: DB241 here. 

Check out the full schedule for the BOWIE WEEKENDER on this page. 

@V_and_A   #DavidBowieis

 

“And so the story goes, they wore the clothes”

 

The April 2013 issue of Vogue Japan has a Kansai Yamamoto retrospective feature and interview which focuses on some of his earlier creations for David Bowie right up to his latest collection.

The iPad version has a video of the interview which includes Kansai talking about working with David Bowie.

 

“Then the NME dropped a bomb”

 

On the shelves in the UK about now is a 100-page NME Bowie special, retailing for £5.99.

You can get the gist of this affectionate tribute from the blurb on the NME site, pasted below, and from the magazine contents listing by scrolling the accompanying image.

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NME – David Bowie Special Collectors’ Magazine

Bowie’s back, and bigger than ever! ‘The Next Day’ is his first Number One album in 20 years, there’s been a huge scramble for tickets to his V&A exhibition and his cultural currency has never been higher, so what better time to celebrate his legend and legacy with a one-off magazine revisiting all of the music, the myths, the movies and the mayhem of The Man Who Owned The World?

Raiding the NME archive for the most thrilling, colourful and revealing interviews from Ziggy to Berlin and beyond, we reassess every album, remember the most extravagant tours, delve into the most scandalous myths and rate his most memorable screen appearances. PLUS from Noel to Radiohead, rock’s biggest stars discuss Bowie’s influence, the V&A exhibition raided for its most stunning shots and we argue why Tin Machine were actually brilliant. Wham, bam, thank you glam!

 

“You got me spinning, baby, spinning in a trance”

 

The collectors among you who concern yourselves with such minutia as label variations will be either delighted (or distressed) to learn that the white vinyl, picture sleeve 45 of The Stars (Are Out Tonight)/Where Are We Now?, was issued for Record Store Day today as two different pressings with different catalogue numbers.

Though both were made in the EU, there is a major label difference between the UK and international variations of the pressing.

The UK version comes with an orange RCA label for Where Are We Now?, while the international version has a predominantly black label with white text.

Otherwise the label design for The Stars (Are Out Tonight) and the cover design for both pressings is identical in every respect, barring the catalogue number and barcode variations.

Catalogue numbers:

UK: 88883705557

International: 88883704917

It seems the international pressing was distributed with a shrink-wrapped cover as was the Bowie 1965! Four track EP.

Pictured here are the variations (UK on the left) and if you click through to the other images you can see both sides of all of today’s Bowie 45s.

 

“They’ve opened shops down the West End”

 

We told you about the Selfridges David Bowie is all yours: London Concept Store recently.  

Now the V&A FB page has a great photo album of the shop’s window displays along Orchard Street.

The installations pay brilliant homage to Bowie’s footwear with particular focus on several of Ziggy’s most famous creations in eye-catching Perspex interpretations of the originals.

The Art Deco flavoured fabric used to make the iconic jumpsuit on the sleeve of the Ziggy Stardust album has also been utilised in the upholstery of a few pieces of very desirable furniture for the display too.

Check out the V&A’s FB David Bowie is all yours photo album here.

The picture accompanying this piece and those in aforementioned photo album are © Photos by Melvyn Vincent for Prop Studios.