Month: January 2001

These boots were made for…erm…Bowie

The Rock Style exhibition at London’s Barbican Centre (see original story: 10/05/00 NEWS: ROCK STYLE EXHIBITION OPENS IN LONDON TODAY) closes this Sunday at 6:00pm (GMT). So if you are in the London area over the weekend be sure to check out this entertaining collection of Rock Star clothes before it’s all over. This could be your last chance to see original Ziggy costumes in the cloth, not to mention Beatle suits, Mick Jagger’s leotard, Marc Bolan’s satin jacket, an impressive wardrobe of Elvis gear (still talking clothes here) and much, much more (as they say when they’ve mentioned all the best bits).

Seriously though, it is a fascinating exhibition which you should allow yourself a good couple of hours to take in. It may be worth remembering that these sorts of shows often reduce the price of exhibition-related goodies on the last day. I will be filing my report on Rock Style soon after the exhibition closes so as not to spoil the surprise for anybody who does decide to go at the last minute. (Well of all the flimsiest excuses…Deadline ED)

Total Blam Blam (European Correspondent)

Is it nice in your snow storm, freezing your brain?

Apart from a great Grandaddy spread, the February issue of Q magazine is this month lifting the lid on the alleged use of drugs by Rock musicians. They have backed up their flimsy allegations with many supposed true tales of abuse and misuse. The squeaky-clean David Bowie is one of those to have his spotless reputation stained by the outrageous claims contained within the pages of this sniffy piece:

“The 70’s British invasion of America was really the cocaine invasion of America. After finishing recording ‘Diamond Dogs’ in spring 1974, David Bowie moved to Hollywood until October 1976. During this period he made the film ‘The Man Who Fell To Earth’ and the ‘Young Americans’ and ‘Station To Station’ albums. He toured like a demon too. Yet, throughout this period, his true love was cocaine and his subsequent move to Berlin was an attempt to give it up.”

Anybody familiar with the recorded evidence of Bowie from this period, such as the BBC’s fine Cracked Actor documentary and David’s appearances on The Dick Cavett Show and Soul Train, will know these accusations for what they are.

The attack on Bowie culminates in the placing at number one of ‘Station To Station’ in the 5 best cocaine albums. Go here for Q’s summation of the recording.

Total Blam Blam – (European Correspondent)

There’s Old Wave, There’s New Wave, And There’s David Bowie…

Uncut magazine, this month (February issue) has on its cover “100 SINGLES THAT CHANGED YOUR LIFE” and inside the feature is headed: “FROM THE SEX PISTOLS TO SLIM SHADY: THE 100 GREATEST SINGLES OF THE POST-PUNK ERA”. Though not denying the importance of the previous years, and despite the fact that half of the artists have split up or are no longer recording, the focus of this article is on singles released in the last 25 years.

And while two of his contemporaries are represented here (Iggy Pop and Neil Young) it is lovely to see David Bowie at number 16 with “Heroes”. After all, bearing in mind that both Iggy Pop and Neil Young were both given the dubious honour of being bestowed with the title of “grandfathers” of youth movements (the former Punk Rock, the latter Grunge) it is easy to understand why these two gentlemen would be included.

But David Bowie, always keen never to align himself to a ‘movement’, is the only artist of his generation (excepting Pop and Young) to be included, and it is easy to see why. Looking through the list, his influence is everywhere. Adam & The Ants, Beck, The Pixies, Devo, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Japan, Blondie, Nick Lowe, Blur, Suede, Aphex Twin, Buzzcocks, Pulp, Simple Minds, A Guy Called Gerald, Gary Numan, The Associates, Oasis, Human League, Talking Heads, The Ramones, PiL, Magazine, Frankie Goes To Holywood, Dinosaur Jr, The Smiths, The Sex Pistols, Kraftwerk, Nirvana and even Iggy Pop and Neil Young, if not directly influenced by Bowie, have some link to him or have had some involvement with him, and they are all included in this Top 100.

For a full run down of the Top 100 and a few excerpts from some of the entries, including “Heroes”, go here.

Total Blam Blam – (European Correspondent)

Waiting for you……

Kelmar returns, with her own unique brand of advice for coping with those days of waiting, leading up to the next David Bowie live appearance.It has come to the attention of your friendly neighbourhood SuperVixen that anticipation is building for the Tibet House show in February and you whacky Bowienetters are starting to get antsy……….

Go here for our own personal SuperVixen’s latest column. Enjoy!

Thanks, Kelmar!

In a corner of the morning in the past…

While we’re talking BBC, if you missed yesterday’s birthday broadcast of the first part of the BBC World Service Music Mix special on Bowie @ the Beeb, then you can listen to the whole thing by using this shortcut to a Real Audio file of part one of this fascinating two-parter:

pnm://rmv7.bbc.net.uk/worldservice/arts/highlights/bowie.ra

I know it’s a strange address but it does work. The program uses new and archive interviews to trace David’s thirty-odd-year relationship with the BEEB, interspersed with many of the songs issued on last year’s Bowie at the Beeb release. The second and final part of the documentary airs next week at these times:

15th January, 09:30 GMT
15th January, 19:30 GMT
16th January, 01:30 GMT (This broadcast can be heard in stereo at the same time on the Radio 4 frequency)
16th January, 14:30 GMT

We will try and post a reminder the day before next week’s broadcast if someone could please remind me. Thanks to Baby Steve K for the shortcut.

Total Blam Blam – (European Correspondent)

This chaos is killing me…

The TOTP space special outlined in my story of last week (01/02/01 NEWS: SECOND TOTP APPEARANCE IN THREE DAYS FOR STARMAN?) was postponed until the same time tomorrow. Check out the story again for further details.

Total Blam Blam – (European Correspondent)

So he told them his scheme for a Saviour Machine…

This date of January the 8th celebrates an historical event that, indirectly, brought us all here today. For it was on this day in 1889 that Dr. Herman Hollerith received a patent for his electric tabulating machine. The machine tallied numbers fed to it on punch cards. The system was first used extensively to compile statistics for the eleventh federal census in 1890. The cost was $5 million below the usual forecasts and saved more than two years’ counting time.

“So what?” you may ask. Well, thanks to his extraordinary success with the electronic counting machine, in 1896 Hollerith founded the Tabulating Machine Company, forerunner of Computer Tabulating Recording Company (CTR). He served as a consulting engineer with CTR until retiring in 1921. In 1924 CTR changed its name to International Business Machines Corporation (IBM). The rest, as they say, truly is history. Click on the image above for more.

Total Blam Blam – (European Correspondent)

If you’d like to add your own personal birthday wish for David, you can do it here!

And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear

The Observer UK newspaper and Channel 4 UK TV programme have been running a reader/viewer contest to discover the 100 greatest ever No 1’s. There was an excellent four hour show at the weekend, which covered all the winners in some detail.

Gus Dudgeon, the producer of Space Oddity, was interviewed about his role, and said : –

“I always thought he was an incredible writer with an amazing imagination. The moon shot was coming up in 1969. They just thought, he’s written a song about somebody going into space. It’s a great thing to hook the record into this big thing.”

For the full transcript of David’s section of this show, and more about the other winners, go here.

Thanks, Spaceface!

Here’s an image I recommend

Suede’s first eponymous album was chosen as this week’s crucial cut, once again, in the Sunday Times. They say :-

“The British rock scene was in a pretty torpid state in the early 1990’s (and) media interest in a band of ambitious twenty somethings with a Bowie-fixated singer and a guitarist who could actually play was consequently intense.

As the first track, So Young, made abundantly clear, Brett Anderson had spent a lot of time listening to David Bowie’s early album Hunky Dory, and had developed a similarly assertive, slightly yodelly way of delivering a melody. He sounded sexually ambiguous and determinedly decadent, particularly when he urged “chasing the dragon” in a shrill falsetto.

More about Suede, including audio clips of this album, here.

For those of you who remember David’s famous meeting with Brett Anderson, you can send an e-card of that NME cover, here.

Thanks, Spaceface!