Month: April 2001

…popular musics and aftershocks

The Spring 2001 edition of XFM’s quarterly magazine, X-ray, yet again proves just how influential the work of David Bowie remains on today’s musicians. Of the four listed recent broadcasts of ‘The Hijack’…a show that asks: “What records do pop stars play when they’re bored of listening to themselves?”…three listed a Bowie track. Here follows those artists and the Bowie song they chose:

Marilyn Manson – The Man Who Sold The World
Coldplay – Life On Mars?
Frank Black – Sound and Vision

Only the fourth band, Gorillaz, didn’t include a Bowie track, but they did choose one of their own songs…proving that even when “they’re bored of listening to themselves”, they listen to themselves! Well what do you expect from a bunch of ‘toons? The Hijack is broadcast Sunday’s 8-9pm and Tuesdays 10-11pm, GMT.

*According to this survey of four at least.

Dame Dorsey is as busy as ever with some upcoming dates, the soonest of which is this Friday (April 27th)! Come check out Gail playing bass for Joan Osborne!

You can catch them in New York at:

Friday, April 27th at 9PM
Tarrytown Music Hall
13 Main Street
Tarrytown, New York

…and in Boston at:

Saturday, April 28th at 3PM
The MDC Hatchshell
Boston, MA

And the following week she’ll be part of an incredible triple bill. The evening will include Kate Pierson (singer with The B-52’s) performing new material from her upcoming solo album, Sara Lee (former bassist with The Indigo Girls, Ani Difranco, Gang Of Four) and her band performing material from her current solo album, and Gail Ann Dorsey (bassist/vocalist for David Bowie, Dar Williams, Tears For Fears, Jane Siberry, and a host of others) performing new original material and some delicious old favorites!

Saturday, May 5 at 8:30PM
The New Paltz Grille
New Paltz, New York

(formerly ‘The Cadillac Ranch’, directly off EXIT 18 on the NY State Thruway 87, next to the Super 8 Motel; about 90 minutes from Manhattan by car or bus). Admission to this show is $20.

Don’t be late, as Gail is on first! Sara Lee’s band is acting as ‘House Band’ for the night. Gail will be playing bass for Kate’s set, and Sara Lee will be playing bass for Gail’s set! Join us for a fun night with the “Upstate Divas”!

I believe in magic, Angel for life

We all wish David and Iman the very very happiest of 9th wedding anniversaries, their first anniversary together with lovely Lexie.

We also look forward to the 9th anniversary of their Florentine church wedding ceremony, when we will show some of the wonderful, formal photographs, for those of you who haven’t seen them yet.

Have a wonderful day, David, Iman and Lexie!

Some of the members have contributed to a page of rather lovely photographs of the happy couple, over the years. You can go hereto see them.

Enjoy!

…the tracks are on TV

Channel 4 started it’s run of the second series of Trigger Happy TVhere in the UK last night. Regular viewers of the show will know it for it’s surreal and often anarchic humour that utilises unsuspecting members of the public to brilliant effect. IMHO, Dom Joly’s creation is the funniest thing we have on TV right now, and, not only is Dom a comic genius, but his inspired choice of soundtrack music is an integral part of what sets the show apart from other shows. Here’s a bit of what is being said about the soundtrack:

“”… replacing the usual audience sniggers with a downbeat soundtrack has been a definite plus throughout.” – The Guardian

“The eclectic choice of music…is the final touch that makes Trigger Happy TV a compelling series.” – Victor Lewis Smith, The Evening Standard.”

Last night’s show featured a fairly long excerpt from David Bowie’s “We Are The Dead” to accompany a sketch where a human snail slithers across a pedestrian crossing, while a queue of irritated motorists wait for the thing to complete its torturous journey. The juxtaposition of the hilarious visuals on screen against the very often melancholic musical selections makes for a most bizarre televisual experience. If you missed last night’s broadcast of the first show of this new series, you have another chance to catch it tonight when it is repeated on Channel 4 at 10:45pm (GMT). Enjoy! I know I will again.

Dazzled by the NEU!

May 28th is the projected release date for the re-issue of the legendary NEU! Albums – NEU!, NEU!2 and NEU! 75. There were a few folk hip enough to buy these records as they were originally released, but they have only been available to the rest of us as impossible-to-find and outrageously-priced battered originals, or as expensive import CD re-issues of dubious origin.

EMI have put paid to this trade with this campaign that sees the albums remastered for CD and vinyl re-issues. No doubt if all the people who have claimed to own the original recordings at some point had actually bought the albums at the time, Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger would be multi-millionaires right now.

The sound of NEU!, described as “difficult” by my wife, was nevertheless hugely influential, and these King’s of Krautrock, along with the likes of Can, Faust and Kraftwerk, helped inspire such diverse artists as Sonic Youth, Brian Eno, Public Image and Stereolab. As many of you know, one man who has been dropping the name of NEU! for zillions of years now is David Bowie and here follows a few words of appreciation from the man himself:

“I bought my first vinyl ‘NEU 2’ in Berlin around 1975 while I was on a brief visit. I bought it because I knew that they were a spin off of Kraftwerk and had to be worth hearing. Indeed, they were to prove to be Kraftwerk’s wayward, anarchistic brothers. I was completely seduced by the setting of the aggressive guitar-drone against the almost-but-not-quite robotic/machine drumming of Dinger. Although fairly tenuous, you can hear a little of their influence on the track ‘Station to Station’. My enthusiasm was doubled when I found out that Dinger was a guitar player and that he had to learn to drum for the sound that he heard in his head. At our regular swop-meets in 1976 Eno and I exchanged sounds that we loved. Eno offered, among others, Giorgio Moroder and Donna’s military R&B and I played him Neu and the rest of the Dusseldorf sound. They sort of became our soundtrack for the year 1976.” – David Bowie, 2001

So, if you aren’t already familiar with NEU! now’s your chance to lend an ear, and if like my wife, you too find them difficult, then blame David Bowie not me. };-)

We are happy to announce that famed rapper “Eve” will be chatting with us right here on May 1st at 7PM EST!

Hope to see you there!

As you probably know by now, the album All Saints is slated for release on June 11, 2001. The album will be David Bowie’s first all instrumental release ever! It is actually a single CD version of a double CD originally compiled as a gift for family and friends only – only 50 copies were ever pressed! Total Blam Blam has more on this original version here, and will have more details about this new version as the release date approaches.

In summary, everything’s ready to go except for one important piece – the album cover! You can view the finalists and cast your vote by clicking on the link from the Mutations Box on the home page, or just click here. Watch the BowieNet news for the results of this saintly poll…

Hear this Robert Del Naja*

Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja, aka 3D, has been talking about the band’s collaboration with David Bowie for their rendition of ‘Nature Boy’. You can read a full transcript of the interview at the band’s official site by simply clicking on the image above, but here follows a butchered excerpt to whet your appetite:

“We met Baz when he was making ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and Nellee (Hooper) did the music for the film. He’d been contacting us for the best part of a year about ‘Moulin Rouge’ and we’d always said no because we didn’t feel we’d be right for the soundtrack. In late January, Baz phoned us up and said he’d met up with David Bowie in New York and mentioned that he’d asked us if we could do a track for the film. Bowie said that he’d love to work with us. We ‘d met Bowie about four years ago at a gig in Tel Aviv and got on really well so we thought OK, that makes it into a bit more of an interesting scenario.”

“The arrangement and the melody don’t give much room to experiment so David recorded his track in New York, sent it to us on disc and we built the whole track around his vocal. We had an initial chat but everything after that was done by email. He’s really into his technology so it was great to work with him in that way….Neil (Davidge) and me constructed the whole thing piece by piece. We just used the strings, some keyboard sounds and some strange little samples here and there. It was an experiment but it worked out really well; we just kept it simple and we’re really pleased with it.”

If you haven’t already, you can find a teaser of this intriguing track in Tuesday’s news.( 04/17/01 NEWS:DON’T HAVE A MASSIVE (heart) ATTACK )

*Del Naja? Zimmerman? What’s a surname between friends?

And illusion I will be, For I’ve never been a singer, la di da*

Last week we announced David’s position on BBC Radio 2’s ‘Voices Of The Century’ chart ( 04/14/01 NEWS:BOWIE IN TOP 20 VOICES OF THE CENTURY ). The full top 100 has now been announced with “Britains’ greatest white soul singer”, as Bowie has been labelled on the site, at number thirteen. For those that needed some sort of proof of his suitability for such a high chart placing, Radio 2 has kindly supplied a short audio cut-up that comprises ‘Changes’, ‘Space Oddity’, ‘Young Americans’, ‘Let’s Dance’ and ‘Ziggy Stardust’…and frankly, on the strength of his vocal performance on these songs alone…he wuz robbed!

*OK OK, I changed one letter to make it work…so sue me! };-)

It’s a real mean team

I came upon this very cute photograph this morning, and just had to share it with you! One of David’s team mates and webmaster of The Bromley Page, Max Batten, posted the photograph in the “History” section. He says:

“Another famous son is David Bowie, or as I knew him in the first eleven at Burnt Ash primary school, David Jones! At last, a chance to see 11 year old David in glorious monochrome. Can you spot him (and me)? I can only say I played on the wing, so maybe David played on the other one. You have to remember it was a long time ago – David must be 54 by now and I’m not far behind. The names ( I remember) from left to right back to front are:

? ? Chris Britten, David Springfield, ? ? Bill somethingDavid Jones, Barry ?, Mike Payne, Simon ?, ?? and me.

There were, I suppose about 50-60 boys in that year so he must have been a reasonable player.”

You can click on the image above to be taken to a larger version.

Thanks to Adam who posted this on the Teenage Wildlife message board.