Month: November 2001

Looks like you’ve been there too…

Never realised so many of you out there enjoy the music of Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel, a fair few of you remarked how good it was to hear “Tumbling Down” being used as one of the warm-up tracks at last year’s Roseland shows. For those of you not familiar with the tune, it’s the song sung by the Bowie-esque (ish) Jonathan Rhys Meyers character, Brian Slade, near the start of ‘Velvet Goldmine’.

Anyway, when we learnt that Steve had been added to the bill for the unveiling of the plaque at the Rat & Parrot (formerly The Three Tuns) in Beckenham High Street on Thursday, 6th December, we asked him what his connection with the Beckenham Arts Lab was, he replied thus:

“When David went off the be a pop star with Space Oddity, I found myself playing more and more Sundays covering him. Eventually, I was offered my first headline spot at the Arts Lab and was paid the princely sum of £15. Bowie indirectly kick-started my professional career – who’d have thought?”

Steve went on to explain that those early performances at The Three Tuns consisted mainly of songs that were later recorded for his first two classic albums; ‘The Human Menagerie’ and ‘The Psychomodo’. Coincidentally, Mick Rock photographed and designed three or four of Steve’s album sleeves from ‘The Psychomodo’ onwards.

If you’re interested in seeing Mr Harley play at the Rat & Parrot event, nip over to BowieWonderWorld. Rednik has all the details that you need if you want to spend the day with fellow fans celebrating the Beckenham Arts Lab and the music of David Bowie at this historically significant venue. See ya there.

Thank god heaven left us, Standing on our feet…

It’s the third Thursday of November and that means Thanksgiving in the US of A. For the benefit of some of us Europeans that are wondering why we’re getting no e-mail from our American friends today, it’s because they’re too stuffed to move.

Thanksgiving is a time when Americans celebrate, with the aid of food (turkey in particular), the perseverance of the Pilgrims who sailed into Plymouth harbour aboard the Mayflower almost 400 years ago…and it’s a nod of appreciation to a rather helpful Abnaki Indian with some pretty useful gardening tips who went by the name of Squanto.

Anyway, you don’t need any history lessons from some flaky Limey…so eat, be merry…and have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Search through your angry inch thoughts…

As promised yesterday, a Mick Rock competition. I’m sure you know that Mick was responsible for the promotional and merchandise shots for the incredible ‘Hedwig And The Angry Inch’. Well, he has now kindly donated a couple of beautiful posters for the film, based on the image above of John Cameron Mitchell, actor, writer and director for the film in which he stars as the internationally ignored songstress, Hedwig.

The posters are a huge 40″ x 27″ glossy affair with a gorgeously glittery logo and are most collectible indeed…and that’s before I tell you that they are signed by both Mick and John!

For your chance to win one of these beauties you have to make sense of the titles below. Each of the three titles is an anagram of a song from the soundtrack of ‘Hedwig’, and you’ve no doubt worked out that your task is to give me the original song titles before I scrambled ’em…Easy enough ain’t it?

sex pose critique

leg fortnight

cow twit killed ten

Answers by this time next week from a BowieNet e-mail account only (as always), to MrTotalBlamBlam@AOL.Com with a subject line of “Hedwig poster”. We’ll announce the winner soon afterwards.

Cool and Still

Coolness : London Evening Standard : 11/19/01 In an interview with Ben Stiller, he discusses the many cameos by the famous which have helped Zoolander to success. “I wanted a character that everyone would associate with coolness, an icon. I put Bowie in the script, never thinking he would do it”.

Iconic couple : New York Times : 11/18/01 In an article describing her ‘Night out with Iman’ at Donna Karan, last Tuesday, the writer had this to say about David and Iman: “The artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel was there, as were the society scribe Fran Lebowitz, the comedian Sandra Bernhard and her pal the fashion maker turned stage designer Isaac Mizrahi. And so of course was David Bowie, Iman’s husband of 9 years and the other half of what some see as New York’s most iconic couple. They linked arms, prompting Mr. Mizrahi to snipe: “You two seem too happy. I don’t buy it. You ought to go into couples therapy.”

:))

I believe in magic

As we reported on Monday (11/19/01 NEWS: MR RICE’S SECRET OUT ON REGION 2 DVD TODAY), the Region 2 DVD for Mr Rice’s Secret is now available to own. The ‘behind the scenes’ interviews include cast and crew talking about their experiences of working with David. Here are some extracts :-

Nicholas Kendall (Director)

‘It’s wonderful to have a star like David Bowie in a movie like this. When I heard the news that we had David Bowie I was really excited. I had always been a fan of his work but I had obviously never met him and he’s been just great to work with. He and Bill Switzer who plays Owen on lead character, they’ve developed a great relationship in the few days that they’ve been working together. It’s been great.’

Colleen Nystedt (Producer)

‘…about as excited as I could be I think. I mean we all have our own personal remembrances and David Bowie has been a huge icon forever. I mean one of the first concerts I ever went to…I can track things back and forth in my life according to what album was out at which time. …..He’s touched people’s lives in wonderful magical ways all the way along. People can list off all his movies let alone his albums. Go on the internet and check out how many David Bowie sites there are. It’s phenomenal. There is something about this man. There is some magic that he has that has touched people over a long period of time in many different ways as he has been able to remanifest himself.’

Bill Switzer (Actor)

David Bowie is just, he’s, well….when I took this project, people told me ‘well David Bowie is going to be be playing Mr Rice’ and I went….. (puzzled expression)…because I wasn’t sure about David Bowie and stuff and I knew who he was, don’t get me wrong. I knew who David Bowie was but not on the same level….my parents both freaked, you know, ‘David Bowie’. So I went out and I listened to a couple of CD’s and I looked him up and realised how big this was and it was amazing. You know, I went to a readthrough before we started shooting with Nic and Colleen and I was expecting (acts nervous) ‘oh my goodness David Bowie’ but I got there and he was really friendly and open and just, you know, yeah he was, he was really cool. …..He was one of the nicest people I’ve met; not for people of his, you know, status, but for anyone. He’s just so..he’s really caring. He’s really cool.

Secret secret never seen…

As we mentioned a couple of weeks back, for the first time ever you can view the RCA SECRET exhibition online. (11/06/01 NEWS: VIEW RCA SECRET 2001 AT BOWIEART) All 1,600 cards are available now for your viewing pleasure courtesy of the girls over at Bowieart.com, who will now be hibernating through the winter months due to exhaustion.

Damien Hirst, R.B. Kitaj, Prada, Marc Quinn, Nick Park, Manolo Blahnik, Anish Kapoor, and Billy Childish are just a few of the artists and designers who have donated postcards to this year’s show, as has that queer-eyed rock-god, David Bowie.

The cards go on sale at 8:00am (GMT) on Thursday 29th November 2001 and you can get the full low-down on exhibition times etc here…You can also take your time to view the cards online here, in a hassle-free environment, while you enjoy the warmth and comfort of your very own computer room…unless of course you have braved the elements to log on at your local cybernet cafe…sorry, I’m rambling.

Anyway, as I say, David has contributed, but don’t pester me for clues as to the nature of his work…I know nothing!

};-)

And there was a little old man*

Nobody really knows the age of the loveable, but completely swishy old tart…but it IS Mick Rock’s birthday, and I know everybody reading this would like to wish him many happy returns. I’m sure you would have felt it more appropriate had you been born actually on Thanksgiving Michael…but have a great day all the same.

Stay tuned for a Mick Rock competition tomorrow…if you can escape the Thanksgiving celebration’s of course.

*Actually, he’s really rather big…in terms of his height at least, you understand!

I keep a photograph, It burns my wall with time…

That ever-so generous Lawrence Kirsch over at Musicfoto.com has kindly given BowieNetters the chance to buy from his impressive folio of Bowie photographs at a preferential purchase price. These classic shots, that cover tours from 1974 to 1987, can be bought by BowieNetters with an incredible 40% discount until December 15th. In Lawrence’s own words:

“The current discount for all those who surf by the Musicfoto.com home page is 30%, already quite considerable. However, exclusive to Bowienet and anyone who has a DavidBowie.com address they will be entitled to an additional 10% discount, a whopping total of 40%!”

Go here for the Musicfoto.com Bowie pages and to maybe give you some Christmas gift ideas for you favourite Bowie fan friend, family member, European Correspondent, etc… };-)

O Supergirl…

Best wishes, many happy returns, and all that sort of happy birthday malarkey, to the very gorgeous and obscenely talented Gail Ann Dorsey. Much love from the members, staff and Governor of BowieNet.

Have a wonderful day…and I know I speak on behalf of everybody here when I say we are very much looking forward to seeing you live again next year. Get learning that new stuff girl!

};-) xxx

Just watch me now…

If you missed BBC America‘s two previous Bowie weekends, don’t worry.. Especially for Thanksgiving, they are planning yet another weekend “celebrating music legend David Bowie”.

Programmes are as follows :

11/22/01 (Thursday)

Bowie at the Beeb : 8.00PM
Bowie at the Beeb : 9.30PM
Later with Jools : 11.00PM

11/23/01 (Friday)

The Man Who Fell To Earth : 12.00AM
Bowie at the Beeb : 3.00AM
A Little Later : 4.30AM
Bowie at the Beeb : 1.00PM
A Little Later : 2.30PM
Cracked Actor : 8.00PM
Bowie at the Beeb : 9.00PM
Cracked Actor : 10.30PM
The Man Who Fell To Earth : 11.30PM

11/24/01 (Saturday)

The Man Who Fell To Earth : 2.30AM
A Little Later : 5.30AM

Also, if you visit the BBCA website, you can win one of 10 “Bowie at the Beeb” box sets, and, as always, you can find full details of these and other programmes, in our calendar.

Enjoy!

:))