Month: November 2001

Be with my baby, then, We’ll spend some time together…

We’re posting this information again just in case you missed it yesterday but mainly because it’s jolly exciting stuff!

In celebration of the release of ‘I AM IMAN’, David and Iman will be hosting a LIVE CHAT EVENT next week here on davidbowie.com.

The chat will be open to the public and will take place on Thursday November 15th at 8:00PM EST. However, after the public chat, the couple will be joining us BowieNetters in the BowieNet Modchat for a more intimate gathering.

During the chat you will have the chance to win 1 of 20 autographed promotional CD’s and 1 of 10 autographed copies of ‘I AM IMAN’. The ‘I AM IMAN’ promotional CD is a limited edition compilation, unavailable in stores, containing five tracks hand picked by David himself.

For ALL the details on the book and CD give-away, and how to enter, click here. For more information on the chat event, click here.

Please be sure to use your davidbowie.com email address when registering for the give-away, so as to identify yourself as a current BowieNet member.

Where there’s trouble there’s POEtry…

Lou Reed has been busy in New York putting the finishing touches to ‘POEtry’, a two-CD soundtrack to his musical theatre collaboration with Robert Wilson. The project is based on the work of Edgar Allen Poe and while Willem Dafoe recites most of Wilson’s text, Reed has contributed 13 new songs.

One of those songs is “a snappy little ditty called Hopfrog” (presumably based on the Poe short story ‘Hop-Frog or The Eight Chained Ourang-Outangs’) for which David has supplied the lead vocal. We will post more details regarding the release date etc., as we get them.

The gift of sound and vision

The UK Sunday Times, Culture section, began a new series of articles yesterday, intended as “A Guide To Planet Pop”, and entitled “From Elvis to Eminem, we trace the key moments that defined the sounds of 2001”. Pink Floyd are mentioned in connection with Prog Rock, and McLaren, The New York Dolls, and The Sex Pistols with Punk. David’s decision to move to Berlin and the events leading up to the release of Low, are credited as the “Moment” for Electronica.

“This might be a waste of an entire month of your life. Are you willing to come to Paris and experiment with Eno and me?” This was the unpromising invitation that David Bowie gave to the record producer Tony Visconti in August 1976. Bowie couldn’t have been more wrong. In a recent NME poll, Bowie was voted the most influential artist of all time, and Low, the album that Bowie recorded in that Paris session with Visconti, is his most influential work”…… “Visconti took things even further by acquiring a harmoniser – a then new device invented to alter the pitch of musical notes – and fed the drums through it to make a dark, urban, claustrophobic sound that nobody had heard before.”

The second section devoted to each genre, concerns the “Momentum” which built up after the “Moment”.

“In developing a new European pop that lived and breathed without reference to the American Blues tradition, Bowie created a template for mid-1990’s Brit-pop bands such as Blur and Pulp….. The actual sound of Low’s synths and drums led directly to synth-pop bands such as Human League, Depeche Mode and Ultravox….. and in the next decade, to popular techno outfits such as the Prodigy, whose No1 hit Firestarter recalls Bowie’s work during this period…. Most of all, processing drums is now a given in all forms of popular music and can be heard everywhere.”

The rest of this article is available online, here.

Image and caption supplied by Blammo.

:))

In the street Iman shouts out loud…

It seems the planet has gone ‘I AM IMAN’ berserk right now. The UK version of this week’s The Big Issue magazine has Iman on the front cover plus a three-page feature outlined thus:

“Somalian supermodel IMAN crossed the barbed-wire border of her homeland to strut the world’s catwalks. But she says the fashion industry is racist, shallow and harmful.”

The Big Issue is a magazine that gives homeless people the chance to make an income, and carries the slogan “Coming up from the streets”.

Other recent features include pieces in The Washington Post, Your Life Magazine, Allure Magazine and a front cover with a six-page spread in Woman’s Journal, all of which can be viewed at Iman’s site.

Watch out for an exciting announcement regarding David and Iman very soon.

Sailor can’t dance like you…

…but you can’t chat like him! For any of you that have been hoodwinked into believing you’ve chatted with Sailor over the last couple of days…you haven’t. Well at least not THE Sailor. Understandably, there are people out there that would love to be him…which is fair enough, as long as nobody is deceived in the process.

You may remember the guidelines we posted the other day that suggested you: “Do not impersonate other members, bnet employees, etc.”

So be on your guard folx…remember Sail0r ain’t Sailor…please feel free to snitch on offenders! My door is always open. };-)

Like a sermon on a blues guitar…

‘LIVE AT MONTREUX 1982 & 1985’ is a double CD release due on Sony on 20th November by Stevie Ray Vaughan and his band Double Trouble. The 19-track CD features a 1,200 word foreword by David Bowie, who had the foresight to use Stevie on his world-wide smash from 1983, ‘Let’s Dance’.

Though the young guitarist’s performance at the 1982 Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland was booed and hissed by the crowd, at least one member of the audience was left particularly impressed. Impressed enough to rehearse Stevie for the ‘Serious Moonlight’ tour that followed the recording of the album featuring the incredible talents of Mr Vaughan.

Unfortunately, seemingly due to events outside of both Stevie and David’s control, the blues man never played a note live with David. For the full story you’ll have to wait for the CD, but in the meantime here is an exclusive excerpt from David’s foreword:

“Stevie and I had drinks after the show and we talked quite a bit about his influences and American music in general. We got on immediately as we shared a love for the playing of Albert King amongst others and in my enthusiasm I gave him a full run down of my 45 and 78 record collection which spanned from early Red Prysock, Louis Jordan and the Alan Freed Rock and Roll band through Broonzy, Hooker and Howlin’ Wolf to British Old School like Bond, Mayall and Alexis Korner. I was deeply impressed with Stevie’s knowledge of and interest in British artists like John Renborn and Davy Graham, musicians that I would never have guessed from his playing that he would have had any interest in.”

Three years later, when Vaughan was invited back to headline ‘Blues Night’ at the festival, the crowd, now familiar with his group’s songs and albums treated him like the conquering hero.

If you are in the UK tonight and aren’t going to see Mercury Rev at Shepherds
Bush, you might want to catch the band on ‘Later… With Jools Holland’ on
BBC2 at 23:35 (GMT). Travis, who are also on the show, are said to be playing
a favourite of their live show, and B-side of their current single, ‘All The Young
Dudes’. If however you are going to Mercury Rev…I’ll see you there! };-)

We can be Heroes, just for one day

VH1 scored the network’s highest ever rating with its broadcast of The Concert For New York City. The show attracted nearly 16 million viewers on VH1 alone. AOL also broke records with its webcast, which drew half a million hits for the live event. The concert has so far raised more than $30 million for World Trade Center relief efforts, and donations are still being accepted. The running total includes money raised from ticket sales, corporate sponsorships, television rights, merchandise sales, and donations made through a toll-free number and via the Internet.

Spaceface and SusanS have added more stories to their pages, including those below, extracted from the “Press” and “Journals” pages..

Watching days later with my wife, I still got a chill. I have never been more proud to be an American and have never been more proud to be a fan of David’s. : nickyd28

But from that dust, those ashes, rises the phoenix of freedom, the voice of the good, and this evening the man who changed my life when I was just a boy, sits ‘boy-like’, cross legged beneath a single shaft of light, with a small toy-like keyboard, like a child on Christmas morning. : spud

The dual aspects of the show were evident from the beginning, when David Bowie, sitting at the edge of the stage, performed a stark, somber solo rendition of Paul Simon’s “America” before launching into a rousing rendition of “Heroes” that suitably paid tribute to those in the crowd. : Hollywood Reporter

David Bowie got things off to an uplifting start by transforming “Heroes,” an idealistic 1977 song about trying to reach for your dreams, into an emotional salute to the courage of the New York fire, police and rescue crews. : L A Times

Check out the pages, here, and enjoy these tributes to a man we know so well and love so much..

:))

Lady Grinning Soul…

The beautiful and outrageously gifted talent that is Gail Ann Dorsey, informs us that she will be performing in Hudson, New York, this Friday and Saturday night (2nd and 3rd Nov) at a place called The Hudson River Theater at 521 Warren Street. (See map below)

You can reach the venue on (518) 822-8189 for ticket and schedule details. If you do go, please be sure to pass on our love and tell Gail to put on her horse’s tail and horns and get over here to Europe for some shows!