Rockologist Glen Boyd Makes The Case For David Bowie

When you rock ‘n roll with me…

The Rockologist is the alter-ego that blogcritics.org music editor, Glen Boyd, uses from time to time and whenever he feels particularly compelled to comment on things that need to be said.

In The Case For Latter Day Bowie On A Reality Tour, (a review of Reality Live and a well-considered overview of David Bowie’s place in music today) Boyd makes some refreshing observations about David Bowie and confirms what we’ve known all along.

You can read the full article over on blogcritics.org, but I’ll leave you with the introduction to give you a flavour of the piece anyway…

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Although David Bowie has been pretty quiet for the last several years, his enduring influence is something which continues to permeate virtually every aspect of pop music today.

From the electronic excursions of bands like Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead ? whose Kid A, Amnesiac, and In Rainbows make up a trilogy not at all unlike Bowie’s seventies “Berlin” albums with Brian Eno ? to the work of modern bands like Arcade Fire (who Bowie himself has enthusiastically and publicly endorsed), Bowie’s stamp remains everywhere, even if the artist himself has been mostly silent in recent years.

So here’s the thing.

David Bowie’s status as an innovator is pretty much beyond reproach. He’s never sold records in quite the same numbers as such contemporaries as the Rolling Stones ? outside of the early eighties Let’s Dance period anyway. But save for maybe Neil Young (which is another discussion entirely), there simply isn’t another artist from the same time period whose influence remains so pervasive in pop music today.

From the textures of electronica to the immediacy of punk (and its nineties bastard child grunge/alternative), most of it can be traced to Bowie’s groundbreaking albums in the seventies. But this is also where the rub comes in…

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Continue reading here.