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See David Bowie’s lyric sheet for The Stars (Are Out Tonight)

“Satyrs and their child wives”

While you folk are hanging around waiting for something to happen, here‘s a little distraction in the form of the first of David Bowie‘s lyric sheets for The Stars (Are Out Tonight).

As you can see, it has some scribbled notes and corrections from his very hand, including a note for the video, which, for those that can’t make it out, reads thus:

“Video – stars like greek gods, cruel and controlling”

Video? Greek gods? Curiouser and then a bit more curiouser.

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Four-star TND review in MOJO

“Here I Am”

The April edition of MOJO magazine has a four-star review of The Next Day by Mark Paytress.

Here‘s an excerpt:

But that was yesterday. On this day, The Next Day, the world wakes up to an entirely different David Bowie, an attack dog unleashed and unrepentant. “Here I Am” he growls at the outset, “not quite dying.” Drums pound as if rousing an army into battle. A cloud of sound swallows everything up like a class act in a small venue.

“Look into my eyes” taunts Bowie. “I’m gonna say goodbye? YEEAAH!” Like a man back from the dead, he’s singing through gritted teeth and loving every second of it. There are honking saxes, and – as elsewhere on the album – bursts of that hysterical falsetto cackle (“They scream my name aloud!”) rarely heard since the early ’70s.

As with the majority of the music monthlies in the UK, MOJO is on the shelves next week.

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David Bowie is most successful

“He‘s in the best selling show”

The UK’s Sunday Telegraph newspaper reports today that The V&A’s David Bowie is exhibition is set to be “the most successful show in the museum’s history.”.

The article continues: “The V&A has sold more than 26,000 tickets for the show which opens next month, the museum’s highest ever figure for advance bookings.”.

Apparently the museum has seen a marked increase in new memberships since David Bowie is was announced, possibly because members get access to a private members only preview.

The Telegraph has illustrated the item with some fascinating exclusives from the show including an original storyboard for the Ashes to Ashes video drawn by Bowie and a preparatory sketch for an unrealised film, set in Hunger City, which became Diamond Dogs. (Both pictured here)

Other exclusives include a sketch on a Gitanes cigarette packet drawn by David Bowie in Berlin, in 1976.

Read the full article online here and view the slideshow here.

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David Bowie is being talked about in Guardian Weekend

“And as the sunrise stream, Flickers on me, My friends talk”

Well, the accompanying visual element to this story says it all.

Go read contributions from the twenty one folk listed below here. 

George Underwood, artist and lifelong friend
Ken Scott, produced several early Bowie albums
Dana Gillespie, singer and teenage squeeze 
Lindsay Kemp, taught Bowie dance and mime
“Whispering” Bob Harris, DJ and friend in Bowie’s early days
Mick “Woody” Woodmansey, Spiders From Mars drummer
Geeling Ng, starred in the China Girl video
Toni Basil, choreographed the Diamond Dogs and Glass Spider tours
Julien Temple, directed Bowie in pop videos and Absolute Beginners
Roger Taylor, Queen drummer
Sterling Campbell, drummer
Tony Selznick, taught Bowie to roller-skate for the Day-In Day-Out video
Adrian Belew, guitarist
Tim Pope, video director
Paul Tibbitt, recruited Bowie to provide a voice for animated TV series SpongeBob SquarePants
Édouard Lock, choreographer and artistic director on world tours
Kenneth Pitt, manager from 1966 to 1970
Geoff MacCormack, lifelong friend
Ricky Gardiner, guitarist during the Berlin period
Mike Garson, keyboards, Bowie’s longest-serving musician
Zachary Alford, drummer on recent tours and albums, including the forthcoming The Next Day
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March exhibition of Sukita‘s Bowie pictures at SNAP

“I‘m under Japanese influence”

Taking advantage of the influx of Bowie fans headed to the V&A from March 23rd, London‘s SNAP gallery will be hosting an exhibition of breath-taking Bowie photographs by Masayoshi Sukita.

Here‘s a bit from the SNAP blurb:

From 23 March 2013 we will be hosting the inaugural David Bowie retrospective of work by Japanese master photographer Masayoshi Sukita. This is one of the most exciting exhibitions we have put on at the gallery, and we have been working very hard behind the scenes with Sukita-san to put this together in a relatively short time-frame.

The exhibition, which has David Bowie’s personal seal of approval, features images from Sukita-san’s 40+ years of collaboration with David Bowie, and combines previously unseen images alongside familiar classics, in a range of physical sizes, including some dramatic large format pieces.

Sukita-san’s archive is truly outstanding – one of the most important David Bowie archives, if not the most, anywhere in the world. Perhaps best know for his “Heroes” cover photograph (which, coincidentally, features on the cover on the new album, The Next Day)

Sukita-san’s relationship with Bowie started in 1972, and the exhibition will cover work from 1972 to 2002.

Masayoshi Sukita: Photographs of David Bowie 1972 to 2002 runs from 23rd March to 30th April 2013. Keep an eye on the SNAP Galleries page for updates.

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Young Americans 45 released this day in 1975

“Do you remember?”

David Bowie‘s Young Americans 45 was released on this day thirty eight years ago.

The release signalled yet another change in direction for Bowie and acted as a taster of what was to come with the album of the same name.

Young Americans was a worldwide hit for Bowie, giving him a Top 20 hit in the UK, a Top 30 in the USA and a #1 hit in New Zealand!

Go listen to what so appealed to New Zealanders (not to mention the rest of us), and continue listening to the whole amazing album while you‘re there. A true classic!