Month: August 2016

 

“Just go with me”

 

As we announced earlier today, David Bowie’s ★ album has made the shortlist of twelve 2016 Hyundai Mercury Prize ‘Albums of the Year’.

For the first time, an online vote will enable music fans to select the first of six 2016 finalists from the 12 ‘Albums of the Year’.

 

The online vote is open here now.

 

Voting for the Hyundai Mercury Prize is open to all residents of the UK. The voting closes at 11:59 p.m. GMT on Friday 12th August.

 

The 2016 Hyundai Mercury Prize ‘Albums of the Year’ are:

 

Anohni – ‘Hopelessness’

Bat For Lashes – ‘The Bride’

David Bowie – ‘Blackstar’

Jamie Woon – ‘Making Time’

Kano – ‘Made in the Manor’

Laura Mvula – ‘The Dreaming Room’

Michael Kiwanuka –  ‘Love & Hate’

Radiohead – ‘A Moon Shaped Pool’

Savages – ‘Adore Life’

Skepta – ‘Konnichiwa’

The 1975 – ‘I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it’

The Comet Is Coming – ‘Channel the Spirits’

 

#MercuryPrize  #BowieMercuryPrize 

 

“Can you hear me?”

 

Check out the new David Bowie – Who Can I Be Now? (1974 – 1976) playlist on Spotify, including new box set tracks as they become available and the featured albums currently on streaming services.

 

#WCIBNBox  #WhoCanIBeNowBox

 

“It’s Monday”   

 

As you are no doubt aware, from 2002 through 2004, Catherine Russell worked with David Bowie as a band member, providing backing vocals and featured contributions on guitar, keyboard and percussion for Bowie’s Heathen Tour and A Reality Tour.

Cat is a very successful contemporary jazz and blues vocalist in her own right, so when we asked her to choose a track for DB Deep Cut Of The Day, we suspected she may opt for one of Bowie’s more jazz-flavoured recordings.

But instead she went for the superb guitar-heavy 1977 track, Joe The Lion, from the “Heroes” album, which was partly inspired by performance artist Chris Burden’s, 1974 piece, Trans-Fixed.

Here she explains how she made her selection…

 

You know, when we were in rehearsals for the Heathen tour, I combed DB’s catalogue listening to stuff I’d never heard. I found Joe The Lion and listened to it several times in a row for days and weeks on end.

I just did this again for the past few days. I LOVE THIS TRACK !!!! It reminds me why I love rock ‘n’ roll in the first place. Why I loved rock ‘n’ roll as a kid. Why it made me feel included, when I felt like an outsider. All the reasons why I love DB’s music. Everyone can express themselves through the music at the same time.

I love DB’s inspired and partly improvised lyric over the conversation between Carlos and Robert Fripp’s guitars, against George Murray’s bass line and Dennis Davis’ drumming! It’s brilliant! Wild and sexy.

Even though it was made in Berlin, it reminds me of what New York night life was like in the ’70s and ’80s, when New York streets were dangerous and vibrant. Much of my teenage life was formed on those streets.

I could go on, but I think I’ll just listen to the song again……

 

Thanks Catherine, great choice. And as Cat suggests, listen to the song again, here.

 

FOOTNOTE: Cat is pictured here with David during the soundcheck for the Parkinson show in November, 2003. (© TotalBlamBlam@DavidBowie.com)

 

#DBDCOTD  #BowieDeepCut

 

 

“Hanging by the cross and nail…”

 

Hope the headline wasn’t too misleading, but if you haven’t yet attended Sotheby’s Bowie/Collector London highlights preview exhibition, you have until next Tuesday, August 9th, to get to it.

Of course, the David Jones Crucifixion we’re referencing isn’t anything Bowie himself created, but rather just one of the pieces from his art collection going under the hammer at Sotheby’s in November.

You can see the picture in the background behind Gavin Evans’ iconic shot of Bowie and here’s the accompanying caption…

 

David Jones (1895-1974)

CRUCIFIXION

pencil and watercolour

23.5 by 16.5cm.; 9¼ by 6½in.

Executed circa 1922.

£5,000-7,000

With the same name and the same South London origins as David Bowie, David Jones similarly explored the relationship between art and language. Author of the epic war poem In Parenthesis 1937, admired by the likes of W. H. Auden and T. S. Eliot, Jones was invalided out of military service after being shot at the Battle of the Somme. Although a master of many media, Jones is especially admired as a watercolourist and printmaker. A troubled and reclusive character, Jones created Crucifixion one year after his conversion to Roman Catholicism.

 

Coincidentally, David Jones died in 1974, the same year that Chris Burden’s own ‘crucifixion’ on a Volkswagen Beetle was unveiled. As we mentioned yesterday, the piece entitled ‘Trans-Fixed’ was referenced in the Bowie song, Joe The Lion.

 

Anyway, here’s the Bowie/Collector highlights preview exhibition and auction schedule:

 

Preview World Tour:

London: 20 July-9 August

Los Angeles: 20-21 September

New York: 26-29 September

Hong Kong: 12-15 October

 

The Exhibition:

Bowie/Collector: 1–10 November, Sotheby’s New Bond Street London

 

The Auctions:

Part I: Modern & Contemporary Art, Evening Auction, 10 November

Part II: Modern & Contemporary Art, Day Auction, 11 November

Part III: Post-Modernist Design: Ettore Sottsass and the Memphis Group, 11 November

 

If you can’t attend any of the above, you can glean lots of information regarding the collection here.

 

 

#BowieCollector  #BowieArt