adieu, bowie

i heard about david bowie's death on npr this morning. oh, my. disjointed thoughts follow.

in the npr story, university of leeds professor simon warner pronounced his last name BAU-wee, first syllable like bow-wow. how about that. sounds weird to me, but must defer to the english person, as it was their language first.

my first impression of bowie is as an actor. i saw "the man who fell to earth" when I was a kid. (and whoa... cannot imagine showing that movie to my kids.) most of that movie surely went WHOOSH right over my head. i do remember some pretty freaky scenes; haven't seen it since, nor felt the need to.

next impression was "the little drummer boy" with bing crosby. which remains one of my favorite xmas songs.

next ... well, next is probably the "let's dance" video - ? ugh

but really - it was my friend sativa quinn who turned me on to bowie - I didn't know the back catalog, i.e., the good stuff, before that. so, thanks!

-- next thing i saw him in was "merry christmas mr. lawrence" which still wow. and he was GREAT in basquiat as andy warhol and EVEN BETTER in the prestige as nikola tesla

all of this through the filter of MTV - which he used very well - and where his videos were constantly in rotation.

next: lists!



First Bowie album: used Ziggy Stardust LP from Record Convergence. I realized "holy **** this is awesome" and started collecting from there. "heroes" long version was a standout album track. also really liked Low. There's a great 33 1/3 book about Low...

Favorite singles - I'll pick a few:
 Sound and Vision
 Life On Mars?
 Let's Dance
 Diamond Dogs
 Jean Genie
 Under Pressure
 Blue Jean
 TVC-15
 Suffragette City

album cuts:
 Moonage Daydream
 Lady Stardust
 Queen Bitch
 Oh! You Pretty Things
 1984
 Warszawa
 Subterraneans
 Wild Is the Wind

It's complicated (love/hate relationship):
 Changes
 Young Americans
 China Girl - such a needless cover

others:
 Golden Years (a shame Elvis didn't follow through on his plans to record this)
 Andy Warhol (reappreciated after the Treepeople cover)
 Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family (reappreciated after the Wedding Present cover)
 The Man Who Sold The World (unfortunately, this one I like *less* because the Kurt Cobain cover has been so overplayed)

Favorite album: now and forever, ZIGGY STARDUST

Finally -- cannot believe Iggy Pop outlived him.