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lemonade kid
Old Love
USA
9876 Posts |
Posted - 08/01/2016 : 21:16:00
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Career Lessons Learned From David Bowie
The Reverend Shawn Amos-©Yahoo 2016 January 7, 2016
Listen and read on..."Blackstar" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kszLwBaC4Sw
David Bowie turns 69 on Friday, Jan. 8 Ń not that youÕll know it from him. Bowie doesnÕt speak much these days. In fact, itÕs been nearly 10 years since he stood onstage, all of his powers intact after emergency 2004 heart surgery.
Since then, Bowie has played by his own rules: no press, albums released with little to no forewarning (including this weekÕs Blackstar Ń easily one of the top 10 albums of his career), his private life off-limits. These have largely always been BowieÕs rules. WeÕve always needed David Bowie more than heÕs needed us.
His life of putting art before celebrity is a masterclass for todayÕs musicians who search for their their best camera angle or hashtag before seeking out their unique contribution.
Before Bowie disappeared from public view, he made the rounds in 2002-03 promoting his album Heathen. His various interviews Š and a few choice moves in the years since Ń provide the syllabus for the class. Here are four key takeaways from Professor BowieÕs Musical Bravura 101.
You DonÕt Need to Show Up for Everything
BowieÕs take on the hypocrisy of awards and the hunger for attention are perfectly summed up in this 2002 Late Night interview with Conan OÕBrien. ŅI only want [the ones] that you really mean.Ó
Keep Your Private Life Private
Over the years, Bowie famously professed bisexuality and played the eligible bachelor (he also had an unsuccessful tumultuous first marriage). In 1992, however, he married supermodel Iman, and together they have become the prototypical married couple. Aside from Paul and Linda McCartney, there isnÕt another rock couple that keeps their balance and priorities more in check. Iman shared their secret in this 2012 interview.
Remember the Element of Surprise
Bowie released his first album in 10 years, The Next Day, in March 2013 without advance warning or publicity. ItÕs the move of a confident artist who not only knows the work speaks for itself, but also has no need to speak about anything else. Beyoncˇ imitated the move later that same year.
MAKE ART!!
Above all else, David BowieÕs public life has been a lesson in the importance of placing oneÕs own creative journey above all else. Look at any of his videos; listen to any of recordings. YouÕll see and hear a man who is first and foremost chasing his own muse and searching for his own truths. The commercial consequences of that search are the byproduct, not the motivation.
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So much music, so little time. |
Edited by - lemonade kid on 11/01/2016 14:58:42 |
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lemonade kid
Old Love
USA
9876 Posts |
Posted - 08/01/2016 : 21:18:57
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David Bowie Blackstar Columbia / RCA / ISO; 2016 By Ryan Dombal; January 7, 2016-Pitchfork review ©2016
David Bowie has died many deaths yet he is still with us. He is popular musicÕs ultimate Lazarus: Just as that Biblical figure was beckoned by Jesus to emerge from his tomb after four days of nothingness, Bowie has put many of his selves to rest over the last half-century, only to rise again with a different guise. This is astounding to watch, but it's more treacherous to live through; following LazarusÕ return, priests plotted to kill him, fearing the power of his story. And imagine actually being such a miracle manŃresurrection is a hard act to follow. Bowie knows all this. He will always have to answer to his epochal work of the 1970s, the decade in which he dictated several strands of popular and experimental culture, when he made reinvention seem as easy as waking up in the morning. Rather than trying to outrun those years, as he did in the '80s and '90s, he is now mining them in a resolutely bizarre way that scoffs at greatest-hits tours, nostalgia, and brainless regurgitation.
His new off-Broadway musical is called Lazarus, and it turns BowieÕs penchant for avatars into an intriguing shell game: The disjointed production features actor Michael C. Hall doing his best impression of BowieÕs corrupted, drunk, and immortal alien from the 1976 art film The Man Who Fell to Earth. Trapped in a set that mimics a Manhattan penthouse, Hall presses himself up to his high skyscraper windows as he sings a new Bowie song also called "Lazarus." "This way or no way, you know, IÕll be free," he sings, smudging his hands against the glass. "Just like that bluebird." Bowie sings the same song on Blackstar, an album that has him clutching onto remnants from the past as exploratory jazz and the echos of various mad men soundtrack his freewill.
Following years of troubling silence, Bowie returned to the pop world with 2013Õs The Next Day. The goodwill surrounding his return could not overcome the albumÕs overall sense of stasis, though. Conversely, on Blackstar, he embraces his status as a no-****s icon, a 68-year-old with "nothing left to lose," as he sings on "Lazarus." The album features a quartet of brand-new collaborators, led by the celebrated modern jazz saxophonist Donny McCaslin, whose repertoire includes hard bop as well as skittering Aphex Twin covers. BowieÕs longtime studio wingman Tony Visconti is back as co-producer, bringing along with him some continuity and a sense of history.
Because as much as Blackstar shakes up our idea of what a David Bowie record can sound like, its blend of jazz, codes, brutality, drama, and alienation is not without precedent in his work. BowieÕs first proper instrument was a saxophone, after all, and as a preteen he looked up to his older half-brother Terry Burns, who exposed him to John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, and Beat Generation ideals. The links connecting Bowie, his brother, and jazz feel significant. Burns suffered from schizophrenia throughout his life; he once tried to kill himself by jumping out of a mental hospital window and eventually committed suicide by putting himself in front of a train in 1985.
Perhaps this helps explain why Bowie has often used jazz and his saxophone not for finger-snapping pep but rather to hint at mystery and unease. ItÕs there in his close collaborations with avant-jazz pianist Mike Garson, from 1973Õs "Aladdin Sane (1913-1938-197?)" all the way to 2003Õs "Bring Me the Disco King." ItÕs in his wild squawks on 1993Õs "Jump They Say," an ode to Burns. But there is no greater example of the pathos that makes BowieÕs saxophone breathe than on "Subterraneans" from 1977Õs Low, one of his most dour (and influential) outrˇ moments. That song uncovered a mood of future nostalgia so lasting that itÕs difficult to imagine the existence of an act like Boards of Canada without it. Completing the circle, Boards of Canada were reportedly one of BowieÕs inspirations for Blackstar. At this point, it is all but impossible for Bowie to escape himself, but that doesnÕt mean he wonÕt try.
Thematically, Blackstar pushes on with the world-weary nihilism that has marked much of his work this century. "ItÕs a head-spinning dichotomy of the lust for life against the finality of everything," he mused around the release of 2003Õs Reality. "ItÕs those two things raging against each otherÉ that produces these moments that feel like real truth." Those collisions come hard and strong throughout the album, unpredictable jazz solos and spirited vocals meeting timeless stories of blunt force and destruction. The rollicking "'Tis a Pity She Was a Whore" gets its name from a controversial 17th-century play in which a man has sex with his sister only to stab her in the heart in the middle of a kiss. BowieÕs twist involves some canny gender-bending ("she punched me like a dude"), a robbery, and World War I, but the gist is the sameŃhumans will always resort to a language of savagery when necessary, no matter where or when. See also: "Girl Loves Me," which has Bowie yelping in the slang originated by A Clockwork OrangeÕs ultraviolent drugs.
Though this mix of jazz, malice, and historical role-play is intoxicating, Blackstar becomes whole with its two-song denouement, which balances out the bruises and blood with a couple of salty tears. These are essentially classic David Bowie ballads, laments in which he lets his mask hang just enough for us to see the creases of skin behind it. "Dollar Days" is the confession of a restless soul who could not spend his golden years in a blissful British countryside even if he wanted to. "IÕm dying to push their backs against the grain and fool them all again and again," he sings, the words doubling as a mantra for Blackstar and much of BowieÕs career. Then, on "I CanÕt Give Everything Away," he once again sounds like a frustrated Lazarus, stymied by a returning pulse. This tortured immortality is no gimmick: Bowie will live on long after the man has died. For now, though, heÕs making the most of his latest reawakening, adding to the myth while the myth is his to hold.
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So much music, so little time. |
Edited by - lemonade kid on 08/01/2016 21:20:29 |
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lemonade kid
Old Love
USA
9876 Posts |
Posted - 08/01/2016 : 21:24:00
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Blackstar-tracks
1 Blackstar 9:57 2 Tis a Pity She Was a Whore 4:52 3 Lazarus 6:22 4 Sue (Or in a Season of Crime) 4:40 5 Girl Loves Me 4:51 6 Dollar Days 4:44 7 I Can't Give Everything Away 5:47
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So much music, so little time. |
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dyecraig
Fourth Love
USA
203 Posts |
Posted - 09/01/2016 : 01:45:01
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My all time favorite artist of all time (redundant, but it's BOWIE!) Feel like a kid at Christmas again. 1st record I ever bought with my own $ was a 45 of "Space Oddity/The Man Who Sold the World" w/picture sleeve (LP cover shot in b/w) for .75 @ Joseph Horne's dept. store. Displayed prominently in the man cave. "*" will be enjoyed with a fine adult beverage this evening. |
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