Monday 6 November 2017

100 Awesome Things - Part 25 - From The Vault 2013

We're finally a quarter of the way through 100 Awesome Musical Things... This post was written not long after David Bowie surprised us all with a new album, back in 2013 when we didn't know we only had three more years left with him...

~~~2013~~~

Did you hear that David Bowie released a new song?

Let's try that again, because I'm not sure you're excited enough: BOWIE IS BACK.

I hadn't realised how much I'd missed his work unti his return. Hearing Where Are We Now? was like sitting down with a dear old friend I'd lost touch with. I'm not going to analyse the minutiae of the Where Are We Now? video and what it may or may not mean.I'm not going to drive myself crazy trying to second-guess Bowie, the World's Greatest Troll.




I think one's view of Bowie is coloured when one first encountered him. To my dad, he will always be the man who did "The Laughing Gnome". To someone else I know, when he hears the name, his first instinct is "Tin Machine!". With me, it's a bit different... I think I encountered him for the first time more than once...

I don't remember exactly when I saw Labyrinth on TV. It must've been its first television airing one Christmas: after 1986 but probably not much later than 1990. I vividly remember fragments: the hair and the tights, sure, but mostly I remembered how forcefully his charisma struck me. I didn't know it was called charisma but I knew it mattered. I didn't see it again until I was at university.

I did though, collect the name 'David Bowie' at that time, because I knew it was important. I kept hold of that name like a secret or a prayer, in the same way I clutched the name 'Ringo Starr' to my heart each time I saw the opening credits of Thomas and the Tank Engine and my mummy would say "He was in The Beatles, you know". I didn't know, but I knew it was important.

Perhaps not quite the same. In between that half-remembered moment of 80s muppetry and seeing it again, I embraced music as a way of life and the name Bowie cropped up lots. I was a Queen fan even as a small child, so Bowie was 'the dude on Under Pressure'. 


As I submerged myself more in that world, he was that alien creature with the red hair and the guy in the dress and the waistcoat and all those other personae he's tried on for size. I remember my brother and I mercilessly ripping the hell out of "Hallo Spaceboy" when it was on the radio during a long car journey. At some point (roughly between Morrison and Thin Lizzy), I fell oh so fucking hard for his music. I think it must've been somewhere between that "Hallo Spaceboy" moment and ...hours.

Maybe I was just at an age (First Year Uni Student Self, that ridiculous creature!) where one should be a Bowie fan. Whatever the reason, I devoured Greatest Hits - I listened to a lot of it on a mixtape on the sad train journeys between Lancaster and Euston when my grandmother died. Then I bought Labyrinth, so in a weird way it all came full circle. I watched it over and again, my love of Bowie and Henson Workshop brought together in a rubbish-but-sweet story of a young girl challenged-seduced by a devilishly handsome older rock star. I forget why it appealed...

I pored over Bowiestyle and Mick Rock's books of glam photography. I wanted to be Bowie as much as I ever had a crush (might as well admit it...). In California, I took the cover of Low to the hairdresser and said "I want that, please." And got it, following therefore in the steps of so many other Bowiefans.

Somewhere along the line, Bowie dropped out of my immediate consciousness. Partly, it was lingering bitterness at not being allowed to see him at Glastonbury. Partly, it was other people getting in the way - Morrison crashed the party again in a big way, then Zeppelin and Lizzy and Rory pulled me away from the Shiny! Sparkly! music into the not-much-nonsense denim-clad world of 1970s Hard Rock. Whatever the reasons, we drifted a little, not least as my consumption of music changed - only a few tracks made it onto my iPod.

So, the last few weeks have been a treat of rediscovery for me. I am delighted to say that I still adore Bowie's music, his aesthetic, just everything. There's even things to like about Tonight and Tin Machine as far as I'm concerned.

Mostly, I love that I can now see far better the layers and the work going on than once I did. I've always been interested in the construction of "rock stars", the tropes and the conventions, but I can see them better now. What I love about Bowie most of all is what a sense of humour there is. He's screwing with us, man! He's screwing with us but letting us in on the joke, if you're looking. God, I love that.

Just Youtube 'Requiem for the Laughing Gnome' and you'll see what I mean. I faintly remember seeing it at the time but it made me laugh so much harder today.

When I was first a Bowie-fan, I was shiny and young and though incredibly cynical, I still believed in the beautiful power of rock stars (I do, I do, I do believe in fairies!). I teetered on the edge of my own dark chasm but had yet to fall in. Well, I've been there and hopefully won't be going back there. I can now see these golden gods not as warriors and kings but as human beings.

In short, I have empathy and compassion for them in a way that once I did not. They can't disappoint me anymore (ha! yeah right) because I see, accept and love their vulnerabilities and weaknesses as much as I love their power and brilliance. Seeing them as fallible creatures (just like me!) opens up so much more.

It might be why I'm one of the few people who seems to love late-period Dylan. I love his world-weary, well-used voice and songs. I love Bowie's later records as much (sometimes more) than the glam stuff. I'm almost a bigger fan of Solo Plant than of Zeppelin... I love Lennon's middle-aged 'How are you all?' as I love the angry young man songs. I'm still not down with McCartney but I think that's because in so many ways he seems more reluctant to grow old than we are to let him.

I would love to know what seventy-year-old Morrison and Lennon would be doing, and Lynott and Gallagher. I believe their work would still have something to say, something interesting and something to love, as long as they were true to themselves. And I wouldn't mind if they looked old or weren't skinny, or if their voices were barely croaks and growls, because that's fucking life, right?

When I started writing this post a few weeks ago (got interrupted), it was intended to be something jokey about Bowie's tights in Labyrinth. I was going to post "As The World Falls Down" with a joke about how I wanted his clothes as much as I wanted to dance with him. Since then I've listened to far too much of his music, fallen into that rabbit hole again. I've listened to some other stuff and considered age and dying and mortality as part of Walking in the Shadowlands.... I can't just make cock jokes because that's not where my head is at any more than it's what Bowie's doing now.

And I still don't really know which video I want to post because so many are so awesome. A live version of Wild is the Wind stopped me working earlier. I just stopped typing. Stopped everything to just listen. I've loved that song since before I knew he'd done it... his original cover is fantastic but that live version just got me.

I think I'll go with this, because it covers all the bases. It's one of the first songs of his I really truly loved. I love the video, too:

CW 2017: For reasons unknown to me, all the various versions of "Thursday's Child" have since been taken down from YouTube and His Nibs' own Vevo channel doesn't include it. So have a SPOTIFY LINK instead... and if you really want to find the video online, you probably can.


I noticed the song back in '99 because I am, as it happens, a Thursday's Child. I have far to go and it feels like it most of the time. 'Maybe I'm born right out of my time' is also the sentiment which pulled me into the Rory Gallagher orbit too.

It sticks because we're both older, me and DB. We've been away from each other for a long time and now we return to each other. What I've loved about all this is that while I crack wise about crushes and being 'liek totes in luv!' with Bowie, that's not it. 


The music... I return to my old friend the Music and discover we still click, like old friends. We might never have been away from each other, but the time apart gives me new appreciation and deeper understanding of my old friend. The love is stronger now, for the absence.

Oh, how I love the music. Whether he's trolling or prancing or contemplating or whatever the hell Bowie did/does/will do at any given moment, it's the music I love. I can't wait to hear what he does next.

But I'd still wear the "As The World Falls Down" get-up. At work.


C 2013.

100 Awesome Musical Things

Part Two - Octopus Jig - The Dubliners
Part Three - Got To Give It Up - Marvin Gaye
Part Four - Who Cares What The Question Is? - The Bees
Part Five - Doctor Who Cold Open - Craig Ferguson
Part Six - Monster Mash - The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band
Part Seven -Don't Believe A Word - Thin Lizzy
Part Eight -These Are The Days of Our Lives - Queen
Part Nine - Who Do You Love? - The Doors
Part Ten - The Mooche - The Duke Ellington Orchestra
Part Eleven - I'm Happy Just To Dance With You - The Beatles
Part Twelve - Rabbit - Chas n Dave
Part Thirteen - The Ballad of the Woggler's Moulie - Rambling Syd Rumpo
Part Fourteen - I Found a Dream - Marilyn Monroe
Part Fifteen - FBI - The Shadows
Part Sixteen - A Million Miles Away - Rory Gallagher
Part Seventeen - Mr Cole Won't Rock and Roll - Nat King Cole
Part Eighteen - The Boys Are Back In Town - Thin Lizzy
Part Nineteen - Rock Me Baby - Willie Mae Thornton
Part Twenty - Paint It, Black - The Rolling Stones
Part Twenty-One - The Ghost Song - The Doors

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