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Post by hatter_in_macc on Jan 13, 2016 0:14:23 GMT
Sound and Vision has already been mentioned on this thread - by exile, I think - but we really ought to add the music, as it really was one of the most extraordinary tracks that Bowie released for chart consumption.
Adding to its wonderful oddness was the presence of nice-Welsh-girl-next-door, Mary Hopkin, on backing vocals!
And I like this vid, too - put together as a tribute by a fan, but several years before now:
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Post by another_ruined_saturday on Jan 13, 2016 0:34:50 GMT
Just worrying a tad now about what to do when Junior comes home, and tells me that homework is bringing him down...  downtown macclesfield isn't that bad, surely?!?  better than him saying he's been picking fights with the bullies and the cads, anyway... |
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Post by gazz on Jan 13, 2016 0:56:24 GMT
downtown macclesfield isn't that bad, surely?!?  better than him saying he's been picking fights with the bullies and the cads, anyway... and besides, he might not be much cop at punching other people's Dads! |
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Post by another_ruined_saturday on Jan 13, 2016 1:35:41 GMT
Apologies for the large amount of posts, but this guy really has left a hole. i found the effect it had on me really surprising. i saw the thread title and had this immediate, 'nah, can't be'. i'm on annual leave this week and i was second-guessing myself about whether that had partly allowed me to indulge myself because in the reaction i had, in listening to the music, watching the clips, reading the early responses to this thread and the reports and tributes, i found myself suddenly tearing up several times over the course of the day, particularly about little associations. i very specifically remember 'space oddity' being re-released and hearing it loads on the radio in my granddad's kitchen. it was so different because it was a story (which he then later brilliantly revised of course). it was 1975, so i'd have been four going on five - he's been a presence for such a long time. lots of his greatest stuff - like 'sound and vision' and 'heroes', i didn't really know until i bought a 'greatest...' cassette when i went to college in 1989, but we've all grown up with either his music meaning a lot, or at least him always being an artful dodger in the periphery of everyone's consciousness. like many of my age, i remember the 'ashes to ashes' video, and i bought the 'let's dance' album from the britannia music club. in what was one of his least fertile periods, i was still picking up singles like 'blue jean', 'loving the alien', and the f***ing brilliant romance of 'absolute beginners'. later that decade, i was introduced to 'hunky dory', and that one never went away. in my twenties i finally followed the rock critics and picked up 'station to station', 'low' and 'heroes', loving the likes of 'v-2 schneider' and 'joe the lion' from the latter. 'sons of the silent age' is my favourite from then though. it's so quintessentially bowie with its leaping chorus, slightly cryptic lyrics, and that line that's been stuck in my head the last couple of days; 'they don't walk they just glide in and out of life; they never die, but just go to sleep one day'. i've literally just snorted at myself for still feeling a bit bereft - but f*** it. i'm off this week. 'sons of the silent age' is having another spin! 'sound and vision' and 'quicksand' are my two favourites, and i love that one is hard like chrome, and has a minimal amount of vocals and lyrics, and the other is cryptic and verbose, conjuring the occult, nazis and the nietzschean ubermensch, and is soft and desperate. just in the distance between those two songs is the sum of bowie's talent. still feeling the loss. |
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Post by another_ruined_saturday on Jan 13, 2016 1:37:25 GMT
and besides, he might not be much cop at punching other people's Dads! yeah, that was the implication! had to get a little slight in at macca even here! |
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Post by another_ruined_saturday on Jan 13, 2016 1:43:06 GMT
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Post by hatter_in_macc on Jan 13, 2016 9:36:12 GMT
Apologies for the large amount of posts, but this guy really has left a hole. i found the effect it had on me really surprising. i saw the thread title and had this immediate, 'nah, can't be'. i found myself suddenly tearing up several times over the course of the day, particularly about little associations. we've all grown up with either his music meaning a lot, or at least him always being an artful dodger in the periphery of everyone's consciousness. These comments, amongst others, sum it up very well for me. I have struggled with one or two untimely deaths of musical heroes in the past - starting with Ian Curtis, when I was an impressionable, angst-ridden teen - but Bowie's passing has really knocked me for six. He and his songs have always been around since I fell in love with music - either in their own right, or heavily influencing the work of others - and hold so many memories for that. But it wasn't necessary to 'be there' to appreciate his work. Teenage Maccette, who was born long after the best stuff had been recorded, is a keen fan (and was in tears when the news broke), and Macc Junior - not yet a teen - has been lapping up the back-catalogue breakfast sessions that I have put on here daily. This morning, the little fella remembered a fave tune that I used to play to cheer him up when he was little - and has insisted that it goes on here. So, for what I'm about to do, I'm truly sorry... except I'm not really - it made the pair of us laugh like drains on today's school run!  |
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Post by countyfan on Jan 13, 2016 9:39:58 GMT
I heard on the radio this morning that "Hero's" is looking like being number 1 in the charts this weekend from all the downloads it's had.
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Post by hatter_in_macc on Jan 13, 2016 10:19:07 GMT
I think it will be joined by a good few other Bowie tracks, too. Let's Dance and Life on Mars? are also streaming like crazy - along with songs from Blackstar, which itself is set to top the album charts by some considerable distance.
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Post by gazz on Jan 13, 2016 11:11:26 GMT
Don't feel shame regarding The Laughing Gnome, Maccy. I love that era, many don't, buy I feel it's an essential listen for any Bowie fan. If he hadn't had been for his 'Newley' era, he may never have had any of the rest. It's all relevant, it's all Bowie.
If my memory serves me correctly, when Bowie was asking for fans to phone a hotline with suggestions for the 'Sound and Vision Tour' playlist, this track was immensely popular, but it was still ignored by the man himself after he discovered that somebody had set up a bogus campaign to raise the profile and increase the number of votes for the song.
Cheers for posting!
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Post by hatter_in_macc on Jan 13, 2016 11:21:59 GMT
No worries, matey - I do like the song myself, remembering it from my own childhood, but didn't want to offend any purists out there...  I recall the voting episode, too. The NME got behind the campaign, urging its readers to get 'Gnome' onto the set-list. All good fun! |
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Post by gazz on Jan 13, 2016 11:23:35 GMT
I recall the voting episode, too. The NME got behind the campaign, urging its readers to get 'Gnome' onto the set-list. All good fun! Ah, was that who it was? Cheers for filling in the blanks, matey! |
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Post by another_ruined_saturday on Jan 13, 2016 13:31:58 GMT
He and his songs have always been around since I fell in love with music - either in their own right, or heavily influencing the work of others that's the other thing and we haven't mentioned it a lot yet. so many of the bands i got into in my teenage years were influenced by bowie. ian curtis and the other members of joy division were listening to him, and their early 'warsaw' incarnation was apparently directly due to 'warszawa' off 'low'. i loved the psychedelic furs, and they were more obvious, with warholian art-pop and richard butler's bowie-inflected vocals. bauhaus' art school gothic melodrama was very clearly indebted to bowie, and you could hear flashes in the bunnymen. the nineties had the clod-hopping attempt at bowie's pan-sexuality of suede and various other london bands of the time. blur's 'strange news from another star' was almost the ultimate bowie rip-off, only almost, cos this, from the same album, really takes the biscuit, and resulted in bowie and brian eno getting a retrospective credit once everybody realised "hang on...that's 'boys keep swinging'". a substantial amount of the music i've been into over the years might not have been produced at all, or would have emerged very differently without his influence. christ. he's getting more important by the minute... |
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Post by Epworth Hatter on Jan 13, 2016 13:58:23 GMT
Great posts and memories, guys. I was listening to the jean genie yesterday and had forgotten how much it sounds like parklife!
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Post by gazz on Jan 13, 2016 14:02:28 GMT
I'd totally forgotten about that Blur song, ars!
I hope this thread stays busy for some time yet, it's helped. I'm still finding myself shaking my head in disbelief. It's not often that news of celebrities passing away gets to me, Brad and Rik are the only other recent ones. Before that I can only think of Hutch, John Candy, Diana and Elvis that have properly saddened me.
Before anyone mentions Danny, he's not in the celebrity category, his seemed more like a family loss than anything else.
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