"And I'm so glad he knew it..."

This. Wonderful. Thing.

I've Heard A Rumor From Ground Control

Oh No, Don't Say it's True.

Fucking cancer.

Notes From Periods Between Throat Coat

I've been sick. Hellishly sore throat. Mild temperature.

Muddled through. It's going around.

But.

I hate being sick.

I hate the loss of control.

I hate coughing so much I pull a muscle.

I hate the feeling that I can't quite swallow.

That my progress ebbs and flows and when I feel I have a good day it is gone by evening when I can barely speak.

Did I mention I hate being sick?

There's a feeling of being trapped inside something you can't control and didn't ask for and don't like.

There's a brisk perception that all solid objects are waiting for you to close your eyes so they can turn into liquids and drip down into messy puddles on the floor.

And then there's always a single song that pops up all over the place, that is playing on every radio station you happen across in your feverish state.

The good news is I'm almost completely better after nearly a week.

The better news is that song was this:

You'll Catch Your Death in the Fog

Woof Woof Bow Wow

Ice crystals without the chill.

Waves rolling in from the mountains.

A time when the possible tints everything.

Shades. Covers. Manipulates.

The feeling inundates you. Overwhelms you. Threatens to carry you over, pull you under.

It's just fog, they say.

Just a way of making things a little less transparent. A little more mysterious.

And you nod.

But you know. You've seen it before. You've experienced it.

The fog rolls in with possibilities.

Rolls out with changes.

The only question is which way you're rolling. Which way you'll go.

I Know When To Stay In And Get Things Done

It's Not Really Words, It's Just the Power To Talk

I love this song more than words can express.

So on days when everything seems to go south, maybe it's just the thing I need to hear.

She Could've Been A Killer If She Didn't Walk the Way She Do

She Opened Strange Doors That We'd Never Close Again

Happy Halloween.

Extra candy if you're dressed as Bowie. (From any era.)

Loving this New David Bowie Video

Which seems like it's almost a mid-70s Bowie track.

Now if only I could stop thinking he looks frighteningly like Ronald Reagan in this clip....

Happy Birthday, Mister Jones

He turns 66 and we get the present?

Works for me.

It Was Cold and It Rained, So I Felt Like an Actor

Telephones, Opera House, Favorite Melodies...

Delia was adament.

"I never want to get old."

She wanted everyone to remember her young. Didn't want laugh lines. Or wrinkles. Or grey hairs.

We scoffed at this. We were teenagers and couldn't imagine any of us getting older. Let alone Delia.

Between the multiple speeding tickets and the multiple drinks and the multiple other things that were hinted at but never confirmed, she seemed the least likely to get old.

But still.

The news always takes you by surprise.

Especially since she gave up speeding. And drinking. And all drugs and most of her other vices.

Still, she didn't give up walking.

In a town where brakes fail. And trucks can't stop.

So Delia got her wish.

And word filtered out (in those pre-internet days) through a series of phone conversations, delivered haltingly up and down the east coast on a rainy, cold Sunday in the early Spring.

Today there'd be emails. And Facebook pages. And probably a website.

Back then the news flashed up, flared, and faded.

Delia loved David Bowie (although if she'd lived she probably would have hated much of his output from the last 20 years).

But today is Bowie's 65th birthday. And this was her favorite Bowie song:

For What It's Worth

Sha La La La La. Embedding on this one's disabled, but click here.

Time and Again I Tell Myself...

Sordid details following...

In the black-light club, with the bass pounding, and the opening band screaming, she smiled.

And I thought again how beautiful she was when she smiled. How it was like a portal to another word.

And she did that thing girls do where they curl the hair in back of their ear. It's endearing as hell, especially if they can smile like the portal to another world.

But.

The light flashed.

And I looked at her arm. And saw the scars.

"What are the scars from?" But she didn't want to talk about it.

And from then on, I was obsessed with those scars. In the light of day, they seemed to vanish. But I found myself sneaking glances at them.

Maybe it was nothing.

For a long while it seemed like nothing.

And then a few weeks later, the scars looked fresh.

"Why do you have those scars?" I asked again.

She turned away. Didn't want to talk about it.

But I grabbed her hand. And ran my fingers along the scars. The fresh scars.

"Okay," she said. "I don't want to do it."

And she took her hand back and pulled her sleeve down. "Every day I tell myself it will be better. And most days it is. But when it's not... it's really not."

And she smiled. A sad smile. Still the portal to another world.

But not a world she wanted to live in. And not even a world I wanted to visit.

No matter how endearing it is when she tucked her hair behind her ear.

David Bowie - Ashes To Ashes on Vimeo.

Just for One Day

Nothing Will Drive Them Away

Over on the Pleasant Valley Sunday blog, Mister Pleasant posted the rare U.S. single mix of David Bowie's "Rebel Rebel," which I'd never heard before.

Great flange effects, weird phased vocals, odd instruments that wander drunkenly in and out. It's a pretty great and adventurous approach to a very familiar song that makes it really jump out all these years later.



Speaking of David Bowie, I was listening to his great song "Heroes" today.

Really listening. Maybe for the first time. Which is weird since I've heard the song thousands of times on the radio in the past few decades.

I knew it was recorded in Berlin -- part of Bowie's trilogy of Berlin albums he made with Brian Eno. I knew the song had a swirling swath of synths and Robert Fripp weird-ass guitar parts. And I knew it was a lot less of a traditional pop or rock & roll song than a lot of his 70s hits.

But I'd never really listened to the words.

It's the story of two doomed lovers kissing in the shadow of the Berlin Wall. He bravely proclaims that they can be Heroes.

And yet...

The vocals are so filled with yearning and desperation. The singer doesn't believe what he's singing for a minute, but hope to convince himself (and his lover) by the sheer act of singing these words.

Not only does the vocal fit in beautifully to the music, but the desperate tone fits in perfectly with the ironic lyrics. And Bowie must have known this because he put the title in quotes to draw attention to the fact that it was never quite what it seemed.

But even the singer's resolve falters. By the end of the song he declares: "We're nothing, and nothing can help us," adding "Maybe we're lying -- then you better not stay." But as the guitars and Eno's detuned low-frequency synth notes swallow up the couple, the singer ambiguously wants something (maybe anything) just for one day.

Years later, the song would largely lose its irony. The Berlin Wall would come down (and the very idea of what Berlin means artistically would change drastically). Bowie would sing the song unironically at Live Aid (which he says is his favorite version of the song) -- that version leaves me cold, although I think it's cool that the band included Thomas Dolby on keyboards and former Soft Boy Matthew Seligman on bass). Bowie would sing the song at the Concert for New York City following 9/11 -- again without the irony. And despite its failure as a single in the 70s, the song has found a second life through commercial and film licensing (and at thousands of sporting events).

But for me the original version is the one that resonates. We've all had moments of intense longing and desperation. Moments when we speak our desires as loud as we can, knowing the chances for success are practically zero but hoping against hope that the proclamation will carry us through.

Even if it's just for one day. (Click for the higher-quality YouTube version or watch the 9th generation copy below.)

With Nothing Much At Stake

The Rest Can Go To Hell

I don't remember a lot about kindergarten. But I remember this.

The wave of political correctness hadn't washed over the school yet, so we were sitting "Indian style." In a circle. On the carpet.

And our teacher asked us to all say what we wanted to be when we grew up.

It was the usual stuff -- fireman, football player, astronaut, doctor.

And then the question came around to my friend Dan. "I want to grow up to be David Bowie," he proudly announced.

Our teacher seemed momentarily flustered. She turned bright red. She almost asked a question, then stopped.

As an adult, I imagine what her question might have been. Early or late period Bowie? Bisexual Bowie? Nine Inch Nails wannabe Bowie? Fashion Bowie?

Or maybe she'd ask if Dan wanted to be a musician. Or a singer. Or to marry Iman. Or if he really just wanted to tour with a mime or convince Mick Ronson to take arranging instead of songwriting credit.

And why had our teacher blushed? Was there some hidden desire connected with Bowie? Some wild backstage antics from long ago?

But instead, we moved on. The next kid wanted to train horses. For the Navy. (Oddly, that answer didn't faze our teacher.)

After school, I asked Dan why he wanted to be David Bowie when he grew up. He thought about it for a minute, then said "No, not David Bowie. Kareem Abdul-Jabar."

Because somehow, when you're five and you're new to this whole strange people-being-on-TV thing, it's very briefly possible to mix those two up.

Kinda Blue

My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare

A while back, I read the story on a blog (and I wish I could remember which one so I could link to it) Kinky Paprika's Shhh/Peaceful blog about Trevor Bolder, bassist for David Bowie's Spiders From Mars band.

According to the story, Bolder had his face painted blue for a performance, but accidentally used permanent paint. Reportedly, Bolder had to go to a specialist in Switzerland for an expensive medical procedure to remove the paint. In fact, the procedure was so expensive, Bolder had to sell his car to pay for it. It mostly worked, but not completely. And that's why, to this day Bolder still has traces of blue paint behind his ear.

I love this story.

And as I said then, it should be repeated over and over.

It's weird and exotic -- involving Bowie, glam rock, and the idea that rockers would risk life and limb to paint their faces for performances. It's truly a glimpse into another world.

But more important, it's completely absurd.


The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars is arguably Bowie's masterpiece. The songs are almost all classics (and almost all have been radio staples for more than 35 years). More importantly, the album as a whole tells a somewhat coherent story (although, in best rock fashion, it's vague enough that every listener can project themselves into it).

Bowie would hopskotch from style to style, persona to persona, for years, before slipping into the role of rock elder. But it was the Spiders -- Mick Ronson's mighty guitar playing and arranging (and some say uncredited songwriting), Trevor Bolder's bass playing, and Mick Woodmansey's understated drums (and Be-Rock-Always name) -- that pushed Bowie to his heights he'd never hit again.

Which brings me back to the paint.



The best part of the story is how it builds on the plausible (face painting, getting the type of paint wrong), layers in exotic details (an exclusive private doctor! in Switzerland!) with the hyperbolic (a procedure so expensive he had to sell his car) before delivering the amazing and oddly detailed fact that puts the ribbon on the story (to this day, he still has blue paint behind his ear).

It's a story of rarified air and rock and roll decadence. A story with a moral. A story that's falls apart almost immediately if you look closely.

Skin peels and chafes and regrows. At about the same rate that Bowie changed his persona in the 1970s.

Hell, if you've ever gotten "permanent" marker or paint on yourself, you know this. Even if you can't wash it off, it comes off with the skin in a matter of days, weeks, or months.

It's doubtful the paint would have lasted five weeks, let alone five months or five years. It's still there more than 30 years? Just not possible.

But still, to this day, we've got a great story of rock & roll excess.

And ultimately maybe that's more important than the facts. Isn't rock and roll all about believing these stories we all know can't be true? When the power chords thunder and the downbeat hits, don't we all willingly throw logical thinking out the window because, deep down, we want to live in a world of myths and legends?

Artifact From An Album That Never Was

Blown Away With the Sands.

A friend of mine from college once told me late at night that every time he heard David Bowie, he thought of sand dunes.

Every grain of sand was a potential new career Bowie could have had -- each one strong enough to act as the foundation for a giant dune, but each easily blown away by the wind in favor of a new grain of sand (and a slightly different dune).

So, after a series of cartoonish singles in the late 60s (which then were endlessly repackaged on compilation albums -- "The Laughing Gnome," anyone?), Bowie settled in for a decade of flirtations with hippie folk, glam rock, Philly Soul, electronica, dance pop, and punk-lite.

Following, the commercial and artistic triumph of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars, Bowie hauled the Spiders back into the studio to record an offbeat collection of British songs (from groups like the Who, the Pretty Things, the Who, the Easybeats, the Yardbirds, and Pink Floyd) Bowie had loved in the 1960s . The resulting album, Pin Ups, is a strange and wondrous anomaly whose appearance served as a signal that Bowie's career would be built on a foundation of anomalies.

A year later, the Spiders from Mars were gone (with Mick Ronson shifting permanently into a Mott the Hoople/Ian Hunter orbit) and Bowie's musical adaptation of George Orwell's 1984 morphed (after Orwell's widow refused to sell the rights) into a dystopian concept album called Diamond Dogs.

Bowie toyed with the idea of recording a sequel to Pin Ups featuring American songs from the late 60s and early 70s, but only completed on song -- a Bruce Springsteen number (plucked from Springsteen's self-consciously Dylanesque debut album) called "Growin' Up":


Bowie's version wouldn't surface until the 1990s, when RykoDisc reissued all the early Bowie albums with a great collection of bonus tracks. Ryko put "Growin' Up" with the other covers on Pin Ups, but the song vanished after Virgin/EMI bought the rights to Bowie's catalogue. The song reappeared a few years later as a bonus track on the 30th anniversary edition of Diamond Dogs (don't worry, there won't be a quiz).

I mentioned Bowie and the grains of sand theory to my friend from college the other day. He insists he never said it and speculates that I dreamed the entire conversation "because isn't college like a four-year dream?" Maybe so. Or maybe it's like Springsteen would say "I strolled all alone through a fallout zone and came out with my soul untouched." (But with lots of great records.)


Still, I would've loved to have heard the whole American Pin Ups album (or even have known what else would have been on it). The one thing I do know is that Bowie (along with Mick Ronson and the other Spiders From Mars) recorded a version of the Velvet Underground's "White Lines/White Heat" during the Pin Up sessions. That song has never been released, but Bowie gave the track to Mick Ronson, who kept erased Bowie's vocals and recorded his own, releasing it on his Play, Don't Worry album. One year, I had a temporary job cleaning up dorm rooms after students moved out. In one room, I found a huge pile of sand in the corner, along with an unopened bottle of Tequila and a vinyl copy of Play, Don't Worry. I gave away the Tequila, kept the record, and swept up the sand, which blew away in the breeze like the shifting sand dunes of David Bowie's career.