David Bowie Passed Away

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His guitarist at that time Carlos Alomar is a freaking living legend that have played with chuck berry and many others.
A local station here from Montreal had him on the phone 2 days ago and was telling stories about that tour and reminiscing about Bowie in general, oh man it was amazing, he said they were still friends and emailed back and forth regularly, he also said he saw Bowie last a year ago and that he didn't suspect a thing.
 
His guitarist at that time Carlos Alomar is a freaking living legend that have played with chuck berry and many others.
A local station here from Montreal has=d him on the phone 2 days ago and was telling stories about that tour and reminiscing about Bowie in general, oh man it was amazing, he said they were still friends and emailed back and forth regularly, he also said he saw Bowie last a year ago and that he didn't suspect a thing.

Carlos played with him from Young Americans all the way through Never Let Me Down (with the exception of let's dance, though he did the touring Niles Rodgers played the guitar lines along with leads from SRV)
 
Edit: Damn, I wonder if this was always in the back of his mind.

When we were on the tour bus in 1996 or 1997, David said, “Somewhere in the late 70s I met this psychic, who told me I was gonna die around the age of 69 or 70,” and he said this with total certainty. It didn’t sound like the ramblings of one of these crazy people: it was something which he absolutely didn’t doubt at all. I never told anyone about it, but it never left my mind. It was my first thought when the news came in. At the same time as I was enveloped in shock, I was thinking, “He told me that”. Every year, as it’s been getting closer, that’s been on my mind, because we were friends and musical comrades.

http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2016/jan/14/david-bowie-mike-garson-pianist-interview

Well, that's actually not a bad guess, and we're only hearing about it now because it was sorta accurate. We don't hear about all the numerous other "prophesies" that never come true.

It's just kind of a troll, really. Especially if it grates on someone for their life.
 
Carlos played with him from Young Americans all the way through Never Let Me Down (with the exception of let's dance, though he did the touring Niles Rodgers played the guitar lines along with leads from SRV)

Yeah, you can listen to Alomar reminiscing here, good stories and funny moments as well, you can tell Alomar was still himself dealing with the blow.
 
It's a shame we'll never see any of Blackstar live.

Indeed.

Honestly, I'd love to just see the band tour with the material and jam out on these tracks. Get Fripp or Belew to use a guitar lead in place of vocals and take the tracks into Outerspace.

Finally relistened tonight. The instrumentation on the album is just so good. I love Bowie's vocal,s lyrics, songwriting but his greatest strength has always been selecting collaborators and being a band leader. He knows how to coax the best out of people. That's true even with his work with Iggy and Lou Reed.
 
Carlos played with him from Young Americans all the way through Never Let Me Down (with the exception of let's dance, though he did the touring Niles Rodgers played the guitar lines along with leads from SRV)

The Alomar/Murray/Davis backup band was the best rhythm section Bowie had in his entire career. It's really awesome how he was doing all this experimental euro / krautrock stuff at the time, but he did it with a rhythm section of American musicians deeply rooted in funk and r&b.

Funnily enough, Davis was also the drum teacher of one of Bowie's later regular on drums, Sterling Campbell.

But what happened to George Murray, the bassist? I mean, this guy plays on Bowie's best run of albums from Station to Station through Scary Monsters and he's really great (that bass on the A-side of Low!) and then he just seems to disappear from the face of the earth. Seriously, who is this guy and what is he doing now?
 
Lovely article giving some insight into his life in NY

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/fashion/david-bowie-invisible-new-yorker.html

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Hehehehehehe
 
Wanted to comment on this but was waiting for ban to pass.
I grew up listening to Bowie and my brother did as well. We cried so much the next day we heard about Bowie's death. Rest in peace Bowie, you were an amazing man and will be sorely missed!
 
But what happened to George Murray, the bassist? I mean, this guy plays on Bowie's best run of albums from Station to Station through Scary Monsters and he's really great (that bass on the A-side of Low!) and then he just seems to disappear from the face of the earth. Seriously, who is this guy and what is he doing now?

really interesting question, now you've got me Googling. I haven't found much yet, a few responses in this thread:

http://www.talkbass.com/threads/george-murray-gear.529488/

give some details - who knows if they are true.
 
The Alomar/Murray/Davis backup band was the best rhythm section Bowie had in his entire career. It's really awesome how he was doing all this experimental euro / krautrock stuff at the time, but he did it with a rhythm section of American musicians deeply rooted in funk and r&b.

That's exactly what made that music so unique. A backing of real American roots being directed into completely uncharted territory. The results are some of the most interesting sounding and influential albums of all time.
 
not sure if this was posted...

David Bowie Honored With Lightning Bolt-Shaped Constellation

They registered seven stars in the shape of the iconic lightning bolt adorning Bowie's face on the cover of his 1973 album Aladdin Sane. The constellation is fittingly "in the vicinity of Mars." Studio Brussels and MIRA have also created a website called Stardust for Bowie where fans can add their favorite Bowie songs to a Google Sky representation of the constellation.

Stardust for Bowie

Studio Brussels registered officially a new star constellation for David Bowie together with the MIRA observatory. Honour him. Make it shine by adding your most memorable Bowie song.
 
So many days have passed but I'm still down about him being gone.

Warszawa has been on repeat for days now. I think that track may be the best he did during his peak creative period and career in general.
 
There are so many amazing Bowie tracks, It's almost impossible to put a lit together. As an album, Heroes will always have a special place in my soul, it's the first musical memory I had thanks to my dad's love of the album. Scary Monster's, Low, Heathen and The Next Day are all favourites. Blackstar is immense, but it's very difficult to listen to right now.

What about live performances though? His performance of Heroes at Live Aid in 85 really hit home for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGOx0ZpMrrU

He's one of those artist that have such an all around amazing catalog. I'm listening to some stuff I've never heard from him before, and I'm just surprised at how wide his range as an artist is.

You'd have to really challenge someone to listen to all he has to offer and not be able to find at least a few tracks to like. Even those that listen to music sparsely.
 
Stumbled onto an interesting little article.

http://solascendans.com/2016/01/14/david-bowie-closet-occultist/
David Bowie: Closet Occultist!

Q: “So were you involved in actual devil worship?”
A: “Not devil worship, no, it was pure straightforward, old-fashioned magic.”
Q: “The Aleister Crowley variety?”
A: “No, I always thought Crowley was a charlatan. But there was a guy called [Arthur] Edward Waite who was terribly important to me at the time. And another called Dion Fortune who wrote a book called ‘Psychic Self-Defense‘. You had to run around the room getting bits of string and old crayons and draw funny things on the wall, and I took it all most seriously, ha ha ha ! I drew gateways into different dimensions, and I’m quite sure that, for myself, I really walked into other worlds. I drew things on walls and just walked through them, and saw what was on the other side!”

David Bowie, interviewed in NME, 1997

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There is an image in the Lazarus video on which a number of bloggers have already commented: where Bowie sits frantically writing at a desk, on which rests a skull. Now the obvious interpretation is that it was a reference to Bowie’s own impending mortality, but when I saw it, it stirred the Sumner Family Brain Cell to life, and got me thinking, where have I seen that before?

The answer is: it comes from the first degree (Apprentice) ritual of the Ancient & Primitive Rite of Memphis and Misraim – a particularly esoteric form of Freemasonry. Assuming the candidate for initiation passes the ballot, just before the ceremony of his initiation,

…[t]he Expert (i.e. Junior Deacon) then takes possession of the Candidate in the Parvis, carefully binds his eyes and leads him to the Chamber of Reflection. He has him sit before a table, sparingly furnished with a real human Skull; a lit wax Candle, half-consumed; a sheet of white paper, pen and ink. The seat is a stool without a back. He lights a little Myrrh, the traditional funereal perfume, in a corner of the room, in a Censer containing lit coals.

Expert: – Sir, alone, left to yourself, before an image of termination of terrestrial Life, I invite you to write your Philosophical Testament.

The “Philosophical Testament” consists of the candidate’s reflections on his duties to God, the World, and himself: but more especially, like its name suggests, how the candidate would answer these questions if his words were the final legacy which he leaves on Earth. However, the code-word “philosophical” indicates that one is meant to interpret it alchemically. In other words, Death is not the end for the candidate – i.e. for David Bowie – but is the first step on the path to spiritual transmutation.

So, there you have it – Bowie indulging in esoteric symbolism right up until the last!
 
He's one of those artist that have such an all around amazing catalog. I'm listening to some stuff I've never heard from him before, and I'm just surprised at how wide his range as an artist is.

You'd have to really challenge someone to listen to all he has to offer and not be able to find at least a few tracks to like. Even those that listen to music sparsely.

I think this was my mantra all throughout the week. People knew how upset I was and who it was about since many of his tracks play randomly on my playlist at work, but there were some genuine questions asked like "what made David Bowie so great and so influential?" and it was my comments that there is always a song that Bowie created that causes people to emotionally latch on to. It causes a memory of an event and it stays there. Sometimes they don't even know it's a Bowie song until they listen to the original, or they remember a certain riff or chorus section.

But he was a big impact on my mother's and her sister's life (who was practically my second mother) so I grew up with that. I had David Bowie and the Carpenters on one side with my mother, and the Beatles and Elton John on the other with my father. So it's hard not to dissociate away from those musicians in my own tastes and their individual deaths are like a hit to my youth.

I haven't stopped listening to Bowie all week. I've cried both privately and openly. It's such a strange experience... but I think I now understand how adults felt when Lennon died, or when Harrison died - as I was too young for even Harrison's impact. It's as if a small fabric of your own life will always be there in the music they created, but it's now become enveloped by a giant shadow called sorrow.
 
There's a lovely live recording of China Girl on Spotify where he just has a bit of a chat with the audience about how he wrote the song with Iggy Pop. Such an articulate, suave guy.
 
There's a lovely live recording of China Girl on Spotify where he just has a bit of a chat with the audience about how he wrote the song with Iggy Pop. Such an articulate, suave guy.

I think you're referring to the VH1 Storytellers show that he did. from around 2000 I highly recommend the entire show. All the stories he tells between the songs as well as the banter with his band are very warm and familial. I listen to it on my phone frequently.
 
For the ones in Europe and with a satellite dish pointed to Astra 19.2, tonight at 00:00 CET Deluxemusic channel (free-to-air) will air a 1h 30m hour concert of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars. Footage is from a 1973 concert, aired yesterday also and I got the chance to listen to it, great music and show, I definitely recommend.
 
Been listening exclusively to Bowie since Blackstar came out trying to work through albums I had not yet listened to. That turns out to be a hard task when all I want to listen to is his stuff from Space Oddity to Tonight. That's 14 albums in the span of 15 years that I consider must-haves.
 
Did he ever move back to the UK (even for a short period of time) since around 1985? Was watching an interview a few days ago where he said it isn't a question of if but when he returns to live in the UK (might have been the Paxman interview, I can't remember for sure but tbh I don't think so) but I don't recall reading he actually did. That line in Dollar Days about getting to "the English evergreens" but not being able to suggests it was still on his mind but he made peace with not doing it if he didn't.
 
Been listening exclusively to Bowie since Blackstar came out trying to work through albums I had not yet listened to. That turns out to be a hard task when all I want to listen to is his stuff from Space Oddity to Tonight. That's 14 albums in the span of 15 years that I consider must-haves.

I think the only musical entity who can really compare with his run is the Beatles. I place him above them not only due to personal preference, but because they worked as a single unit in their evolution. Bowie curated a list of collaborators and pushed them to their max in order to achieve a singular vision. He didn't just decide to do an album in a genre, he would take the genre and change it in a way to suit his particular needs. Station to Station through Scary Monsters almost sound so far ahead of the period in which they were created; like alien transmissions.

I don't know that we'll ever see someone like him again.
 
I can't get Bowie off my mind.
I keep thinking about him.
His death has upset me.

Anyone else have some good covers to share? I really like different interpretations of his work.
 
I've listened to the album Blackstar a few times now. For some reason the Album makes me think of Twin Peaks. Wasn't he in the Movie?

Yeah, he was. Been loving listening to radio this week, not just for the music but the DJ blather, like listening to an EB employee trying to be authoritative about games. Heard one DJ yesterday talking about how Bowie was great in Flash Gordon. Pretty sure he wasn't in that.
 
Oh that's right, in Fire Walk With Me he's an agent who warps in and out from somewhere.
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Fire Walk With Me was originally shot as a 3 hour epic, but David Lynch was forced to cut it in half. After years of dealing with the copyright holder, the deleted scenes were finally released on the 2014 Blu-ray box set, Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery. It includes a kick-ass, trippy scene where you see get some more background on Bowie's character.
 
Marc Maron had some very lovely stuff to say about him before his latest interview on WTF...ironically, he was promoting the new album in an ad the day he died and was just elatedly saying DAVID BOWIE over and over. Any other day and it would've been normal, but it was kinda jolting that day, heh.
 
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