David Bowie memories

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I Remember hearing from my best friend about David Bowie, and when he play his music, was quite an experience for me. He was able to evolve and adapt his music and persona to the changing times, and while remaining relevant to the times, he always preserved the quality of his music intact. A great loss to the world of music. May he rest in peace.

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Manuel Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Reviewer page Forum Senior Member Joined: March 09 2007 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 12475	Posted: January 12 2016 at 07:09
	I Remember hearing from my best friend about David Bowie, and when he play his music, was quite an experience for me. He was able to evolve and adapt his music and persona to the changing times, and while remaining relevant to the times, he always preserved the quality of his music intact. A great loss to the world of music. May he rest in peace.

Atavachron Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Reviewer page Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: September 30 2006 Location: Pearland Status: Offline Points: 64672	Posted: January 12 2016 at 04:54
	He left us with extreme dignity, and I admire his desire for privacy during what must've been a very hard time.
	"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." -- John F. Kennedy

Dean Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Reviewer page Special Collaborator Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575	Posted: January 12 2016 at 04:48
	During the 70s my kid sister Alison was the big Bowie fan in our house, she'd first seen him perform Starman on Top Of The Pops in 1972 when she was 13 and that began an obsession that persists to this day. She collected all his albums, had scrapbooks full of pictures and press cuttings, and even wrote to the Japanese Embassy to ask if they would translate all his song titles into Japanese kanjii so she could embroider them onto a Bowie themed kimono-style dressing gown she made for herself. I would occasionally borrow a few of her albums (Space Oddity, Hunky Dory and Man Who Sold The World) as they were closer to the heavier, progressive artists I truly loved, but Ziggy and Aladdin held no fascination for me. Everything changed in 1976 when he released Station to Station, that album literally blew me away, for me it seemed like Bowie had suddenly become a serious musician and was creating music that had a momentum and direction that went against the grain of everything else that was being made at that time. While many highly regard his Berlin trilogy, for me that era began with the title track Station to Station with its relentless motorik drive and the dense dual guitars of Alomar and Slick. Low and Heroes were a natural progression from that and I loved them to bits. So accompanying Alison to London to see his 1978 tour was no chore and the set appeared to be designed to appeal to both of us, with her freaking-out during the 'Ziggy' half while I was enthralled by the 'Berlin' half. At that time I was into mimicing Roger Dean's painting style using car touch-up aerosol paints, spraying the paint onto water-covered sheets of glass to create his trade-mark marbling effect and scratching away some of the dried paint to form the image. She asked if I would to do one of David Bowie for her and I chose to copy the Low cover. Intrigued by the technique I was using she asked if she could do one too so between us we made another based upon the movie-poster for The Man Who Fell To Earth (both resulting paintings she still owns, naturally). I don't have photographs of either of them but back then I took a photograph of a slide the Low painting projected onto her face: (sorry for the horrible scan, the original is much more vibrant and intense than this) Forward fast many decades... A few years back I was stumped for what to buy her for birthday so thought I make another Bowie picture. Remembering the kanjii dressing gown she'd made in the 70s I thought I'd use his song titles in some way and ended up creating this image in Photoshop that I then had printed onto canvas: [side anecdote: when we were adding Bowie into Prog Related I ran a draft of the biography Daniel (Zowie Ziggy), Micky and I had written past her for her comments. While all of her comments were constructive and helped in the final edit, one passing remark at the time made me laugh out loud - 'you got it wrong, he's not Prog Related, he should be in Symphonic Prog'... So was she right, is it really 'symphonic'? There are undoubtedly 'symphonic' elements to some of his work, though not in the Symphonic Prog sense we apply here, and there is an undeniable musical theatricality (as opposed to the more obvious stage theatricality) that we would call Art Rock in the same way we would describe the theatrical Prog of Genesis, ELP and Yes also as Art Rock. So in a sense she was partially correct, he's not Related to Prog, he was, and forever will be, a Progressive Artitst, just one that doesn't neatly slot into the categories we have here. And that's the enigmatic attraction and appeal of Bowie and why we have seen the unprecedented reaction to his untimely death here on the PA - his music transcends classification yet fits-in everywhere.] Last week Alison texted me: "New Bowie album out on Friday... hope it's good. I watched the Reality tour DVD while I was ironing and that was brilliant... took me back"... Edited by Dean - January 12 2016 at 05:15
	What?

Rivertree Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Reviewer page Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator / Band Submissions Joined: March 22 2006 Location: Germany Status: Offline Points: 17598	Posted: January 12 2016 at 02:30
	On vacation I once could follow a Bowie gig in Sardinia, it was in 1997, 11th of July exactly, Rocce Rosse Festival at Arbatax. the setlist a nice warm evening, millions of stars above, we were sitting on the terrace, having wine and snacks, not far away, two or three kilometers across the bay, I'll never forget that ... Edited by Rivertree - January 12 2016 at 02:40


Komandant Shamal Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Reviewer page Forum Senior Member Joined: February 02 2015 Location: Yugoslavia Status: Offline Points: 954	Posted: January 12 2016 at 00:24
	i was one of cca 50 000 spectators at Maksimir football stadium in Zagreb, Croatia, ex-Yugoslavia, where David Bowie was playing a fantastic gig as a part of his Sound & Vision The Greatest Hits Tour, 1990. Edited by Komandant Shamal - January 12 2016 at 00:28

cstack3 Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Reviewer page Forum Senior Member VIP Member Joined: July 20 2009 Location: Tucson, AZ USA Status: Offline Points: 6809	Posted: January 11 2016 at 23:57
	I only saw Bowie perform once, in the play "The Elephant Man." He was a brilliant actor of course. Bowie's Berlin era is some of my favorite, I was walking into a bank a few weeks ago and heard the Robert Fripp opening of "Heroes" on the radio, it was startling and breathtaking. RIP David, I didn't know your material as well as Yes or Genesis, but you certainly had a huge impact upon me, dating back to the very early 1970s!

Atavachron Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Reviewer page Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: September 30 2006 Location: Pearland Status: Offline Points: 64672	Posted: January 11 2016 at 22:45
	Bowie was the personification of what it was to be young in the mid- to late-70s; the whole alienated, androgynous, Rocky Horror thing found a home with the disassociated kids of the post-Hippie era, and Bowie was the definitive rebel of his time. You don't realize what you have until it's gone.
	"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." -- John F. Kennedy

ClemofNazareth Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Reviewer page Special Collaborator Prog Folk Researcher Joined: August 17 2005 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 4659	Posted: January 11 2016 at 22:03
	I had a friend when I was in college in the early 80s who was a DJ. He got tickets to an outdoor Bowie concert and invited me (probably because I had a car and it was a 200 mile road trip). There was a really bad rainstorm on the way there and we wrecked my car, I'm guessing the weed and wine might have been a factor too. Anyway I heard the concert got called off early so I suppose we didn't miss much, but it took about two weeks for the car to be rebuilt. Good times.
	"Peace is the only battle worth waging." Albert Camus

BrufordFreak Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Reviewer page Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: January 25 2008 Location: Wisconsin Status: Offline Points: 7974	Posted: January 11 2016 at 20:34
	I thought it appropriate to start a journalistic thread of personal vignettes of the various ways in which David Bowie touched our each of lives, individually. I personally was not a big fan of his music, but the timeless classic "Space Oddity" touched me as few songs have ever: eerie yet ethereal, human and yet spiritual, so unusual and unique for pop music. My favorite Bowie memory was when he introduced "my good friend, Jeff Beck" on one of those late night "Midnight Special"-type shows in the early seventies whereupon David left the stage and Jeff strummed his guitar once and went into a left-hand solo for what seemed like minutes. I was at a party but that viruoso guitar exhibition is all I can remember from that party. Otherwise, "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence" was incredibly powerful....
	Drew Fisher https://progisaliveandwell.blogspot.com/