David Bowie Webdream

Love this!

It doesn’t get much better than this:

According to NASA administrator Maj. Gen. Charles F. Bolden, Jr., the highly experimental glam space program—dubbed Project Starman—has been in development for exactly five years. Though engineers initially feared the mission might blow our minds, the historic launch ultimately proceeded without incident.

“Admittedly, this is a very bold and risky departure for the agency,” said Bolden, later adding that Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust period and other outer-space-related work has been a major influence on NASA’s direction since the early 1970s. “Those familiar with NASA’s previous, more conventional research and exploration sensibilities are going to be in for quite a shock. Many are likely to be confused and threatened by the boundary-pushing nature of the project.”

And it only gets better from there.  Love The Onion!

In 1996 Jack Gillis married Meg White. He then became Jack White, they became The White Stripes. Pretty much the first thing they did was a cover of Moonage Daydream:

Eventually they would do another little ditty called Seven Nation Army:

OK, so I got to see The Spy Next Door this weekend with my now seven year old boy.  It was a fun movie in a cute childish way.  Definitely made for kids.  This is standard Jackie Chan kid stuff here.  It was fun, definitely a thumbs up, but still kid stuff.  Except for one odd thing: the plot centers around a bootleg of David Bowie and Iggy Pop performing together.  Now, that’s cool and all, but I don’t get why it’s in this movie.  Now, the person this performance means something to is a ten year old boy.  He was born in 1999.  Bowie hasn’t really done a lot since 1999.  He’s done a lot of cool things, but musically, not so much.  Now, granted, retro and alternative radio plays a lot of Bowie, but not a whole lot of ten year old boys sit around listening to those stations.  So, bottom line, they may have heard Bowie, but I sure don’t see how a ten year old boy would be a fan.  They hear a lot about Elvis too.  I’ll put it this way, think back to when you were ten.  How many of your idols then were over the age of 20?

Secondly, and probably less profound, the only Bowie/Pop bootlegs I’m aware of were the 1977 The Idiot tour.  And, that’s all over the internet.  It’s just striking me as weird with all the Bowie themed small kid movies coming out.

And lastly, and certainly least profound, Jackie Chan is 55.  According to him he saw the Bowie/Pop performance that we have to assume was 1977 or so.  According to the movie, Bob Ho was living in China.  Bowie and Pop never performed in China.

Just a note to the future movie makers, we all know Bowie’s the coolest thing to ever hit pop music.  That’s a given, and that’s documented by his work.  However, to make a movie the least bit believable, keep Bowie in perspective.  If it’s a movie about 30 to 50 somethings, Bowie’s fine.  If it’s a movie about little kids,  Bowie’s not.  It’s a distraction that doesn’t need to be there.  Scour the latest teen magazines and you’ll find plenty of fillers for the movie.  And, quite frankly, I think most 40 somethings don’t really appreciate the fact some people think their music is on the same level as something a ten year old would listen to.  Music’s just not what it was thirty years ago.

Ever since I’ve been blogging here, I’ve lamented the fact that The Stooges were not in the Rock’n'Roll Hall of Fame.  The Rolling Stones were the original bad boys of rock.  But, they did it in a typical PR kinda way.  It seemed contrived.  Then, along came Iggy and the Stooges.  They were bad.  Real bad.  There wasn’t much to like about them.  Their music was very basic.  It was recorded in a way that made it sound like someone literally sat a mic in front of the entire band.  Iggy was prone to cut himself on stage, not terribly appealing.  He was prone to make musical statements that didn’t really make a lot of sense.  Basically, everything about Iggy was chaos.  The staple that seemed to keep him from going completely over the edge were The Stooges.  There are several legacies left in the aftermath of The Stooges.  The most obvious being:

Although bands like Pearl Jam attributed Neil Young with being the godfather of grunge, they’re way off.  Iggy made being stupid cool. While other bands were becoming more and more studio oriented, The Stooges stripped it all back down again, paving the way for The Ramones and punk.

While other bands were pretending to be bad:

That’s not fake blood.  While others pretended to push sexuality to new levels:

Iggy did it on stage.

Social barriers?

That may be Iggy in white.

Contortionist?

Lounge lizard?

Bondage?

Glam?

Now, ya gotta keep in mind that Iggy did all this before the Beatles broke up.  Michael Jackson wasn’t even a teenager yet.   While major acts were polishing their images, Iggy did everything possible to destroy his.  It became very uncomfortable to watch.  Everything punk aspired to be, Iggy took it over the top while laying the groundwork.  Iggy went solo at some point.  He had some minor hits along the way.  He teamed with Kate Pierson to have his biggest hit in 1990.  The Stooges basically went nowhere and didn’t do much.  In 2003 Iggy re-joined them toured with them since.

Iggy was pretty emotional about finally getting in.  They had been passed over seven times while performers who had obviously less of an impact on rock got it.  For Iggy, it was vindication.  For guitarist and bassist Ron Asheton, it was meaningless.  He died earlier this year.

There are so many bands that performed for nothing more than to sell a few records, maybe score some babes, or even better, make lots of money.  Then there were true musicians and performers who felt music was something different, something special.  The Hall of Fame is for special performers.  They need to think long and hard about how they select their members.  Ron Asheton never had the limelight, never made a bunch of money, and could have scored chicks without all the aggravations and notoriety of performing with Iggy.  But, he seemed to know something special was happening.  He’ll never know that the rock world knew it was special too.

This one’s for Eric Schmidt.  If you got skeletons in your closet, you better not let Google know about it.

Well, sorta.  And, definitely not in that way.  More like this:

This is part of a collection of Adam Lambert album cover parodies.  Several are good.  However, the comparison is there for a reason I imagine.  Adam Lambert loves glam.  Bowie loved glam.  Therefore, they have to be compared, right?

I don’t really think so.  Here’s the performance that got everyone all worked up:

And, here’s the glam I enjoyed as as kid:

Now, the difference being primarily, for me, that in Bowie’s glam days, it was the music that initially set Bowie apart.  Then you tossed in the odd outfits and sometimes bizarre stage shows.  Toss in a gay reference occasionally to keep them guessing.  But, with Bowie, it was more of a WTF moment than a statement on sexuality.  With Lambert, particularly this song and performance, it seemed to be purely a sexual statement.  The music is lame.  And, I mean, way lame.  This guy can sing, but doesn’t at this time.  Then you’ve got gay, S&M, bondage, blah, blah, blah.  If you can’t figure what these people are emulating, you never will.  This is no WTF moment.

People just don’t get what glam was.  Sure, it was some outlandish costumes, but the music was what set it apart. As rich as the visual experience was, the music was much moreso.  Until a Lambert or someone gets it, I’ll be disappointed.  Quite frankly, I don’t think Lambert ever will.

About a week or so ago, I had a discussion with my teenage step-daughter.  She’s hip.  She keeps one eye covered with hair at all times so the world can’t see her face.  She’s not emo tho.  Be sure to understand that.  During some strange dinner time conversation, she questioned the fact that I seemed to have a David Bowie comment about anything pop we discuss.  She really seemed to think I was stretching things a bit.  I explained to her that the reason I focused on the world according to David Bowie is because he sort of is in the middle of everything musical for the last thirty years or so.  I was fairly confident in my claim.

We then hopped in the car and drove to Atlanta, Georgia, to watch U2.  Now, the only U2 connection was the fact that Bowie worked with a fella named Brian Eno.  Brian Eno would later hook up with U2 to produce an album called The Unforgettable Fire.  That was a pretty good mix.  Bowie and Eno were a good mix as well, delivering one of Bowie’s most recognizable songs to this day.  Eno has again teamed up with U2 to produce the album U2 is supporting for this tour.  So, imagine how I felt when U2 was preparing to hit the stage and they played one song over the PA before the band came on:

David Bowie of course. And, in deference to Eno in some way or another, not a song Eno had anything to do with. They could have done Heroes…….

Needless to say, I had to get a dig in on the young and inexperienced step-daughter.

Tomorrow I’m taking the boy to see a movie that features this song:

During their shows, they often do Heroes, a Bowie/Eno collaboration.

And, they opened for U2 a time or two.

Small world huh?

My friend JeniQ noticed something I had always noticed, but never really put much thought to.  It’ll make itself kind of obvious as this post meanders.  Some history first.

In 1969, following the success of Space Oddity, Bowie went back in the studios to release his next big hit.  He teamed up with Marc Bolan, who was pretty hot at the time.  And, he was pretty much totally infatuated with a babe named Angela Barnett.  Tony Visconti was producing this round, and had a particular song in mind:

London Bye Ta Ta wasn’t floating too well with Bowie.  So, Bowie and Bolan put together a little ditty pretty much featuring Bolan’s guitar work:

Catchy guitar riff, smooth lyrics, nothing shocking or weird.  It went absolutely nowhere.  A few years later, Bowie was a star, and he was putting together a quick album to follow up on the popularity of Ziggy Stardust.  Most of the songs for Aladdin Sane were harsh, cold, disenchanted, and loud.  Except for one song:

Not content that The Prettiest Star was so horrible no one would buy it, Bowie re-made it with Mick Ronson on guitar.  Visconti once again was producing the song he didn’t want to produce in the first place.  There was one very noticeable difference.  They added doo-wops.  What got left on the cutting room floor was the guitar solo intro.  Starting instead with the classic guitar riff.

Fast forward a decade or so and Bowie’s friend Julien Temple was producing a movie.  He got Bowie to do a supporting role.  And, more importantly to me, record the theme song to the movie.  This type of collaboration had previously yielded Cat People.  So, the concept was promising.  However, the song was not quite as creative as Cat People.  It enjoyed a quick stint in the charts and pretty much faded from most Bowie fans’ song lists.  There was most definitely a reason for this:

For those that had been around Bowie for a while, we had already heard it.  He even brought back the opening solo.

But, it was still good.  And, both are in my Top 20 Bowie tunes of all time.

Every year a few diehard rockers that actually can go back 25 years start thunping for The Stooges to make it into the Rock’n'Roll Hall of Fame.  That’s Iggy Pop for the others.  We do that for one very simple reason:

They invented punk. The Rolling Stones and others ran around snarling and acting bad. However, going to their concert was as exciting as watching Abba. The Stooges took concerts to a whole new level where you often truly feared for your safety and sanity. Sometimes, you were truly ashamed to watch the personal destruction occurring on stage. In other words, you were actually affected. Punk would spawn all kinds of spin-offs that we listen to today. Almost every young band emulates Iggy at some point by crowd surfing. Watch the video to learn how to do it right. Iggy didn’t just lay there and wallow around. He stood on people. He walked on people. He threw peanut butter. Most people like myself know that Iggy and The Stooges aren’t in there because their sound was unpolished, the band members not pretty, and the crowds at the time were small. However, what they created was huge and Kiss and The Red Hot Chili Peppers will be the first to tell you The Stooges belong there before they do. I’m not going into any argument about any of the rest of the list. But, before any of them get in, The Stooges need to be there.