Archive for June, 2007
The Guitars of David Bowie?
Luke Slater over at TinMachine does a really neat survey of the guitars Bowie has used through the years. He comes to the conclusion Bowie basically has two guitars. One acoustic, one electric. Luke then finishes up with a conclusion that loses me. He thinks this is sad.
Now, ya gotta remember that for the most part, Bowie never considered himself a guitar player. Sure, he’s strummed a lot, but find a video where Bowie gets down on a guitar. It don’t happen. He plays piano, keyboards, saxophone, whatever it takes to get the sound he wants. No biggie. Also, consider the guitar players he’s hung out with over the last forty years or so:
- Mick Ronson
- John Lennon
- Jeff Beck
- Peter Frampton
- Stevie Ray Vaughn
- Nile Rodgers
- Charlie Sexton
- Earl Slick
- Carlos Alomar
- Adrian Belew
- Robert Fripp
- Reeves Gabrels
- David Gilmour
If I could count on that line-up to make me sound good, I’d have two less guitars than Bowie does.
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Space Oddity on Hits A Go Go ( have you seen THIS outfit before? )
If you wanna see the evolution of David Bowie in its entirity, just watch all the videos of Space Oddity. Or just do it here, I’ve got a bunch of them. And, I’ll probably have a bunch more. Never one of my favorite recordings, his live performances most often were much better than the studio. Unfortunately, this is not one of those. This is possibly the only time, outside of demo videos, you’ll see Bowie lip syncing here. However, the unusualness of this performance is worth watching. Remember Tommy James circa 1970 or so? Just watch, it’s a great chuckle to me:
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Space Oddity, the original motion picture
Most people consider the RCA/Mick Rock video of a shock-red-haired androgynous Bowie as the original Space Oddity video. A lot of sources will cite it as such. However, about three years before that, while he was still David Jones, he actually prepared a demo for Space Oddity that is a hoot to me to this day. This is a very young Bowie showing some of the almost child-like imagination that seemed prevalant through his early years. I actually like it more than the glitzier RCA version of 1972. If anyone has better information on this video, I’d love to have it here. Here it goes:
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Bowie’s webby acceptance speech
Bowie won a webby, that part I’ve already posted on here. However, for some bizarre reason, winners are only allowed to say five words. Here was Bowie’s:
“I only get five words?”,”S***, that was five. Four more there. That’s three,” “Two,” and then exiting.
Can’t see how you can get much better than that with only “five” words!
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