Slashdot Mirror
David Bowie Dies At Age 69 (bbc.co.uk)
echo-e writes: Renowned singer David Bowie has died after an 18-month battle with cancer. His latest album, Blackstar, was only just released on Friday — his birthday. His last live show was in 2006. Bowie rose to fame in the 1970s, and he is known for hits such as Under Pressure, Let's Dance, and Space Oddity. He also appeared in handful of films, such as Labyrinth in 1986.
Bowie was also notable for being one of the few musicians to immediately see the value and staying power of MP3s and the digital distribution of music. If anything, he was overly optimistic about it. In 2002, he said, "I don't even know why I would want to be on a label in a few years, because I don't think it's going to work by labels and by distribution systems in the same way. The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it's not going to happen. I'm fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing."
Send his ashes to Mars.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
It seems they're being rather tight lipped about what type of cancer it was, but rumors prior to his death (and prior to the public admission he even had cancer) claim it was lung cancer.
Just spent the weekend listening to the new album and trying to figure out the meaning behind the Blackstar video. It suddenly all makes sense.
He will be missed, but it's nice to know he left at the top of his game.
..now where did that
Not to mention his shrewdness in securitizing revenues from his songs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... . He got $55 million up front at the cost of ten years' revenue from his music. The revenues fell short but, based on what he was saying about the music business, he may have anticipated this.
Whether you like his music or not, there is no denying that David Bowie was a true artist, a real entertainer. There was nothing fake about him. Nowadays, we don't see real artists like him very often.
I suspect that you're seeing history through rose-tinted glasses. There were plenty of pop-acts in every era that Bowie overlapped with, we simply don't remember many of them.
Which is why we remember Bowie.
I wonder if anyone 30 years from now will remember Beyonce. We are officially in a worse period of music than disco.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Could be. Linda Ronstadt was hugely popular in the late seventies but is virtually forgotten today. The Manhattan Transfer won multiple Grammys and used to sell-out auditoriums like rock groups but is down to 2,000 seat auditoriums.
Bowie had staying power because he continually reinvented himself and managed to keep up with what the public wanted in addition to giving them something new to consider. He was willing to vary his look- Bowie in the Ziggy Stardust era versus The Man Who Fell To Earth era vs Labyrinth are basically completely different acts.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
It's probably unimaginable to many but, a few years back, I managed to get to see Meatloaf. It wasn't that many years ago. I want to say four years ago? It might have been five. Strangely enough - it was an excellent show. I saw Bowie twice back in the 70s. He was excellent, but more on that in a minute. Now, the kicker is, I saw Garth Brooks a couple of times and I don't even really like most goat-roping music. I also saw a whole bunch of Dead shows over the years - some good, some not so good. Not too many years ago, more recent than Meatloaf, I got to spend some time with the band and see Three Dog Night in concert. Yup, Three Dog Night - still together, tiny venue, special passes, even ate with 'em. I've seen Dylan at least a couple dozen times now, I've even met his son. For someone a little more obscure, there's Susan Tedeshi and, I might be biased, The Roy Hudson Band. Let's include Ian Anderson (alone or as Jethro Tull) in the group.
What do they all have in common? Well - every last one of them threw every ounce of energy and themselves into their show. They gave you everything they had (some exceptions for the Dead) with every show. There were others, like The Steve Miller Band and The Eagles, who gave you a polished show. Pink Floyd and even Metallica gave wonderfully polished shows. AC/DC and Ozzy are polished shows. But they don't have the same energy, they are not the same. The first group is a group of artists who put everything they have onto the stage. They hold little, if anything, back. If you've ever been on stage and played, well, you understand the actual effort that that can take. Actually, add Elton John and Billy Idol to the first list. I can't leave them out. I'm sure I'm missing more.
This is probably going to run a little long but I have a point, really. It's just not easy to say, at least not for me.
There's a certain something, I don't have a word for it, that I think an in-tune audience can appreciate and the artist feeds off of it. Certain artists, fewer than we might hope, have that capacity and they give you their all - and you give them your undivided attention and enjoy the moment. It's not easily put to words, at least not by me, but it's there and all the more palpable if you've been fortunate enough to be on both sides. (I'm not very good but I've played and sung in front of some reasonably large groups of people, sometimes even for money. The largest would be about 12,500 at a very overcrowded Hemp Fest, it was fun.) I don't know how to describe it but it's not just a connection, it's a willingness to push that to the limits, to push yourself to the limits (I presume - I'm not that good), and to really make everything work as best as one can.
It's not even about raw musical talent. A fairly well-to-do friend hired a rather famous guitar soloist to play at his party one year. The music was absolutely flawless. It was mind-blowing. He ripped scales I'd never even realized could go together. He's rather famous for a reason. He's as fluid as water and as technically pure as possible. The acoustics were perfect, the ambiance was perfect, the music was phenomenal. Yet, he sat on a bar stool. There were no vocals (he doesn't have vocals and generally only does private shows like this) and no movement, no anything... It was so perfect and yet so dead.
That's the opposite of Bowie... I'd not even say that Bowie was, on the scale of things, all that musically talented compared to many others. Yet, he was fantastic. He was, well, not just able but willing to put himself and everything he had into making art. I'm told that some shows from The Doors were similar to that but I never saw them. But Bowie? I only saw him twice and yet I still remember the sentiment and appreciation. Fucked if I remember what was played, I was blitzed! But, I digress...
I guess I'd have liked to see him later in his career but I just never got to it. I don't actually regret that, oddly. I'm happy for the two times that I did get to see him. I'm happy for the short time I had in
"So long and thanks for all the fish."