#UK - David Bowie

[pixiedeadbeat]

A very young David Bowie, 1960’s

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

David Bowie - Moonage Daydream

[incorrectquotesconaisseur]

I don't understand how people watch life on mars, see sam tyler die bc of listening to david bowie, centering the whole story around a david bowie song, giving sam a boyfriend best friend VERY STRAIGHT AND MACHO BOSS whose name is based on a david bowie song, making sam a canon david bowie fan and STILL not see how that boy is the most bisexual to ever bisexual

[erikoswinoswald]

Collaboration: Frank Ockenfels 3 x David Bowie

by Frank Ockenfels 3

Hardcover & Kindle

6 November

256-pages

[thekingofspin]

Life on mars alternative description:

man falls in love with tumor and dies

[soundslivemagazine]

When We Silence The Music, We All Lose

Recently, I came across an instrument company called AeroBand that makes wireless MIDI ‘air drums’ with a sort of haptic feedback response, marketed as ‘silent’ drums, and the concept stuck with me for a while. The purpose of these ‘drums’ would be fairly obvious to anyone who has ever lived in shared or rented accommodation: keep the noise down, be a good neighbour! But it also signals a bigger problem with vanishing musical and communal ‘third’ spaces where loud music, loud kids and activity can exist, and the music in turn gets quieter and more invisible until you can’t hear what it is saying anymore.

We have gone from drum kits to electronic pads and deadened practice kits for the domestic drummer, to eventually having people in rented accommodation being so worried about noise complaints that they’ve had to create drum-less drums. No drummer prefers these, they are simply a way of protecting yourself from eviction. Living in matchbox houses with paper thin walls made of cheap and in-no-way soundproof material, packed so close you’re a stone’s throw from your neighbours, we’ve silenced the drumkit entirely.

Is it any surprise then that people are not forming bands in the numbers they used to 30 years ago? Is it a surprise that we moved from bands rehearsing in basements and garages in their houses, to samples, electronic kits, MIDI, solo ‘bedroom’ stuff; even as we lose more and more rehearsal spaces, and schools stop offering kids musical lessons because they must be inferior to subjects that lead to a job in IT or finance? We lose youth centres, community spaces, musical spaces, and everyone’s world gets a little quieter.

Gentrification. People move into the ‘fun’ parts of town and then file complaints against the very things that make an area ‘fun’ in the first place: music, noises, lights, life, later evening events and establishments. A residential permit accidentally granted to a builder in downtown Montreal’s vibrant entertainment and culture district and the subsequent noise complaints from residents who knowingly moved in next to an old, culturally significant music theatre, have recently led to the shutting of the 130-year old La Tulipe. Kingston, Ontario’s BLU Martini, a beautiful 400-capacity bar and music venue located right on the downtown waterfront, shut its doors this September after 41 years of playing an important role in the city’s homegrown music scene, ten in its final location. With no one else wanting to pick up the mantle, the space’s next inhabitants will be Chuck’s Roadhouse Bar and Grill, who aren’t particularly interested in ensuring the space continues to host emerging live musical talent. Cardiff grassroots venue The Moon, known for launching the careers of many of the UK’s best emerging musicians, closed its doors last month.

Tiny Horse (left) and The Wilderness (right) at Kingston's BLU Martini in 2024.

Elsewhere, city councils are so afraid of the word ‘rave’, they aren’t fully sure what it means but think it means ‘illicit drugs-taking event’ and want to ban any instance of it. The raves move out of the city, to obscure, remote locations, or abandon the city altogether. The city loses another piece of its existing culture.

Sometimes we stop the music right at the source: The Rehearsal Factory, a notable rehearsal space with spots all over Toronto, has dwindled down to 2 or 3 locations over the last 20 years, with their notable Richmond St. branch being sold off to a controversial Australian megachurch. Roswell Rehearsals lost its space in Kingston two years ago due to noise complaints, and its absence was sorely felt by the city’s many young, renting musicians who felt caught out by the lack of a dedicated musical space. Fearing hefty fines, potential police action and even eviction if they tried to practise indoors, the warm welcome it received on reopening its doors this October was evidence of how much it was needed in the local music community. As more and more artists live in rented or shared accommodations where practising out loud simply isn’t practical, the loss of rehearsal spaces within reasonable commuting distance is effectively the death of emerging music: it either is forced to spread itself thin hours outside of towns and cities, the congregation sites of culture and events, or it dies altogether, leaving the cultural fabric of the whole nation weaker and less colourful.

I wanted to take a walking tour of historically important music sites in London when I visited. As one of the music capitals of the world, London, and the UK by extension, have been responsible for a large amount of global popular culture: with an annual music export worth £2.5 billion in 2021, they are one of only 3 countries that exports more music than it imports, and the second-largest exporter overall.

The inner city of London alone has had many important venues, clubs, studios— the Blitz, where the New Romantic kids first congregated for their David Bowie nights in the 1980s, The 2i’s Coffee Bar, where many stars of the 1960s were discovered, including Cliff Richards, Tommy Steel, Francis Bacon and much of the skiffle movement, are just two examples.

New Romantic kids at the Blitz in Soho, London in the 1980s.

Neither exists anymore. Three-fourths of the planned London music tour involved looking for ghosts: empty spaces, corporate offices and residence buildings sitting on the burial grounds of moments of cultural significance. I didn’t end up doing the tour, I didn’t think I could bear to look at these places, to try and imagine what they once were and what their downfall means for the health of the modern music scene.

The London-based neo-jazz group Ezra Collective formed in 2012 as teenagers in a youth club: they were in the Tomorrow’s Warriors youth band, a music education initiative at the South Bank Centre in London. Eleven years later, they shone as the first-ever jazz winners of the prestigious Mercury Music Prize for their 2023 album, Where I’m Meant To Be, signalling a shift in how their musical movement blending traditional jazz with RnB, soul, electronic, alternative, Afrobeats and hip hop, has been steadily gaining legitimacy as a uniquely British sound, even within the traditional circles of jazz study where it was once treated as mongrel.

In his acceptance speech at the Mercuries, Ezra Collective percussionist Femi Koleoso took time to celebrate their youth club beginnings, praising the ‘good, special people putting time and effort into [helping] young people to play music’. Much has been made of the benefits music has for young people: everything from developing brains to keeping kids off the street, giving them a sense of community and purpose; something to look forward to and love. Ezra Collective are proof of just how far providing young people with musical spaces can go.

Sure, sites pop up and go down all the time, often shining brightly for a short period of time. That is part and parcel of being in the ideas- and coffee (alcohol?)-driven, volatile, passion-fuelled and chronically underfunded art scene that music is. But when over the years, we are left with less and less: fewer spaces, stricter laws, higher costs, less funding, decreasing importance given to the role musicians play in society, and ultimately fewer venues to play, fewer musicians, and certainly fewer of the vital working class voices that so often hold a mirror to our society, as music becomes the reserve of the rich, there is no doubting that its strength and conviction will dilute without conscious intervention.

It’s the same with the Bluetooth drums. I know the makers only want to do good, bless them for trying, and I don’t doubt a lot of people will find this a better practice solution than drawing MIDI notes on a quantized grid, because it still feels a little like playing live, albeit hitting the air with vibrating haptic feedback. It’ll be AR or VR drums next, inevitably. I’m aware of the passage of time and I don’t wish it ill.

What saddens me is that we lose so much of the spirit of art and culture to this dilution. The music getting quieter as to not offend the neighbours, even as musicians get slowly choked out of gentrified spaces. Writers being unable (or less freely able) to explore darker themes so as to not set the dogs of the ‘problematic writing’ police on them. Artists presenting as less dramatic so as to not appear ‘weird’ to an uninvested audience; TikTok’s adherence to a straitjacketed definition of correctly performed ‘authenticity’. Making fun of anyone who dares to dress weird, look different, say something new. You see it everywhere. Art gets diluted to become palatable with ever-diminishing returns, and in doing so it loses its ability to express itself and say something that needs to be said.

I don’t know. Some could look at it as the weird, twisted, fucked up plant growing through cracks in the pavement, doing what it can to reach the sunlight. Art surviving despite everything; changing, evolving, and somehow being more poignant and posing a stronger message as a result.

But even a 22h everlasting candle has an end. We’ve got to do more to protect our artistic spaces and outlets, and the ability to create without fear, or we risk losing them forever. It takes just one generation to train out habits; we see it with other obsolete things, let’s not let art be one of those.

Read on Sounds Live Magazine.

[yourenotdyllanthomas]

it's so funny that some of the greatest musicians of all time came from the UK but Robbie Williams is the one they're fighting for. you guys made Queen, Bowie, Elton John, The Beatles, and so many more but the guy who made himself into a monkey is the one we're starting WW3 for?

[g1ngervit1s]

thats life!

[freddiemercurylegendabovelegends]

Today, on June 1st, 1982 - Queen Story!

‘Las Palabras De Amor (The Words Of Love)’ bw ‘Cool Cat’ released in the UK (taken 'Hot Space' album)

- ‘Las Palabras De Amor (The Words Of Love)’

Written by Brian May

- ‘Cool Cat’

Written by John Deacon and Freddie Mercury

🔸"David Bowie sang backing vocals on one of my songs that was on the album, it's not Under Pressure, it's another one, but he didn't like what he did"

- Freddie Mercury

Interview 1982

🔸"David just did a backing track.

He said: 'I want it taken off, because I'm not satisfied with it.' Unfortunately, he didn't tell us until about a day before the album was supposed to be released, so it really set us back. It delayed the album's release"

- Brian May

Interview 1982

Pic: Screenshot from Official Video 'Las Palabras De Amor'

👉 June 1982

Queen played a special performance of 'Las Palabras De Amor (The Words Of Love)' for BBC's Top Of The Pops, UK

[socumonfeelthenoize]

[theditchlillies]

David Bowie // Hadden Hall, Kent, England // September 1970

Photographer: Keith MacMillan

[charliefics]

hoping this doesnt get taken down //

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

David Bowie – Modern Love

[incorrectquotesconaisseur]

if I had a nickel for every fandom centered around david bowie songs that tore my heart out, stomped on it, burnt it to a crisp and left me damaged irreparably that tackles grief and found family and features heavy homoeroticism and repressed homosexuality, I'd have two nickels. which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice

[erikoswinoswald]

★ David Bowie ★ Forever ★

[thekingofspin]

I definitely come on here and say this every time I watch this episode, but the final roof scene in life on Mars gives me chills every single time with the music and the drama. it's just everything.