Yesterday we lost one of the greats. A very special human who dazzled us with his music and inspired millions of weirdos to step into the sun.
The music press has responded with an outpouring of eulogies and hundreds of thousands of words recounting the amazing life of a true artist.
My earliest memory of Bowie is of a Christmas morning. I was five and the evening before my parents had taken me to a party. While we were out, burglars had smashed one of the windows in our mostly glass house. They took the Macintosh computer, my mother’s jewelry and my dad’s sound system. In the CD player was my beloved Beauty and the Beast soundtrack. I cried all day, devastated at the loss of the CD and the feeling that my home had been violated. Dad found a Bowie CD to play on something that had survived the robbery. It was the singles collection: 1969-1993. I remember the cover of a distorted yellow and red man, even now. The first track was “Space Oddity.” It moved me and as I danced around the house I forgot all about Beauty and the Beast. I wanted Bowie, not Belle from that day forward.
Here are some of the best things I’ve read about Bowie in the past 24 hours. Please add your own in the comments.
x Ally-Jane
Ann Powers for NPR
Adam Sweeting for The Guardian
Carl Wilson for Slate
Rob Sheffield for Rolling Stone
John Pareles for The New York Times
Joe Gross for the Austin American Statesman
Electric Literature shared David Bowie’s 100 favorite books
Ben Graham for The Quietus
Brian Eno shares an email he received from Bowie last week.
Cap Blackard for Consequence of Sound
Hilton Als for The New Yorker
I wish you’d commissioned the Scary Monsters proposal instead of Transformer.
Hi, I also wrote a tribute, on Bowie’s relationship with (Easterm) Europe for Pitchfork http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/992-how-the-cold-wars-fallout-shaped-david-bowie/
Lovely anecdote and tribute, Ally-Jane. Here’s what I just published, which isn’t very similar except that it also connects the love of Bowie to childhood:
http://avidly.lareviewofbooks.org/2016/01/12/how-to-bring-your-kids-up-bowie/
Thanks for these great links on the passing of a singular talent. Here’s my humble tribute, thanks for the invitation:http://rpmlifeinanalog.com/2016/01/11/a-master-of-masks-space-oddity-hits-stardust-david-bowie-1947-2016/
Ruth and Martin’s album club
http://ramalbumclub.com/