A Sense of Doubt blog post #1987 - The first time I heard David Bowie - Musical Monday for 2007.27

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1987 - The first time I heard David Bowie - Musical Monday for 2007.27

Welcome to a new series that I am calling "The First Time I Heard."

Not a super inventive or creative title but a very descriptive one.

But there's a series of books called THE FIRST TIME I HEARD with volumes about Joy Division/New Order, David Bowie, the Smiths, Kate Bush, My Bloody Valentine, and of course, The Cocteau Twins, the last of which being how I learned of the series and the first one I bought.

This one:


As the series page says of it:


The "First Time I Heard" book series is edited by Scott Heim, a novelist (Mysterious Skin, We Disappear) who is also a longtime music fan. Other installments in the series (or those forthcoming soon) include books on David Bowie, The Smiths, Kate Bush, Cocteau Twins, R.E.M., Kraftwerk, My Bloody Valentine, Abba, Roxy Music, The Pixies, and others.


And so I WAS INSPIRED to give this a shot. Though I have never been a fan of My Bloody Valentine, not that I dislike the and, I just don't know the music, the others have all been huge in my life and my attraction to music with the Smiths being the one that would rank last in that group and yet still that band and Morrissey have been a huge influence.

If I sustain this feature, some of the artists/bands listed as forthcoming (Roxy Music, Kraftwerk, REM, The Pixies) would be in my list, too, as well as Radiohead, Donald Fagen, Indigo Girls, Ani DiFranco, Erykah Badu, and many more, too many more than I feel like listing at this moment, but to get some idea, the list is HERE.





Of course, I have to start my series with DAVID BOWIE because no other artist has had such a profound effect on my life, my heart, my soul, and my art. Yeah, that's cheesy as fuck for me to write. It's also true.

Of course, I could go on and on about Bowie, but the books seem to confine contributors to relatively short reflections.

And yet, short for me is long for others. My David Bowie story has three parts. Part one takes place in high school, part two shortly thereafter, and part three in my first quarter at college, all within a year's time from December of 1979 to October of 1980.

My story about David Bowie starts with something about which I am extremely ashamed, but it's also a good story to show my development as a human and as I cast off cultural and societal attitudes, implicit biases, hateful dogma, religious persecution, schoolyard persecution, and heteronormative, hegemonic bigotry.

I first heard David Bowie in 1979 when he appeared on Saturday Night Live (SNL). I have shared video clips, images, and articles relating to that appearance here in this blog post.

I am at a cast party for the play Scrooge that took place at Gull Lake High School in which I played Scrooge, himself, in December of 1979. Because of Bowie's appearance, I know that the party took place the night of Saturday December 15th, 1979, and was still going rather late as SNL always aired from 11:30 to 1 a.m.

Though we were interacting, singing around a piano, and playing various games, the TV must have been on, and I saw David Bowie for the very first time. I distinctly remember the strange, puppet thing from that performance, and the song "Boys Keep Swinging," which seems to reference gay lifestyle of so it seemed to me at the time.

Now, at this point in my life, I have no idea about gay lifestyle, which was not yet even called "gay" by everyone as "homosexuality" still was the most common term. I was sheltered in my little suburban/rural high school and community of all supposedly white, supposedly straight people. There were two black people in our school of about a thousand students, and no gay people, at least none that I knew about at the time. Little did I know that my co-star, who played Bob Cratchit, would later come out of the closet as gay, so would my best friend, and probably at least half a dozen others.

Still, when seeing Bowie, I remember that I said, out loud, for many to hear, "What a faggot." I did not say it mirthfully or lightly. There was malice in my voice.

Honestly, at this time in my life, I had no real idea of what a "faggot" even was. I knew it had something to do with overly effeminate men, and I know I had been called it a lot on playgrounds and hallways since about fourth grade. I would have been called it in school bathrooms or locker rooms if I ever went inside those places during the peak hours of usage, but I did not. I avoided them like the plague.

And given that I was with a bunch of high schoolers trying to be theatre people, some who would make a life out of theatre, like my still in the closet, gay co-star, it seems that Bowie's swishy performance would trigger some latent fear in myself that caused me to try to push it and him away.

Probably, I was saying what I thought would help me fit in. I vaguely remember that people in the room were uncomfortable or dismissive. I don't remember what any one said. I am pretty sure I was the only one who called Bowie a "fag." It would take me years to unpack and understand this moment. I did not have any malice for gay people at all. And "fag" was not and did not become a word regularly used in my lexicon. In fact, once I had a better understanding of the world and gay people's place in it in the early 1980s, I never, ever used that word again. And yet, my own inner journey and feelings about myself had just begun. Because fitting into a hateful society of moral majority was only part of why I called Bowie a "faggot."

Just a few months later, on my first day of college, as a declared theatre and English major, I would meet my first truly out of the closet gay man, who would squeeze onto a couch in the lounge being used as a class room, squeeze between two women I had sat down with, both of whom I hoped to sleep with, and say "some of us are blessed with thin hips," in the most, stereotypical gay manner ever.

This incident would be a huge awakening for me in interacting with gay people, understanding what it means to be gay, and working through the years and years of indoctrinated homophobia that had been programmed into me along with the ever-present concern that my own femininity was proof that I was latently gay or at least bi-sexual. All this personal development compounded by the fact that my academic advisor was a sexual predator who preyed on confused men to sate his own sexual appetites.

It would take me many years to work through how my heterosexual masculinity felt threatened every time someone wondered if I was gay, clearly a response due to the bullying at the hands of subhumans playground thugs.

Okay, second confession. I used to shoplift. I am taking a big risk by writing of that here, but really, how many people actually read my blog. Oh, you're reading. Hi. Well, don't turn me in for a decades-later trial and sentencing. The statute of limitations has probably passed. I am not proud of my rebellious criminal behavior, but I did it, so it's probably time to come clean.

Some period of time after seeing Bowie on SNL, probably in the summer, I stole his new album 1980's Scary Monsters and Super Creeps from a big box store. I am not sure why given I did that given my first impression of Mr. Bowie. But I did. I took the album home, put it on the turntable, and what I played was so foreign to my sensibilities, even for someone who had graduated from Kansas and Toto to Pink Floyd's The Wall, I hated it.

The first track, "It's No Game pt.1" opens with strange sizzling sounds, and then a pop, as if a metal container had been opened. Bowie counts in the music with "one, two, two, two" and then a Japanese woman's voice speaks over wailing guitars, screeching and screaming, in what Bowie asked of Fripp to "outplay B.B. King in a guitar duel" as Bowie's voice cuts in screams like the guitars, enraged, caustic. It was like the punk of the time but not. I had not yet heard the punk music of the time nor anything really experimental, such as the Berlin music in which Bowie had immersed himself in the late 1970s. It sounded like noise. I to turn it off. I couldn't listen to it. I don't think I even made it through the first side of the album.

Okay, David Bowie experiment over. Between SNL and the stolen album, I had decided that he was too weird for me, triggered my own uncertainties about sexuality that I didn't even know I had, and his album was unlistenable by human ears. Done and done.

And then I entered my freshman year at Kalamazoo College. Suddenly without the baggage of playground bullying, nerdism, role-playing game club management stigma, and other things that for girls would have been social suicide, I was surrounded by attractive women, many of whom actually found me attractive. In fact, my geeky aspects soon become a plus and not a minus. And since I was hard on  puberty (yeah, sorry, that joke is SO MALE), I couldn't get enough of interactions with beautiful and smart women (since mostly only smart people went to that school). I joke that I majored in women at K-College, and though that may sound sexist, I hope you know dear reader how much I love and respect women, so keep that in mind as you read my remarks.

So, I met this amazing woman whom I desperately wanted to sleep with and never did. I probably could have as she did stay up all night once talking with me. But I was still a shy boy and usually did not know how to make a move. Her name was Janniki Kuppuru. No, I am not sure of the spelling. She was half Indian, born in Sri Lanka, raised for half her life in London and the other half in southern California. She never wore shoes. She only attended K for one year and refused to wear shoes, even in the winter. Eventually, she relented and bought a pair of boots to wear crossing the quad to class or the cafeteria, but she would take the boots off as soon as she was safely indoors and leave them by the door. Kindly, no one stole her boots.

I met her in the fall before the temperatures and snow fell just by wandering the all-girls dorm and talking with women who had their doors open. Janniki was full on hippy with the paisley skirts and Indian chemises from her birth place, that had up until 1972 been known as Ceylon. Janniki was tall, thin (not too thin) with curly dark hair and skin that was lightly tinted brown.

Either when we first met or more likely a few weeks later, we stayed up all night talking, drinking, maybe even smoking a little pot, which I had just tried for the first time around this time period. We talked about all the things that college students often talk about, and as I was learning, other people, especially brilliant and fascinating women, were greats sources for authors, musicians, artists, and schools of thought I had never heard of.

After many hours getting to know me, Janniki asked me if I had ever listened to David Bowie. I said I had and I had not liked him at all, referencing the unlistenable Scary Monsters album but wisely keeping the shame of my homophobic comments about his SNL performance to myself.

"So, you have never listened to Ziggy Stardust?" she asked me. I indicated that I had not.

"YOU," meaning given what she knew of me so far as a science fiction loving geek boy, which had some cachet in 1980 among more progressive thinking (and probably also somewhat geeky) college students, "would LOVE this album. The full title is The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars."

I had to admit that the title sounded cool, but then, I had been hopeful about the title of Scary Monsters and Super Creeps.

Janniki had a copy, of course. She insisted that I listen attentively to the whole thing, take in its story about the alien Ziggy Stardust.

And so, in the room of dim lights, incandescent lamps covered with scarves, her walls covered with posters about the Tamil Tigers, Bowie, and surrealist and abstract art, we lay there together in the middle of the night listening to the album, snuggled near to each other on the floor among bean bags, pillows, and bedding as she preferred to sleep on the floor. Her bed was covered with clothes, books, and some still unemptied suitcases.

And I fell in love.

With David Bowie.

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars starts very differently than Scary Monsters with the "slow quick quick" heartbeat-like drum of "Five Years" that slowly builds in volume until the auto-harp kicks in and then eventually acoustic guitar and a string orchestra.

The song is about how the human race has only five years left to avert apocalyptic disaster as told to us by Ziggy Stardust, an alien who has "fallen to earth" and cannot get home.

As one song moved to the next, played at a high volume, because the album cover indicates that the album is meant to be played at "maximum volume," I couldn't believe I had so misjudged David Bowie. We were kindred spirits. As the songs referenced science fiction tropes popular in Britain at the time (1971) and invoked shades of things like War of the Worlds or Day of the Triffids, I feel more and more in love.

Sure, I had a huge crush on Janaki Kuruppu. I desperately wanted to kiss her. But she gave me something more valuable than whatever brief tryst we might have had before she took up with her boyfriend, a giant, blonde-headed farm boy from Nebraska with whom she ran off when both of them decided either they were done with K-College or done with college entirely.

And so, I was hooked. I saw Janaki often for the rest of the school year but once she took up with Biff Studly or whatever his name was, I saw her much less and never again for an all night talk. But I did see a great deal more of David Bowie. As I was starting to work as a DJ at the radio station, I began playing his albums. I gave Scary Monsters another listen, and since my tastes were growing more sophisticated, I started to not just like it but LOVE IT. Though I probably have listened to Low more than any other album, Scary Monsters and Super Creeps remains my favorite. I even used "It's No Game, part two" in an avant-garde theatrical performance my senior year.

There are an awful lot of mistakes on that album that I went with, rather than cut them out. One tries as much as possible to put oneself on the line artistically. But after the Dadaists, who pronounced that art is dead…Once you’ve said art is dead, it’s very hard to get more radical than that. Since 1924 art’s been dead, so what the hell can we do with it from there on? One tries to at least keep readdressing the thing…
David Bowie, promo disc for Scary Monsters, 1980.

@wordpressdotcom https://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/2011/08/08/its-no-game-pts-1-2/

I recorded my own music video of "Rock 'n Roll Suicide" from The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. I wrote an essay about Bowie music called "Yassassin" as a preface to my Moby Dick paper for American Literature class. And in so many more ways I lived my Bowie love, even shouting "BOWIE!" at the top of my lungs, often, while walking around campus when I was a foolish and attention-seeking young man.

Thank you Janaki Kuruppu. You gave me a life long love of David Bowie. I am forever grateful.

And as for my initial shame, after years of personal reflection and exploration, I hope I have come to a place of total acceptance.  I no longer feel threatened if someone thinks I am gay anymore than someone thinking I was born in Germany would freak me out. In fact, sometimes I follow the example of a friend who ran the University LBTGQ organization and responded with "thank you" any time anyone asked her if she was gay. Like, you know, if she had been mistaken for Cameron Diaz or something similar. I have come to be in that same mindset, too. I believe I have peeled back all the layers of denial and rationalization to understand my sexuality and the sexuality of the world around me, though I still feel both are works in progress.

For that, thank you David Bowie. You started my journey and you have been a paragon example along the way.

Blog readers can see my love of Bowie on this blog as I featured Daily Bowie posts for about 80 days after his death and have posted about him many times, such as

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #122 - Five Years - Seven Songs
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #185 - Happy Birthday David Bowie
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #187 - David Bowie Dies 1601.10 at age of 69
and

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #197 - The Daily Bowie - Day 0 - "Space Oddity"

And so that's my first episode of FIRST TIME I HEARD.

Here's some videos and resources on Bowie's 1979 performance.

https://www.davidbowie.com/blog/2019/12/16/how-bowie-waved-bye-bye-to-the-70s-on-snl

Bowie – TMWSTW, TVC15 & Boys Keep Swinging SNL 79 from Gia on Vimeo.

And now he is a puppet dancer”

Forty years ago today a whole new persuasion of young Americans awoke having been converted by David Bowie’s appearance on Saturday Night Live the previous evening.

For it was on 15th December 1979 that this live broadcast in New York had a similarly persuasive effect on a receptive group of US youngsters that Starman on TOTPs in 1972 and the BBC’s 1975 Cracked Actor documentary had on UK teenagers.

Of course, the youth of America looking for something new had already had their hearts and minds captured by broadcasts of both The 1980 Floor Show and The Ziggy Stardust Motion Picture more than half a decade earlier, but the SNL appearance helped to cast the net further. 

Bowie performed The Man Who Sold The World, TVC 15 and Boys Keep Swinging, with Klaus Nomi, Joey Arias and a toy pink poodle/TV monitor all making extraordinary guest appearances. The show was hosted by actor Martin Sheen.

For The Man Who Sold The World Bowie was lifted and positioned in front of the microphone by Klaus and Joey in a costume designed by Mark Ravitz and Bowie, inspired by Sonia Delaunay’s designs for Tristan Tzara’s 1923 play Le Cœur à gaz (The Gas Heart).

The skirt suit that David is wearing on the right of our montage was designed by Brooks Van Horn costume house, New York, and was worn for TVC 15, the song that also showcased aforementioned pink poodle.

The other picture shows DB operating a puppet while utilising green-screen technology for Boys Keep Swinging to hilarious effect.

In an absurd move the show’s producers blanked the line “Other boys check you out” but seemingly missed the puppet’s obvious excitement at the climax of the song.

Words cannot do Bowie’s SNL appearance justice, suffice to say, it remains among the most surreal television performances broadcast anywhere, ever.

If you've never seen this piece of TV history, prepare to be captivated by all three songs here on Vimeo.

#BowieSNL  #BowieBKS

Monday 12.16.19

 

GOOD LINKS

CONSEQUENCES OF SOUND: Saturday Night live shares three vintage David Bowie performances from 1979 — watch

OPEN CULTURE: David Bowie and Klaus Nomi’s Hypnotic Performance on SNL (1979)


DAVID BOWIE NEWS: David Bowie with Klaus Nomi & Joey Arias – The Man Who Sold The World, TVC 15 & Boys Keep Swinging (Saturday Night Live, 1979)


ROLLING STONE: Watch Fred Armisen’s Tribute to David Bowie on ‘Saturday Night Live’

During the Adam Driver-hosted episode of Saturday Night Live, the long-running sketch comedy series paid tribute to David Bowie by having former cast member Fred Armisen return to reminisce about a memorable 1979 episode of SNL where Bowie served as musical guest.

“When I was in high school and living in Long Island, I stayed up to see David Bowie play on Saturday Night Live. Watching him, for me, was a life-changing experience,” Armisen told the audience. “David Bowie transformed whatever space he was in, whatever medium he was using, and that night for me, he transformed live television.”

In addition to the on-air tribute, SNL dug into its vaults and posted all three of Bowie’s visually stunning performances from that Martin Sheen-hosted episode from December 1979. For that musical guest spot, Bowie delivered Klaus Nomi and Joey Arias-assisted renditions of “The Man Who Sold the World,” Lodger‘s “Boys Keep Swinging” and Station to Station‘s “TVC 15.”

1987 - THE YEAR IN NUMBER

I officially started graduate school in 1987. I had already been taking some classes, but I officially started in the English Department program at Western Michigan University to pursue both my MA in literature and my MFA in creative writing.

I was between  major relationships for the entire year, the last one having ended in 1986, and the next one not beginning until 1988.

I saw Bowie in concert this year on the Glass Spider tour. I had seen him 1983 and would see him again in 1990 and 2002 and 2004. TOUR LIST.



http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/1987.html

What Happened in 1987 Important News and Events, Key Technology and Popular Culture

What happened in 1987 Major News Stories include The Simpsons first episode airs, Zeebrugge MS Herald of Free Enterprise Ferry Disaster, Work on the Channel Tunnel begins, Televangelist Jim Bakker Scandal, Klaus Barbie / Butcher of Lyon found guilty of crimes against humanity, Great Southern British Storm, First Criminal convicted using DNA Evidence, Michael Robert Ryan kills 16 People in Hungerford, USS Stark a Frigate is attacked by an Iraq Air to Sea missile, Stockmarkets around the world crash. After many years of research a new drug AZT is used for the treatment of AIDS. After a long period of growth the US stockmarket drops 22.6% in one day on October 19th and throughout the rest of the world major falls are recorded by the end of October with Hong Kong dropping by 45.8%. In the UK 2 major transport disasters happen when A cross-channel ferry capsizes and an underground fire in Kings Cross Tube Station. England also suffers one of the worst storms in history when Hurricane force winds hit much of the South of England

Jump To 1987 Fashion -- World Leaders -- 1987 Calendar -- 1987 Technology -- Cost Of Living -- Popular Culture -- Toys


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1987

• September 2 – In Moscow, Russia, the trial begins for 19-year-old pilot Mathias Rust, who flew his Cessna airplane into Red Square in May.
• September 3 – In a coup d'état in Burundi, President Jean-Baptiste Bagaza is deposed by Major Pierre Buyoya.
• September 7 – 21 – The world's first conference on artificial life is held at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the United States.
• September 13 – Goiânia accident: Metal scrappers open an old radiation source abandoned in a hospital in Goiânia, Brazil, causing the worst radiation accident ever in an urban area.
• September 15
  • Pope John Paul II arrives in Los Angeles for a two-day papal visit, his first one ever to the city, where he makes an arrival day speech to local leaders of the U.S. entertainment industry.
• September 17
  • At a small rally in New York City's Harlem district, televangelist Pat Robertson announces his candidacy for the 1988 Republican presidential nomination.
  • Pope John Paul II arrives in San Francisco for his first ever visit to the City by the Bay in which he embraces several AIDS sufferers including an infected child and proclaims abstinence from illicit sex and drugs are the two main ways to avoid infection.^[4]
• September 20 - Alain Prost wins the Portuguese F1 race in Estoril to surpass Jackie Stewart and set a new record of 28 career wins.

https://www.vox.com/2016/1/11/10749546/david-bowie-berlin-wall-heroes

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2007.27 - 10:10

- Days ago = 1851 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.