Hey, Mom! The Explanation.

Here's the permanent dedicated link to my first Hey, Mom! post and the explanation of the feature it contains.

Saturday, January 8, 2022

A Sense of Doubt blog post #2517 - Happy 75th Birthday David Bowie!

Bowie Birthday 1976

A Sense of Doubt blog post #2517 - Happy 75th Birthday David Bowie!

Why do I love David Bowie so much?

Because he's like me in so many ways.

I am probably not unique in this. I am sure many of us see ourselves in David Bowie.

Because of these:

So many of the things I wanted to do come from books.

Bowie, 1993.

He didn’t actually go out very much but preferred to stay home. I’d often invite him to a party and he would often say, “No, I’m going to stay in, I’ve got some work to do.”

George Underwood.

You will read these and other collected "changes" in the post from Chris O'Leary's PUSHING AHEAD OF THE DAME, but these two struck me as so much like myself that I understood even better why I feel like I have such a strong kinship with David Bowie.

Thank you, David. May I call you "David"? Brian Eno calls you "David."

I am reading (again) Eno's 1995 diary because of the 25th anniversary re-issue as he discusses working with you on Outside, which is released that year.

I love learning about your process.

I am very proud of this post for your birthday that collects a lot of my Bowie posts and contains the entire DAILY BOWIE list:


Monday, January 8, 2018

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #917 - Happy Birthday David Bowie - Musical Monday for 1801.08

I also have some playlists on You Tube, the first of which will surely keep growing.


MY BOWIE STUFF PLAYLIST YOU TUBE





https://www.stereogum.com/1852459/20-great-david-bowie-moments/lists/


FUNNY BOWIE MOMENTS YOU TUBE SERIES










Many of the very best Twitter messages for Bowie's 75th birthday, this year in 2022:





































































Because of the historic events of this time last year, I included a bunch of Bowie's birthday wishes ill-fittingly in this post: 

Friday, January 8, 2021

A Sense of Doubt blog post #2152 - Welcome to Trump's America - Insurrection 2021 - January 6th - Day of Shame


WHAT THE ACTUAL???

Here they are:



























ONE OF THE VERY BEST THINGS ON THE INTERNET is The Pushing Ahead of the Dame website run by Chris O'Leary. Here's his post published today in honor of Bowie's birthday.

Changes75Bowie

by col1234

Changes (demo).
Changes.
Changes (live, Glastonbury, 1971).
Changes (live, 1973).
Changes (live, 1974).
Changes (rehearsal, 1976).
Changes (live, 1990).
Changes (live, 1999).
Changes (live, Glastonbury, 2000).
Changes (A&E Live By Request, 2002).
Changes (live, 2002).
Changes (Ellen, 2004).
Changes (Butterfly Boucher with David Bowie, 2004).
Changes (with Mike Garson and Alicia Keys (Bowie’s last performed song), 2006.)
Changes (Cristin Milioti, 2016).
Changes (50th anniversary remix).

David was born on 8th January [1947]. The midwife said to me, "this child has been on earth before," and I thought that was rather an odd thing to say, but the midwife seemed quite adamant.

Margaret "Peggy" Burns Jones.

The very first memory I have is of being left in my pram in the hallway of 40 Stansfield Road [Brixton], facing the stairs---they were dark and shadowy.

Bowie, 2003.

If there was anything that caught his ear, he would tell everyone to be quiet and listen, and then fling himself about to the music.

Peggy Jones.

So many people are born in a trap. And they don't seem to have the courage to want to get out. And it's so simple, really, so simple.

Gurney Slade (Anthony Newley), The Strange World of Gurney Slade.

So many of the things I wanted to do come from books.

Bowie, 1993.

He didn't actually go out very much but preferred to stay home. I'd often invite him to a party and he would often say, "No, I'm going to stay in, I've got some work to do."

George Underwood.

Bowie ("Dave Jay") sketch for a Kon-Rads suit, ca. 1963

David knew all the songs by heart and in his peculiar way could sing every song in our set [but] none of us liked his voice at all.

Alan Dodds, The Kon-Rads.

He looked like a young waiter who had blown his first check on a bad haircut.

John Bloom, recalling Davie Jones and the King Bees' performance at Bloom's birthday party, April 1964.

One of the ways we would write was I would bring my fingers down on the keyboard and David would say, "What's that? Hold that chord." And we would write something around it. I found it hard getting my fingers used to those chords, he never made things easy.

Denis Taylor, lead guitarist, The Lower Third.

You can't give all you have to take something back.

"Take My Tip" (1965).

Bowie and the Lower Third's BBC rejection, 23 November 1965

He had written a lot of songs, they were not Rock and Roll but they were very good, very musical and they had unusual shapes, nothing like the current Top 20 stuff.

John "Hutch" Hutchinson, on first working with Bowie in The Buzz, 1966 (from Bowie & Hutch).

Now you know I'm not the warmest performer on stage, and I never have been...I've never felt comfortable talking on stage. With 'Diamond Dogs' I even wanted to have the band in an orchestra pit.

Bowie, 1976.

David, you're working with a backing group, The Buzz. Have you always worked with them?
As David Bowie, yes. I've always been with them, for about six months.
Why do you say 'as David Bowie'?
I was someone else before that.

Radio London interview with Bowie at the Marquee Club, 1966.

Bowie recalls a typical Buzz setlist from 1966 (BowieNet journal, 26 December 1998)

I want to act. I'd like to do character parts. I think it takes a lot to become somebody else. It takes some doing.

Bowie, to Melody Maker, 26 February 1966.

He would go down to Carnaby Street and get himself kitted in a fancy outfit. You would never see him walking around like a slob. He didn't do slob.

Dana Gillespie, to Dylan Jones.

Record Mirror, June 1967 (via DB Glamour)

Lo, Palmer's Green has been disrupted by a clown and two friends. Twenty-four people walked out the first night. Most of them were coppers off duty. One old man sat and read a newspaper: The Sketch, I think. And a couple of nice ladies talked about their babies, bingo, and bras in Row E. Lindsay [Kemp] was pissed, Jack [Birkett] was ill and I just sang.

Bowie, letter to Hermione Farthingale, 1967.

I'm not quite sure what
We're supposed to do
So, I've been writing just for you

"Letter to Hermione"

Bowie: What do you think you'll be doing in ten or twenty years' time?
Writing---and you?
Bowie: I might be writing, too. I think of myself more as a writer than a musician. I shall be a millionaire by the time I'm thirty, and I'll spend the rest of my life doing other things.

Interview by George Tremlett in Ken Pitt's apartment, 39 Manchester St., London, 17 November 1969.

David Bowie is 22 years old, thin, with a halo of fair hair, a delicately soft face and two cold eyes. One is pale kitten blue and the other green, and it makes it rather disconcerting to talk to him.

Penny Valentine, Disc, 11 October 1969.

Ken Pitt's budget for "Space Oddity" the single (from The Pitt Report).

I haven't got a clue why Visconti didn't like the song. The fact is, Mercury didn't have any major acts with the exception of Rod Stewart, who at that point wasn't a major act anyway...they took Bowie on specifically because of "Space Oddity." They'd heard the demo and in those days a gimmick was a big deal, and people who had gimmicks were taken more seriously than those who hadn't.

Gus Dudgeon, 1993.

Lucifer as 1969 Bowie, Sandman No. 4, April 1989 (Gaiman/Keith/Dringenberg).

I wasn't interested in the far future, spaceships and all that. Forget it. I was interested in the evolving world, the world of hidden persuaders, of the communications landscape developing, of mass tourism, of the vast conformist suburbs dominated by television---that was a form of science fiction, and it was already here.

J.G. Ballard, 2008.

With The Man Who Sold The World I wanted to work in some kind of strange micro-world where the human element had been taken out, where we were dealing with a technological society. That world [was] an experimental playground where you could do dangerous things without anybody taking too many risks, other than ideas risks....It was all family problems and analogies, put into science-fiction form.

Bowie, 1993; 1976.

The start of David Rome's "There's a Starman in Ward 7," New Worlds No. 146 (Jan. 1965), a possible influence on Bowie's song.

The song breathes out the whole sweep of postwar British culture before the Beatles turned it on its head—the slow, squalid sink of pointless desires caught in John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger, Colin MacInnes’s Absolute Beginners, Tom Courtenay and Julie Christie in Billy Liar, Nell Dunn’s Up the Junction—and places it squarely in the present. It’s a drama of ordinary life you can’t turn away from, because you’re seeing a life that you know, that you’re living, thrown up on the screen of the song. The quietest tinkling piano begins it; at the end, the piano trails off into a huge, harsh crescendo of movie-finale strings—hero and heroine clasped in each other’s arms, wind propelling them into their future—as if the notes can’t remember the song.

Greil Marcus, on "Life on Mars?"

The day will come when David Bowie is a star and the crushed remains of his melodies are broadcast from Muzak boxes in every elevator and hotel lobby in town.

Nancy Erlich, New York Times, 11 July 1971.

You had to make the two sides of the album roughly the same length. While parts were being worked out, I would spend time working out the timings and putting songs together so I could suggest which order would work best...Up to a point, the running order was dictated by the LP format. The whole idea about the concept album thing...there are some songs that fit together on a certain story. But I dispute the fact that it's a concept album, because why would you have "It Ain't Easy," which was recorded for Hunky Dory?

Ken Scott, on The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars.

Writers like George Steiner had nailed the sexy term "post-culture" and it seemed a jolly good idea to join up the dots of rock...Everything was up for grabs. If we needed any truths we could construct them ourselves. The main platform would be, other than shoes, "we are the future, now" and the way of celebrating that was to create it by the only means at our disposal.

Bowie, introduction to Moonage Daydream, 2002.

"I am a David Bowie doll," NY Daily News, 18 June 1972.

Ziggy was this kind of megalomaniac little prophet figure who came down to tell us it was all over. We were never quite sure whether he meant it or not, whether he was from outer space or not.

Bowie, on 20/20, 1980.

As David Bowie appears, the child dies. The vision is profound – a sanity heralding the coming of consciousness from someone who – at last! – transcends our gloomy coal-fire existence. David Bowie is detached from everything, yet open to everything; stripped of the notion that both art and life are impossible. He is quite real, impossibly glamorous, fearless, and quite British. How could this possibly be?

Morrissey, Autobiography.

from Masayoshi Sukita's first Bowie photos, 13 July 1972

How would you describe yourself?
Bowie: Partly enigmatic, partly fossil.

Backstage interview at Carnegie Hall, 28 September 1972.

Among certain more affluent hippies Bowie is apparently the symbol of a kind of thrilling extremism, a life-style (the word is for once permissible) characterised by sexual omnivorousness, lavish use of stimulants--- particularly cocaine, very much an Γ©litist drug, being both expensive and galvanising---self-parodied narcissism, and a glamorously early death. To dignify this unhappy outlook with such a term as “nihilist” would, of course, be absurd; but Bowie does appear to be a new focus for the vague, predatory, escapist reveries of the alienated young. Although Bowie himself is unlikely to last long as a cult, it is hard to believe that the feelings he has aroused or aggravated will vanish along with the fashion built round him.

Martin Amis, The New Statesman, 6 July 1973.

The Sixties are definitely not with us anymore…the change into the music of the Seventies is starting to come with people like David Bowie and Lou Reed…they don’t expect to live more than thirty years and they don’t care. And they don’t care. They’re in the Seventies. What I’m tryin’ to say is these people like Lou Reed and Davie Booie or Bowie, however you pronounce it, those folks—I think they got somethin’ there, heh heh. Take a walk on the wild side!

Neil Young, 1973.

Bowie, 1973 (Barrie Wentzell)

Living in Dagenham, the appeal was that if you dyed your hair or had a little bit of make-up or wore a bangle, you'd get the piss taken out of you, but because it was David Bowie you didn't. You could dress up like that...It was so obvious that girls liked it---thank you David Bowie! And good music to shag to, I have to say.

Steve Ignorant, of Crass (whose name came from "the kids were just crass" in "Ziggy Stardust").

"Lady Grinning Soul"---to have all those runs on the piano, I was practicing eight hours a day at the time, year after year. You can't play like that if you haven't done tons of repetition....then when we did "Time" they found that truly humorous, and David being almost like a Broadway singer and knowing all the German stuff, everything about it was David Bowie. But I was playing the piano how I think he would have played if he could play at my level. He could play, he played well, but it was very basic piano. I think, if he had my chops, that's what he would have done.

Mike Garson, on Aladdin Sane.



Of all the Bowie posts I have made, this is my favorite. For more there's links in this reprinted post, but you can also check out my categories: David Bowie and The Daily Bowie.


Monday, July 27, 2020

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

snl_79_mont_v2_1080sq.jpg

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 Janniki Kuppuru. 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 Janniki 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.




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 Janniki. 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 CΕ“ur Γ  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


 David Bowie SNL

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 that Was

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.

Life Special Issue: 1987 - The Year in Pictures (January 1988 ...

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


1987 Newspaper Poster, Birthday Poster Printable, Time Capsule ...

Like it's 1987 – Jean Snow [.net]

Melody Maker review of January 1987 with staff picks by Allan ...

Archived Music Press | Scans from the Melody Maker and N.M.E. ...


1987 Best Albums And Tracks Of The Year - NME


8tracks radio | Billboard Hot 100 Number One Singles of 1987 (2016 ...


These 5 Video Game Franchises are Turning 30 This Year... Feeling ...

Wonder Woman (1987-2006) #1 - Comics by comiXology

Justice League America 1987 series # 5 very fine comic book


BrowseTheStacks on Twitter: "Spider-Man: The Wedding / The ...


David Bowie's 1987 Slump Held Its Own Weird Magic - The Atlantic





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
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HAPPY BIRTHDAY MR. BOWIE!

MERRY CHRISTMAS MISTER LAWRENCE!

heh.



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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2201.08 - 10:10

- Days ago = 2381 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.
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