Every magazine on every shelf...
There are a few bits in some of the latest rock publications that will no doubt interest many of you.
First up, the publishers of Q and MOJO have produced The Complete Guide To Downloading which has various Bowie bits peppered throughout its pages. A two-page spread which suggests an Alternative Best Of (see above) kicks off with this standfirst: "Glam rock, gender-swerving pop and industrial noise... Exploring the Thin White Duke's critically revered but rarely heard album tracks."
And these are the fifteen David Bowie tunes they settled upon:
01 The London Boys
02 Janine
03 All The Madmen
04 Quicksand
05 Moonage Daydream
06 Aladdin Sane
07 Big Brother
08 Somebody Up There Likes Me
09 Stay
10 A New Career In A New Town
11 Sons Of The Silent Age
12 Because You're Young
13 I Can't Read
14 Survive
15 New Killer Star
Needless to say, the comments for each track are complimentary...for example, here's what they say about the first and the last songs on this pretty cool collection...
The London Boys (1967) - The first sign of Bowie's strength in melody and a saga of one suburban lad's move into the pill-popping mod scene of Soho. Resembled a strange union between Suede and The Jam.
New Killer Star (2003) - Bowie's last epistle dug into a treasure trove of old styles while sounding strangely fresh. On this, the curtain-raiser to 2003's Reality, he replicates the Scary Monsters blueprint, albeit in a mature style as befitting a man in his mid-fifties. As the old advert slogan proclaimed: "There's old wave, there's new wave, and there's David Bowie."
The magazine also lists what it considers to be the best ten songs of every year since 1970...Our man faired far better than any other artist with seven songs that have a Bowie credit and one other with a production credit...here they are:
1971 Changes1972 Starman - All The Young Dudes (Mott The Hoople) - Walk On The Wild Side (Lou Reed)
1974 Rebel Rebel
1977 "Heroes" - Lust For Life (Iggy Pop)
1980 Ashes To Ashes
Elsewhere Bowie songs are also chosen in categories as wide-ranging as UK Rock 'n' Roll pioneers, Electronica, accoustic classics, air guitar anthems and more. Finally there's a great half-page picture from David's appearance at Net Aid in 1999 illustrating a feature about the future of digital music. Phew!
If you don't get such things in your area you can order online here.
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The November issue of MOJO has a cool half page pic of DB with Arcade Fire in Central Park in the What Goes On Section.
In the same magazine's regular All Back To My Place feature, Katie Melua is torn over her favourite Saturday night record: "The Scissor Sisters album is so good. Or maybe Space Oddity or Ziggy Stardust by Bowie, or Brown Eyed Handsome Man by Chuck Berry. Retro, but I don't care."
Further down the page, head Bunnyman, Ian McCulloch, is a little more certain when he responds to the "What is your all-time favourite album?" question, thus: "Hunky Dory by David Bowie. It starts with Changes and ends with The Bewlay Brothers, and when I listen to it I think, 'Have I ever got anywhere near those songs?'" Apparently the first album he ever bought was Ziggy Stardust: "Me mum got me it... she was going into town, so I said, 'Mum, here's me £2.45, get me Ziggy Stardust'. She got it from Rushworths in Liverpool, even though she was worried that if I got into Bowie I'd end up looking weird. She bought it under duress."
Following that, you won't be too surprised to learn that the musician Ian would most like to have been other than himself would be: "Kind of an amalgam of my heroes... Elvis, Bowie and Lou Reed. Not vocally, but in terms of cool, attitude and mystery."
In this month's Hello/Goodbye section, of which Trevor Bolder was last month's subject (see Thursday's news), Goth God Pete Murphy of Bauhaus talks about the genesis of his band:
"November 1978 I met Daniel Ash at Northhampton Comprehensive and was fascinated by him.
In 1971 we discovered this wonderful creature called David Bowie when we heard Hunky Dory drifting out of the art room, and Danny started to learn the guitar and we messed around with me on bongos. When school ended he went off to art college and I got a job at a local printer as a bookbinder, singing Bowie and Iggy songs at the top of my lungs."
Those of us old enough will remember that the group's biggest hit was a cover of Ziggy Stardust which reached #15 in the UK charts in 1982. They also had a very stylish cameo in the vampire movie, The Hunger, when they performed Bella Lugosi's Dead in a nightclub scene, as David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve's characters scoured the darkness for beautiful young things to suck dry.
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The November issue of UNCUT has reprinted a picture of DB strolling through New York holding the 100th issue of the magazine. The same shot was used in the UK tabloid press a few weeks back. The picture is a particularly intrusive paparazzi shot and having had the dubious privilege of viewing the complete series of these shots, I can tell you that the photographer was relentless in their attempt to get an unnecessary amount of pictures of David.
David calmly and very subtly signalled his displeasure in an attempt to get the uncommonly rude snapper to desist. An act reflected in the UNCUT caption to the picture which read: ""Then another finger..." yes, you're in the top 100, Mr Stardust." ...the latter part of the caption being a reference to the fact that Mr Stardust was not only in the top 100, but indeed, the top 10 as we reported at the time. (08.08.2005 NEWS: ZIGGY LP IN TOP TEN MOST SEISMIC EVENTS EVER)
Dictionary.com has the meaning of paparazzi as: "A freelance photographer who doggedly pursues celebrities to take candid pictures for sale to magazines and newspapers." There is a shorter description of these types, which is an anagram of the very magazine this picture appears in!
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The Diggin' For Gold section of the November edition of Record Collector highlights the 1990 numbered 7" Spanish promo of Ashes To Ashes/Starman. This collectable 45 was pressed in an edition of 500 to promote the CHANGESBOWIE album release.
The magazine values the record at £50, but I don't see it on eBay with anything like the frequency it used to come up... methinks that fifty quid is probably a bit on the conservative side, and with the prices that rare Bowie vinyl seems to be fetching these days I wouldn't be surprised to see it go in future for at least double that figure.
If you haven't already, you can read about the Bowie content of the November issue of Q magazine in Wednesday's news. (10.05.2005 REMINDER: HEROES ON THE BBC SHORTLY AND IN Q NOW)
