RIP David Bowie
- Thread starter Lear60man
- Start date
I was shocked too. I was born in 77, so I heard most of his songs on MTV. I just listened to Fame last night and it still has one of the best guitar riffs ever.
Axlotl
Master Member
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. He was one of those artists that added soo much to the industry and along with freddy for me when i heard the news really had a big impact...He will be missed
I keep coming back and coming back to this. Not the thread, but Bowie's death and my sense of loss. I don't know how many on here know Outside, but it is probably his most underrated album, and easily my favorite. I have always loved things that unsettle me, that shake up my internal status quo and let the pieces maybe come back down again slightly differently than I'd been before. The Wall, A Clockwork Orange, just about anything by David Lynch... This album had that, in spades. Many people didn't "get" it. Rolling Stone only gave it three out of five stars. Bowie himself fretted that it was "too long", at about 75 minutes.
Hardly. I couldn't, and still can't, get enough of it. Those who know all this, just skim. Those who don't, read the quotes and click the links. This whole thing started when Bowie and Brian Eno (who'd worked together on Bowie's albums in the '70s) reconnected at Bowie's wedding and started talking. They decided to go into the studio "with not even a gnat of an idea" and see what happened. They visited the Gugging psychiatric hospital outside Vienna, whose patients are famous for their "outsider art". They brought some back and into the studio and eventually ended up with about three hours of material, mostly dialogue.
Then convergence, or serendipity, happened. A magazine asked Bowie to keep a diary for ten days, that they would then publish. Bowie felt his life was too boring, and instead decided to do the diary of one of the characters that had come out of those improvisation sessions with Eno, and the result was fifteen years of the life of Detective Nathan Adler and a whole raft of characters he had interactions with. That became the backbone of the album.
Back in the studio, Bowie wrote the songs alongside the band as they improvised, guided by "mood notes" from Eno ("You are the disgruntled member of a South African rock band. Play the notes that were suppressed.") and explored all manner of obscure musical and thematic areas. Bowie ran the diary into a software version of how he would cut up and shuffle his writings to come up with lyrics back in the '70s, and he'd riffle through the results while listening to the band jam and decide whether for a particular one he'd sing, or do spoken-word, or put on a character, or what.
Overall, it's meant to be a somewhat dystopian view of the anxiety and spiritual uncertainty of the last few years of the millennium, as people try to find new ways to express and validate themselves, and society tries to figure out if those ways are legitimate or criminal. And as I said in my first post, it was to be the first (hence the cover reading "1.Outside") of several albums released from '95 through to 2000. There was more than enough material. He had sketched out the characters and rough structure of what would have been "2. Contamination", to be released in the Spring of '97. Bowie and Eno improvised in the studio for eight days. They had some twenty hours of material to work with and take forward. The first monologue from Baby Grace was about fifteen minutes long and described as "very Twin Peaks". God, I would love to hear it...
When we got Earthling instead, I was worried. As the years have passed, I realized he might never come back to this. The worst part? On the day he died, Brian Eno said this:
My fondest hope now is that Iman and Brian will work to put out something that lays it all out, so we get something of the rest of the story. For now, here's the liner notes -- the Diary of Nathan Adler exerpt that was with Outside. Read through to the end and you'll hopefully see why I've been on tenterhooks to see what happens next. And just in case you haven't heard it or don't have it in your collection, the full album is on YouTube... although I apologize for the adverts breaking up the flow.
--Jonah
Hardly. I couldn't, and still can't, get enough of it. Those who know all this, just skim. Those who don't, read the quotes and click the links. This whole thing started when Bowie and Brian Eno (who'd worked together on Bowie's albums in the '70s) reconnected at Bowie's wedding and started talking. They decided to go into the studio "with not even a gnat of an idea" and see what happened. They visited the Gugging psychiatric hospital outside Vienna, whose patients are famous for their "outsider art". They brought some back and into the studio and eventually ended up with about three hours of material, mostly dialogue.
Then convergence, or serendipity, happened. A magazine asked Bowie to keep a diary for ten days, that they would then publish. Bowie felt his life was too boring, and instead decided to do the diary of one of the characters that had come out of those improvisation sessions with Eno, and the result was fifteen years of the life of Detective Nathan Adler and a whole raft of characters he had interactions with. That became the backbone of the album.
Back in the studio, Bowie wrote the songs alongside the band as they improvised, guided by "mood notes" from Eno ("You are the disgruntled member of a South African rock band. Play the notes that were suppressed.") and explored all manner of obscure musical and thematic areas. Bowie ran the diary into a software version of how he would cut up and shuffle his writings to come up with lyrics back in the '70s, and he'd riffle through the results while listening to the band jam and decide whether for a particular one he'd sing, or do spoken-word, or put on a character, or what.
Overall, it's meant to be a somewhat dystopian view of the anxiety and spiritual uncertainty of the last few years of the millennium, as people try to find new ways to express and validate themselves, and society tries to figure out if those ways are legitimate or criminal. And as I said in my first post, it was to be the first (hence the cover reading "1.Outside") of several albums released from '95 through to 2000. There was more than enough material. He had sketched out the characters and rough structure of what would have been "2. Contamination", to be released in the Spring of '97. Bowie and Eno improvised in the studio for eight days. They had some twenty hours of material to work with and take forward. The first monologue from Baby Grace was about fifteen minutes long and described as "very Twin Peaks". God, I would love to hear it...
When we got Earthling instead, I was worried. As the years have passed, I realized he might never come back to this. The worst part? On the day he died, Brian Eno said this:
My fondest hope now is that Iman and Brian will work to put out something that lays it all out, so we get something of the rest of the story. For now, here's the liner notes -- the Diary of Nathan Adler exerpt that was with Outside. Read through to the end and you'll hopefully see why I've been on tenterhooks to see what happens next. And just in case you haven't heard it or don't have it in your collection, the full album is on YouTube... although I apologize for the adverts breaking up the flow.
--Jonah
Goonie
Sr Member
An article from Rolling Stone with details about David's health over the last year:
Rolling Stone: David Bowie Planned Post-'Blackstar' Album, 'Thought He Had Few More Months'
Went out to the mountains skiing today and listened to Bowie songs on the way there and back.
Rolling Stone: David Bowie Planned Post-'Blackstar' Album, 'Thought He Had Few More Months'
Went out to the mountains skiing today and listened to Bowie songs on the way there and back.
Jaitea
Master Member
Sorry to disappoint all those who have asked but this alleged version of LWTUA that’s doing the rounds with David Bowie singing is a fake..!
— Peter Hook (@peter_hook1) January 27, 2014
J
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