all made up with nowhere to go

A. I forgot about Young Americans and Pin Ups when I was listing which Bowie albums I'm missing, so that's eight in total I haven't got.

The next one I have to listen to is Station to Station, and I don't wanna!

B. I also forgot that I played OG FFVII in between The Zodiac Age and FFV Advance. So actually only the last two FFs I played/am playing were remakes. (Although I did play the VII remake demo so ??? maybe that counts??? ;) )

C. I'm sure there was something else, but I've forgotten it now, oh well.

I am currently reading the Paul Trynka biography of David Bowie, and I'm already annoyed with it*. I haven't even got to the portion of the book (of which there is much) that he spends wanking over Bowie's career in the seventies.

What I said in this old entry back in 2016 still holds true. Spoilers: the last three decades of Bowie's career are reduced to a very slim section of the book. THREE DECADES. I really can't articulate how much this infuriates me.

I can't wait to get to "Scary Monsters was his last good album!!!!111!" [/sarcasm]

I'm going to keep reading it, though, because it is readable, and my massive feelings of spite are giving me ideas for some writing, so yay? (All my fiction writing of the last five years or so seems to be spite fuelled, and I have no idea why!)


*Well, I say it, I mean people in general.

~

I don't have a right lot else to say. The last week has felt like it lasted about five years, I am still in the same place in Dark Souls that I was the last time I posted, and I had a migraine the other day that made me feel like an out of phase CRT TV. But I'm sleeping all right at the moment, and that is a hecking blessing.

Now I should go and get something to eat because it's way past eating time.

I have booked an engineer to come and look at the Sky box, because, this morning, it was still borked. Some time between that phone call and now, it fixed itself. It is now happily telly-ing, and we are watching Holby City.

However.

I am not going to cancel the engineer, because that would be tempting fate. Provided the box is still working on Friday (when he is booked to come), I'm going to ask him to check everything over to make sure it's all OK. Because then I won't feel like we're wasting his time, and if there is anything amiss, he'll find it. (And, of course, if it's borked again, then he can fix it for us!)

~

On the tenth of this month, I happened to mention to mum that people were still leaving flowers and tributes at the Aladdin Sane mural in Brixton. I said it had been two months since David Bowie had died, and I kind of couldn't believe people were still doing that (not because I thought they shouldn't, though. Because I am the last person who is going to tell anyone else how to grieve).

"Well," she said, "you're still listening to his music, aren't you?"

"Yes," I replied, "but I listen to his music anyway."

I know she's not interested in the majority of my tastes in music (though sometimes she surprises me - she likes some of the FFXII soundtrack, and likes Queen of the Rodeo from Silent Hill 3, for example), but honestly not sure how she missed this (she's even bought me some of his albums, for crying out loud!!)

(I suppose it goes back to people only being aware of what they want to be aware of, if you see what I mean?)

~

Still writing. I have a town that seems to be overrun by dads who make awful decisions about what they should name their businesses.

I'm reading through select entries on a blog detailing circumstances, etc. of the creation of every single song David Bowie ever did. (I applaud the blog's owner. I would never have the patience to keep that up). Anyway, I'm currently reading through the entries about Outside, since duh favourite album, Strangers When We Meet being my gateway drug, etc. (This is confirmed by having listened to the album right through three (or more) times in the past week, which I haven't done since I was 23 or 24. A lot of it is better than I remember, and that includes the segues, and I'm Deranged is my new favourite song).

At the moment, I'm reading the comments on The Hearts Filthy Lesson. It was the first single released off Outside. Some people think it was a bad move, some people don't. Me, I don't know, because I don't ever remember hearing it before 2004. I only remember Strangers and Hallo Spaceboy. And then nothing else (apparently this is down, I have learnt, to making radio unfriendly songs. Like no-one else ever did that in their entire musical career. /sarcasm).

I digressed a little. A lot of the commenters mention how outright ignored Bowie was in the nineties (because everyone wrote him off in the eighties). They also say about how a lot of places ignore everything past Lodger (and/or Scary Monsters; see also the "best album since Scary Monsters", which is an actual thing said by Serious Music Critics, Repeatedly, and which Mr B rightfully complained about).

This is a thing that I find frustrating. Another commenter said how mid-nineties Bowie is, to some people, their Ziggy. This is it for me. Well, maybe not my Ziggy, but certainly Outside/its singles have a special place for me, and they're my touchstone and, tellingly, what I fall back on when anguished.

(I was disgustingly anguished as a fourteen year old, hearing Strangers. As mentioned elsewhere (and partially documented on the internet), I had a shit year in 2004/5, and Outside was probably on repeat a lot. I'm having a wobble right now, though it's nowhere near as bad as the previous twice).

I picked up two special edition magazines in the wake of Mr B's death. One details everything, up to, wait for it...

Wait for it...

Wait

for

it

...

Yeah, you guessed it: Scary Monsters

Then the rest of the mag is album reviews up to Blackstar.

The other one's much better, since there's interviews covering all of his career (and it cost me less!)

You know, like the seventies were the important part of his career, and everything else after that was just farting about.

OK THEN.

But it's not just this magazine that's guilty of it. I have an issue of Uncut from 2007, specially released for his sixtieth. It's weighted in favour of his early career. I listened to a lot of music archives from the BBC. Aside from the Mark Radcliffe show, which covered things past Scary Monsters, everything stopped in the same place.

I tweeted a bit about this (yeah, I was trying to be cryptic, because I honestly don't know if y'all are sick of me talking about him yet):

When you like a musician or band and anything discussing them only concentrates on a fraction of their career(s) you didn't experience.

And you want hear about the bit that meant the most to you, and you hear/see next to nothing about it.

(For reference: I didn't experience Ziggy because I wasn't alive. I wasn't even a twinkle in my dad's eye, as they say. I don't think my parents had even met when Ziggy was scandalising the neighbourhood. Hey! Guess what album was out the year I was born!

Yeah. That one.

Scary Monsters. The single of the same name (but not same punctuation) came out just over a month before I was born. It's me. It's my fault. I single-handedly killed Mr B's career by simply existing).

In this case, I'm glad Youtube exists, because it is providing me with all the mid to late-nineties Bowie I want. Unlike the other outlets.

(Talking of which, the two visual biogs I have start skimping on things around the mid-eighties. Everything from, say 1987 to 2004 is conflated into a handful of pages in the one (literally less than fifteen). But it's the less good one of the two, so I suppose that's sort of to be expected??)

But I'm glad I'm not the only one who's noticed this...thing happening. It really seems unfair, especially when people talk about what a varied career he had.

"Oh, you can't pin him down to one genre, he covered so many!"

Yes, but you can't really say that when you think nothing of his work past the seventies is any good. (Don't get me started on this whole "Ooooh, this sounds like his old stuff!", meaning therefore "we like it!" Yeah, only till the next thing came along, and then we were back to the whole "best album since Scary Monsters" shtick).

I guess I am just very protective? I want his work to be considered as a whole, not as separate parts, because I don't think it's fair to do that, especially when you're ignoring the majority of his career.

I feel like I'm talking myself into circles already, so I'll quit here.

You can read the entry I mentioned and comments here. I cannot be held responsible for you getting as lost in that blog as I have in the past week (it is, indirectly, all Brian Eno's fault. But maybe I'll explain why another time).

Apparently I'd already figured out in 2009 that Strangers When We Meet is my favourite Bowie song*. I'm thinking Outside might be my favourite album. (I wish I didn't figure out things and then forget them, but I know mid-2009 to early 2011 is full of holes re: my memory so yaaaaaaaaaaay).

I streamed some stuff through Spotify (I can get it to work on my phone but not the internet, wtf?) and it played me around half of The Next Day on shuffle, and I honestly don't know why I ever put off listening to it because I liked what I heard (I'm lukewarm on Where Are We Now? but eh. I don't like everything he's ever done anyway. But everything else on that album that I heard is OK!)

I had forgotten at some point in the past that I liked A Better Future (which is on Heathen). I am glad to have rediscovered it.

~

Addendum to my In Memoriam: I completely forgot that the entire reason I own Low on vinyl is because my ex-housemate bought it for me one day. She came home from town and was all, "I saw this, thought you'd like it, I hope you don't have it already." The weird part about this is I don't think I even listened to much Bowie while in the same house as her**. I remember watching Labyrinth with her because the DVD went missing, only to turn up again when I moved out. But really that's it.

(What I mostly remember is arguing about how to play a Tracy Chapman song on the guitar. And arguing in general).

(And even if I had had it already, I would snatched it from her hands because vinyl. I think the only other vinyl I have is Let's Dance. I may have to check this out).

~

Pictures under the cut! Linked from twitter :) Two of me, two of a minotaur.

( Read more... )

~

*The amount of people I've seen in the past week call it "an under-rated gem" amuses the crap out of me, because I always assume that if I like a thing, then pretty much everyone knows about it. Like that time I was surprised nobody on University Challenge knew Play Dead (Bjork). I know it so why doesn't everyone else?

**What I mean is, I'm always surprised when other people realise that I like him, and thus buy me related things.

I don't have any amazing stories about my experiences with David Bowie's music. True, it would've made a meeting between me and a friend go better if I'd been introduced to him as a fellow Bowie fan, rather than him being introduced to me as, "this is Gaz, and he can do a really good impression of Cartman." He could, but that's besides the point.

And there's that, when I was really severely depressed in 2004, having had a nervous breakdown at work, I then spent three months listening to nothing but Bowie. I was having a really shitty time right then, and he was all I wanted to listen to. So I did.

Oh. There is that my BFF got the Ziggy Stardust stripe tattooed on her one calf. I didn't even think she was that into Bowie, but it just goes to show, you never know.

Of course, he holds the record for being the person who gave me the most ideas for pictures that I have absolutely NO IDEA how to make. Also titles for stories. Because of course he does.

I just spent two hours listening to the Bowie tracks on my phone, trying not to cry, and enjoying it. He's really fun to sing along with. And to listen to.

Which leads me to:

I don't have a favourite song by him. I can't pick just one, so here's a handful. (Sorry there's nothing that wasn't a single release, but I'm doing this off the top of my head without having listened to any of his albums in a few years. I need to rectify that, although I'd been thinking that before today's news).

Loving The Alien - please watch this one, even if you don't watch any others, for the sight of him sliding around in water on his knees. It's hilarious.

Strangers When We Meet - this is the song that got me into his music as a teenager. I was fourteen.

(I mean, I'd always been aware of him, but this is where I started appreciating his work).

Jump They Say - this video has suicidal imagery in it, so please exercise caution watching it if you think it'll upset you.

My headdesk/facepalm icon (not currently uploaded) is a still from this video.

Hallo Spaceboy

The Heart's Filthy Lesson

Queen Bitch

Space Oddity

~*~

1. Still got insomnia, still not amused.

2. Still feeling like an unsociable bastard. I don't want to go out because the weather is so horrible, and I don't want to interact with people in general, because I can't be bothered BUT. On the plus side, I am not actually depressed. I feel this is some kind of minor miracle.

3. I have nearly finished Xmas presents for all concerned. Just got to finish mum's painting now.

4. Sold my first item (a scarf) and got my first order (some fingerless gloves). Feel quite proud of myself!

5. I got our portable record player out earlier, and listened to some stuff on vinyl. Nothing compares, I tell you. I listened to two albums I have had for years but never heard. One was Mr Bad Guy, by Freddie Mercury, and it sounds very eighties (well, it was made in '85). The other was Low, by David Bowie, and it sounded very much like the soundtrack to some avant-garde movie. I felt like I should've been in a garret in Paris, sitting on a rough wooden floor while listening to it. And it would've been snowing outside, in all likelihood. I also liked that the majority of tracks were instrumentals, and the ones that weren't didn't have many lyrics.

(Wikipedia tells me it was intended to be a film soundtrack, so that explains a lot).

6. I haven't played video games in forever, but I might finish up playing ME1 and start on ME2 over Xmas. Which will be a stark change as, for the last three years running, I have played an Ivalice related game. It's nearly becoming a tradition!

(I waver constantly on ME2. Part of me doesn't want to play it because fandom says it's awesome, and talks about it all the time, but then a bigger part of me wants to play ME3 when that gets released, and to do that, I have to play ME2 for any of it to make any sense*).

7. Ugh. That's it. I'm going to sleep.

~*~

*That said, I'm sure Bioware will include a generator for people who are new to the series, like they did in ME2. Maybe?