10/1/23 Update: Much of the commentary I’ve read about this song focuses on the first part, which, as the name implies, is about a “free festival” and is usually interpreted to be Bowie’s disillusioned goodbye to the 60s. My great recent revelation is that the second part of the song, about the Venusian spaceship coming to Earth (“the sun machine…

In don’t know much about the band, Pulp, but came across this video that features various parts of the song performed by impersonators of a wide variety of familiar singers, including Bowie. Instead of linking to the video, I’m linking to the cover art for the single which is obviously a parody of the cover of The Rise and Fall…

I recently came across a reference to a painting by Paul McCartney— you know, the former Beatle, that depicted David Bowie, um, throwing up. It’s called, “Bowie Spewing” (see the photo gallery). Looking into that led me to find a Polaroid of Bowie taken by McCartney’s late wife, Linda. I somehow never saw either of these before and thought they…

I came across this video by French musician Sébastien Bédé while looking for videos of the week. This doesn’t qualify for my own made-up rules because it wasn’t posted in the last week— it’s a few years old. But it’s spectacular. Bédé did a series of Bowie remixes including most of the songs off, Heathen. He then created the video…

Stan Harris was not a name I knew until I saw his obit. He passed away at the age of 92 on Monday, September 18th in Toronto. He was a prolific television director whose path briefly crossed with Bowie’s as he directed the 1980 Floor Show in 1973. I’ve posted videos related to the 1980 Floor Show many times before…

My oft-repeated assertion that I would sit through almost any movie at the drive-in was put to the test this week. I couldn’t bring myself to go to the first movie of the double header— My Big, Fat Greek Wedding 3. Wedding movies just ain’t my bag, baby (though I was OK with Mama Mia). As if to make the…

Amidst a higher than average number of “Space Oddity” and “Heroes” covers this week (some of which were quite good), this video by Sunken Screens stands out. It has all the aspects of videos I like for this weekly feature— it’s a “real” video, meaning it was shot as a video and has production qualities. It’s a somewhat obscure song,…

“Nacho” is a YouTuber who makes terrific unofficial videos. Here he claims to have “restored” this video of Bowie and Cher on the Cher Show performing “Can You Hear Me” as a duet. I am not seeing major differences from the version I used in 2016 when I posted during my song-a-day tribute, which is still on this blog. If…

KillerStar is a new band largely made up of Bowie alumni about to release a new album. The band has already released its first single, which is featured in the above video, “Should Have Known Better.” The song does not especially sound like a Bowie song. I don’t hear Gail Ann Dorsey’s familiar backing vocals, Mike Garson’s characteristic piano, Earl…

I posted an update on “Holy Holy” a few days ago which features a version of the song that was actually recorded for potential inclusion on Ziggy Stardust, but was dropped until it was used as a B-side later and has reappeared as bonus material elsewhere. Today’s post features the original mono version Bowie released as a single in 1971.…

9/19/23 Update: It turns out that the Barbie movie has a Bowie connection after all. In a video extra connected to the home release of the summer’s top grossing movie, Margot Robbie explains that co-star Kate McKinnon’s character of “Weird Barbie” was partially inspired by Bowie. To read more, link to the story here, where you can also see a…

There’s an event happening in Albany (where I live) on Thursday, described below, centered around listening to and discussing The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Of course, I would like to attend this event, but I won’t. Today I got my latest COVID shot. I have lost track of how many people I know…

My original 2016 post about this song (click to link) uses an excellent video of the band Shearwater performing it from a series of videos of the band covering the entire Lodger album. So this is the first appearance of the song as performed by Bowie on this blog. I’m posting it not to discuss the song itself but to…

The Bridge School is a program for educating children with severe speech and physical impairments. Neil Young and his wife are supporters and have organized an annual fundraising concert on the school’s behalf at which Bowie once performed (see my comments on the live album based on Bowie’s performances, which was oddly titled Unwashed and Slightly Phased by clicking on…

Update: 9/17/2023 “Holy Holy” sounds almost like a fragment of a song. Bowie juxtaposes religious words, thus “holy,” with intimate terms like, “hold on to anyone.” Like he couldn’t make up his mind between “holy” and “hold me.” Adding to the schizophrenic nature of the song, Bowie switches from pleading to whoever the song is directed at to “let me…

9/16/2023 In recent days I commented on such songs as “Time Will Crawl,” “Sunday” and “If You Can See Me.” Each is an example of Bowie using evocative lyrics that are not necessarily meant to be taken literally. Between the lyrics, the music, and other aspects of how Bowie presented such songs (such as where they appeared on their albums),…

If you’ve been following my beginner’s guide, you’ve read about how I suggest introducing yourself to Bowie and slowly wading into this music and videos in a rough order. If you haven’t been following the series, click here. So now I’m going to tell you what to avoid. For some reason, I occasionally find it fun to write about the…

“Oh God, I could do better than that… But it could have been me Yes, it could have been me“ On the surface, “Queen Bitch” is a lament about a flamboyant gay man, or possibly trans person, of whom the narrator is jealous. But the song boils over with a sense of ambition and commitment towards achievement that transcends the…

I typically don’t like to simply post somebody else’s story in this blog, but I came across a reference to this video in Nicholas Pegg’s The Complete David Bowie that in terms of facts I have nothing more to add. The story is that this is a video of Bowie performing “Time Will Crawl” on the British show, Top of…

I delayed the weekly “cover of the week” for a day so to post “Sunday” and reflect on 9/11 but I have a winner today, Shane James Bordas’ cover of one of Bowie’s most underrated songs, “Time Will Crawl.” “Time Will Crawl” is an almost stereotypical Bowie song about a post-apocalyptic landscape. It’s a real rock song which, with minimal…

It has often been written that Bowie’s 2002 album, Heathen, seemed to be a reaction to the September 11th terrorist attacks of 2001. Bowie himself talked about the coincidence, but it was a coincidence. Most of the songs, including the opening track, “Sunday,” had been written before 9/11. Nonetheless, the album captured a sentiment at the time of unease and…

I came across Lena Hall and her Obsessed series while looking for a good cover of “Queen Bitch” for use in a future post. I found what I was looking for and more. I didn’t recognize Hall’s name, but she’s a singer, actress and actually a star of stage and screen. She seems to have left a mark on Broadway.…

I’ve been meaning to post about some of Bowie’s lyrics that have been meaningful to me. I’ve been thinking about it as a top 10 list, but reflecting again on Adam Steiner’s analysis of “Up the Hill Backwards” (see yesterday’s post), I continue to be blown away by how rich some of Bowie’s lyrics are. His most meaningful words deserve…

I’m reading a book about my favorite album, Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps). Its called Silhouettes and Shadows, by Adam Steiner and came out earlier this year. I’ll probably write more about it later, but I am blown away by the chapter about “Up the Hill Backwards.” Keep in mind that is is the album I listen to more, and…

I mentioned a few days ago that I thought there were enough good songs on the two Tin Machine albums for one good album. Around the time I wrote that, I was listening to the podcast, Fantastic Voyage, which feature two guys talking about Bowie. They had done several episodes on Tin Machine culminating in a “best of” episode. The…

I recently came across a “on this date” type article on a Buffalo media outlet’s website, which mentioned the 40th anniversary of Bowie’s Serious Moonlight tour stop in 1983. I was 14, my sister was 13. She wanted to see Bowie. I had no interest. So my mother took her along with our friend Caroline Hassett (who has saved a…

Our latest foray to the drive-in (on Friday, despite the title of this segment) was the Denzel Washington vehicle, The Equalizer 3. A drive-in quality movie for sure, I was kind of left thinking why one of America’s greatest actors would do a movie like this in the first place. A cheap-thrills, formulaic movie does not make for a bad…

Hurricane is one of those bands that has existed for a long time in various manifestations and has gone through a variety of lineups but is still around. I wasn’t previously familiar with Hurricane, which, despite this fairly faithful rendition of “Under Pressure,” has its origins as a heavy metal band, going back to 1983. The band had a hit,…

Yesterday I mentioned this song as an example, along with “Rock’n Roll with Me” and “It Ain’t Easy” of songs that seemed out of place on their albums. Specifically, the nice, calm “Strangers When We Meet” is a really odd choice to end the manic, sometimes violent 1. Outside. Bowie seemed to like the song, though, for which he did…

Yesterday I mentioned the footage of Bowie performing, “Rock’n Roll with Me” in Buffalo during a 1974 concert at Buffalo’s Memorial Auditorium that’s was featured in the documentary, Moonage Daydream. This is the clip from the sequence featuring that performance. “Rock’n Roll with Me” is my least favorite song on one of my favorite albums, Diamond Dogs, but it isn’t…

I recently visited my home town of Buffalo (I live in Albany now) and stayed in the area around the waterfront. While there I saw many projects that have come to fruition and some that are still underway that I had been involved with in some way in my prior career. It was a strange, slightly sad feeling. I’ve been…

There aren’t a lot of covers of, “If You Can See Me,” but this is a good one. I’m posting it as an excuse to basically summarize my conclusion about the song, which really hadn’t occurred to me before (take a look at yesterday’s post). My main revelation is that this is really one in a series of songs where…

I was recently listening to Arsalan Mohammad‘s excellent podcast, Album to Album in which the host was discussing The Next Day with Leah Kardos, the musical theorist who wrote Blackstar Theory. You can listen to that podcast here. Kardos has certainly influenced my own thinking about Bowie and her book is thus far the best analysis of his music I…