4-12-09 David Bowie – Ziggy Stardust

Well, Shanoah, since the theme seems to be Freddie Mercury or David Bowie in weird costumes (I know! Crazy, huh!), here’s David Bowie live with Ziggy Stardust.

Courtesy of deadliner.

4-11-09 Queen with David Bowie – Heroes

Well, since the theme seems to be tribute-concerts-to-Freddie-Mercury-with-David-Bowie-fronting-Queen (a very small and little known genre of music), here’s one of my favorite Bowie songs, Heroes, from that very same concert… held, coincidentally, on Easter Monday, April 20, 1992.

Courtesy of patamondongo.

Under Pressure

Well, I was having trouble coming up with a good response to Whiplash, and now that it’s gettling close to time for the next post, I’m feeling a bit under pressure to come up with something.

So I thought I’d post this epic song. It’s Freddy Murcury’s “Under Pressure” being sung by David Bowie and Annie Lennox. Awesome performance. Interesting that Annie Lennox looks stranger then Bowie does here.

Jesus and the Devil and…

Well, if we have the apocalypse going on, and Jesus and the Devil going at it, we clearly also need David Bowie in on it as well. Though I can’t say which side he’d be coming in on. Or neither, come to think about it.

But you’d get one impression watching him steal babies, and doing voodoo here, in the Labyrinth. This is the song Dance, Magic Dance.

But then listen to him in this clip with Bing Crosby, singing Little Drummer Boy. Purely amazing, and quite different from the impression you get above.

That may be one reason why I like David Bowie. He’s clearly Chaotic Neutral.

Onions

I suppose we could have less conversation. I tend to be good at that, really. Especially after thinking about you giving a hamster mouth to mouth.

You know, I was already familiar with that song, but wasn’t familiar with the Nike commercial. Which, I suppose is typical of me. I already had a version of it in my bookmarks, right here:

A Little Less Conversation

Of course, I have a lot of interesting things in my bookmarks, like this:

Cheese and Onion

This song, of course is from the Rutles. John was once asked in an interview what he thought of the Rutles, and as a response, he started singing a bit of this song.

And of course, have any of you ever seen John Lennon singing with David Bowie?

Fame

The answer is, of course, no, you haven’t, and you are unlikely to. All the videos in this post are of the talented Steve Riks, in one case playing two separate people in the same video. Pretty good impersonator, isn’t he? Of course, I think his Lennon impression is the best of the ones I’ve seen him do…

9-24-08 David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust – Starman

Hrmmm… David Bowie you say… And Klaus Nomi looks like a starman in that outfit.

Speaking of which…

There’s a starman waiting in the sky
He’d like to come and meet us
But he thinks he’d blow our minds
There’s a starman waiting in the sky
He’s told us not to blow it
Cause he knows it’s all worthwhile
He told me:
Let the children lose it
Let the children use it
Let all the children boogie

Off 1972’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Transmission courtesy of syndecut midevilfreako.

I’m Waiting For The Man

Yeah, that’s what I was looking at. Didn’t really have time to cover it, but it was important enough I thought I’d better bring it up.

Today I thought I’d play a song about something more ethical then politics, though. Namely drug-dealing:

I'm Waiting for the Man - Velvet Underground

This video was done by Andy Warhol, and is of a studio session of Velvet Underground doing a song called “I’m Waiting for the Man”.

And, as you may have gathered from the song lyrics, the “man” the singers waiting for, is a drug dealer he’s going to purchase his latest fix from.

The song has been covered a surprising number of times:

I'm Waiting for the Man - Lou Reed & John Cale - Bataclan '72

This one I wouldn’t be that surprised about, though, as Lou Reed & John Cale were two of the main people from Velvet Underground.

This take just somehow feels a little cleaner then the last one.

I'm Waiting for the Man - David Bowie

And this is David Bowies cover. It has a rather different feel, which may be because he was taking different drugs; cocaine rather then heroin.

And, of course, he’s a rather different artist then Velvet Underground.

Note that nothing in this post is meant to imply any support for drug dealing or taking; if you choose to get all hyped up on caffeine after this, and become a powered-sugar-donut snorting, asprin-crazed madman after reading this, it’s totally on you.

Oh, by the way, Sean, do you know what I bought last weekend?

MWAHAHAHA!

A Post With A Substantial Lack of Ladies

Killer robots from outer space? Boy, I post one song about Robots from Kraftwerk, and suddenly they’re all over the place, destroying all the humans.

And in the meantime, I can’t really find my way to making a good theme with the one music video I have tucked away involving robots.

But a song by the Who comes on my mp3 player, and and suddenly I have a whole theme about men in drag going. Without even referencing Rocky Horror Picture Show. Scary.

So, here we go:

I'm A Boy - The Who (1967)

Here we have the sad story of a boy whose mother dresses him up as a girl. There are some strange people out there. (Even if we exclude David Bowie)

Dude (Looks Like A Lady) - Aerosmith 1987

And here’s a classic Aerosmith song. I’m not much for Aerosmith, but they have their moments. (Which for me is mainly this song, and “Janies Got a Gun”).

Lola - The Kinks 1970

But for a classic story of being drunk enough in a bar not to notice that you’re chatting up a crossdresser, we have to go to the Kinks, with Lola.

I love this song, especially with the double meanings implicit in the lyrics.

Girls will be boys and boys will be girls
Its a mixed up muddled up shook up world
except for Lola
...
Well I'm not the worlds most masculine man
But I know what I am and I'm glad I'm a man
And so's Lola

Of course, I also always think of Weird Al’s parody of this song, Yoda, which is brilliant.

Rebel, Rebel - David Bowie

And, you know, I mentioned excluding David Bowie earlier in this post, and that isn’t really fair to him with a theme like this. So here he is, being all metrosexual in “Rebel, Rebel”.

8-19-08 David Bowie – Life on Mars?

Well, we go from floating to being bounced around like a BB in a pachinko game (story of my life).

It seems that:

1. I was doing research at work today on Michael Imperioli for a signed copy of the script for The Sopranos pilot…
2. And I found out that he’s in an American TV series called Life on Mars…
3. Which is based on a British series called Life on Mars…
4. Which took its title from David Bowie’s song Life on Mars?, on 1971’s Hunky Dory.

So I figured, “If the Universe has gone to that much trouble to give me a song for the blog, I better do as it suggests.” And so I did. I feel so meshed with my karma right now…

Courtesy of Darknessanddisgrace.

DJs

I remember hearing both versions of 99 Red Balloons on the air, Sean. It was a a fun song: “Captain Kirk says red alert”

I’ve been listening to KVMR a bit more, and happened to catch a few interesting songs. There was a jazz piece that prominently featured hold music clips I thought was very cool (but was unable to russle up for the blog).

They also had a David Bowie marathon a few days ago, which is always a good thing. While listening to that, I happened to run across this song:

DJ – David Bowie

This song kind of got stuck in my head. I heard it before I realised I was in a Bowie marathon, too, and found out what song it was by a lyrics search.

I’ll admit I sometimes feel like a DJ when doing these posts (though, not having actually been a DJ, I can’t say how close this actually gets).

Sadly, most music you hear on the radio these days, with certain radio stations as exceptions, are not determined by the people running them, and will not have more obscure or less popular songs. Which somewhat leads us to this song:

The Last DJ – Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers

This song is the title track of a cd by the same name from 2002. Is you might imagine, it was banned from air play.

Rolling Stone magazine quoted him saying this about it:

“I remember when the radio meant something. We enjoyed the people who were on it, even if we hated them. They had personalities. They were people of taste, who we trusted. And I see that vanishing. I thought it was a good metaphor to start the album.”

So, along with the last gunslinger, we have the last DJ. And, you know, Tom Petty is very distinctive. Before he started singing, my first thoughts were “Tweeter and the Monkeyman. Woohoo!”

Both great songs, but the overall sound is very similar. Makes me think that he may have been one of the main writers on that song…