Around midnight last night, one child threw up. At 6 am, the other one had a disquieting bout of diarrhea (aren't you glad I'm here to share these things with you? You're welcome!) As such, the day has started much earlier than anyone would have preferred. Being that I'm ostensibly supposed to be going out tonight (to see the triumphant return of Firewater to Brooklyn), I volunteered to get up with the kids and let Peg catch a few more Z's. Such is my Dadly duty.
So, we're up. Both kids are irritable, and I'm not far behind them in that capacity. Unable to think of any activities for my little testy two, I begrudgingly flicked on the tube. Charlotte sniffily asked for the Disney Channel as opposed to my usual go-to choice, Noggin. I winced and obliged. The room soon filled with the sickly strains of Johnny & the Sprites, a show that makes me want to unfreeze Walt Disney from his secret cryogenic chamber just so I can brain him with a tire iron. The air in the apartment is still rife with the faint but distinctive whiff of unhappy toddler bodily fluids. I've accordingly thrown open all the windows. The kids, for the moment, are glued to the television and neither puking nor pooping. Detente has momentarily been achieved, but this looks like it might be a long weekend in the not-so-good way.
In an attempt to find my inner happy place, I've fired up my iTunes and am grooving to some vintage Bowie of the coke n' smack-addled, occult-bothering, worryingly paranoid and possibly Nazi-sympathizing variety. I'm currently ankle deep into Thomas Jerome Seabrook's surprisingly well-written rock tome, "Bowie in Berlin," a sprawling account of the Thin White and thoroughly fucked up Duke's sojourn to Germany in the mid-to-late 70s wherein he recorded arguably the finest albums of his illustrious career (I'm still partial to the doomy dystopia of Diamond Dogs, myself). Even if you're only a passive fan of ol' Dave's, it's a fun read.
In any case, I first heard this version of "Heroes" in the very early 90s upon the release of the then-seemingly ambitious and garishly packaged box set, Sound + Vision. On the tour to promote same, Bowie infamously stated that he'd never perform these songs again -- a claim he unsurprisingly later reneged on. Regardless, "Helden" is a mix of "Heroes" sung entirely in the native tongue of Bowie's adopted city. Bowie's pronunciation is suitably phlegmy and guttural, perfectly complementing those Velvet Underground-cribbing hammered pianos and Robert Fripp's otherworldly guitars. In retrospect, I much prefer it to the original. The bass line alone is to die for.
Emboldened by a sense of Teutonic discipline, I'm now ready for the next onslaught. ACHTUNG!
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