Earlier today, I was chuckling about a petition that was making the rounds on the `net. Essentially, it was a petition to God to send David Bowie back to us. “If this works,” wrote a commenter, “we really could be onto something.” That made me laugh. It would indeed be a neat and welcome trick.
There are obviously loads of folks out there for whom the loss of David Bowie doesn’t mean quite so much, whether it’s because they’re simply too young to have lived through his more productive periods (through no fault of their own) or that they simply have their heads way up their own corpulent, pungently expulsive asses … oh, wait, excuse me, or that they simply don’t recognize or appreciate the magnitude of his impact on the world. Fair enough, I guess. When Michael Jackson moonwalked off this mortal coil, my own world didn’t end, but I know it deeply affected many. I was going to say “deeply touched,” but that felt a bit icky, considering the subject of the sentence. Yeah, I went there.
Anyway, along with the bitter realization that there will be no more genuinely new music from the man (it’s been recently said that he’d been harboring designs to actually do another album after Blackstar), in watching the hours and hours of footage and interview clips, it seems further heartbreaking in that Bowie seemed like such an authentically nice individual. It would be so nice to get him back, wouldn’t it? If only to lift the pervasive gloom that has defined 2016, thus far.
And if he could find a way to rope Lemmy in, too, that would also be excellent.
But in the days ahead in the wake of this bleak week, as the Bowie tributes, anecdotes, archival footage and heartfelt commemorative events gradually slow down to a trickle, I can’t help dread the inevitable return of the bullshit, when the media -- both mainstream and social – invariably return to all things Kardashian and Trump and people start losing their collective excrement about the most insipid dollops of today’s popular culture, rendered that much fouler by the void left behind by gentlemen like David Bowie and Lemmy Kilmister (yes, I’m throwing him in there, again, too). At least we still have Iggy Pop.
Anyway, herewith a (maybe?) last Bowie anecdote from me. I was fairly late to the table on Low, and didn’t really get around to experiencing the record until I got to college. Prior to that, my favorite Bowie record was (and remains) Diamond Dogs. But, during the early stages of my freshman year at Denison University, I befriended a kindred soul named Jay, a perpetually furrow-browed music obsessive fixated with The Stooges, The Velvet Underground, The Dead Kennedys and – yea verily – Berlin-era Bowie. As equally preoccupied with music as I, Jay was a crucial figure in broadening my horizons beyond the parameters of punk and metal, and I remain indebted to him for that.
In any case, it was during a dark January at Denison, and barely a third of the student body was on campus. This was because it was “J-Term,” a month wherein students could devote solely to a specific elective class or, conversely, take the month off. As such, during that cold, snow-caked month in the frigid expanse of rural Ohio, the campus was so underpopulated that it felt positively post-apocalyptic.
But Jay and I were both there. And, as college jerks did (and still do), we wasted a heroic amount of time doing nothing much more than listening to music and drinking a heroic amount of beer.
One dark evening as the snow was continuing to pile up, Jay called and said to come over. I forget what the actual plan was, but it was probably more that he was too reluctant to trudge through the snow to get to the quad I was living on, so somehow it was decided that I should walk to his quad. So, I put on my winter gear and walked out into the snowy night.
Once again, the campus was almost completely dark, with only a couple of lights on in any of the dorm windows. I cut through a completely deserted academic quad and made it over to the dorm Jay was living in. From quite a ways away, I could already hear – even through the wind and the snow – the music emanating.
With his windows thrown wide open, Jay was cranking Bowie’s “Speed of Life” off of Low at volumes normally reserved for -- wait for it -- Motorhead (it didn’t hurt that Jay was the only student around on his hall that month). As I walked up through the snow, I could hear its spacey strains cutting through the driving snow and bouncing off the adjoining buildings.
I’ve never been able to hear it again without thinking of that dark, snowy January night.
Here it is again, scoring some lovely New York City footage. Crank it.
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