Overkill

[kernelbogey]

I too have been surprised by the coverage.

I remember being fascinated hearing Bowie's music, new to me, in a restaurant in the King's Road (West London) circa 1971. I immediately bought the LP and played it a lot for a while, at a time when my classical LPs outnumbered Pop and Rock. Bowie is two years my junior. Four years later, family life began, with long days and a long commute. For a couple of decades I lost touch with Pop and Rock, and probably haven't played my Ziggy LP for 25 years.

But Bowie was larger than 'Pop and Rock'. Calling him a Pop Star is like saying Mozart was an Austrian composer. Bowie was a formative influence, and integral to, a society that was changing rapidly, and with increasing acceleration, between the mid sixties and now. I'm not qualified to comment on the musical trends (e.g.'Glam Rock'), save to note that the diversification in itself was new.

Bowie was a pioneer of androgeneity when it was considered dodgy by the mainstream. Now sexual ambivalence is part of the mainstream. He was also a pioneer in the use of sexually ambivalent costume.

It has to be said that he was also a very beautiful man, and I have not noticed this being said on this thread or the tribute thread. Look at the pictures of him as a young man: he is stunning. It's still not widely acceptable for a man (which I am) to say that another man is beautiful, but I do consider that - and am able to write it in a public forum without shame partly because of Bowie's contribution to contemporary culture.

[Anna]

kernelbogey, that is the best response I've read on either of the threads about Bowie. I was trying to compose something but you've said everything I wanted to say.

Speaking personally, I suppose I'm a fan (perhaps admirer is a better word) although the last album I bought was Hours - released in 1999. But there is some of his music, from various eras, which was very significant during some periods of my life - and I treasure those songs, they mean an awful lot to me (cf Noel Coward and potency of cheap music, etc.) and connected me to him in some way and the fact that he went so suddenly, without warning, makes me sad. It's a personal thing, I'm certainly not being whipped into a frenzy of shock by the media.

[Beef Oven!]

I too have been surprised by the coverage.

I remember being fascinated hearing Bowie's music, new to me, in a restaurant in the King's Road (West London) circa 1971. I immediately bought the LP and played it a lot for a while, at a time when my classical LPs outnumbered Pop and Rock. Bowie is two years my junior. Four years later, family life began, with long days and a long commute. For a couple of decades I lost touch with Pop and Rock, and probably haven't played my Ziggy LP for 25 years.

But Bowie was larger than 'Pop and Rock'. Calling him a Pop Star is like saying Mozart was an Austrian composer. Bowie was a formative influence, and integral to, a society that was changing rapidly, and with increasing acceleration, between the mid sixties and now. I'm not qualified to comment on the musical trends (e.g.'Glam Rock'), save to note that the diversification in itself was new.

Bowie was a pioneer of androgeneity when it was considered dodgy by the mainstream. Now sexual ambivalence is part of the mainstream. He was also a pioneer in the use of sexually ambivalent costume.

It has to be said that he was also a very beautiful man, and I have not noticed this being said on this thread or the tribute thread. Look at the pictures of him as a young man: he is stunning. It's still not widely acceptable for a man (which I am) to say that another man is beautiful, but I do consider that - and am able to write it in a public forum without shame partly because of Bowie's contribution to contemporary culture.

I started with Bowie in 1971 and he has 14 years on me. I agree that contextualising Bowie with just pop and rock misses the point that he was an artistic pioneer with very few near relatives. I've never placed Bowie in any particular trend like Glam Rock because I quickly got used to him moving on to something else - to me he was just 'Bowie'.

[MrGongGong]

Just shows the ignorance of people, when something like this happens

It certainly does

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?14553-David-Bowie-RIP&p=533688#post533688

#83 being a perfect example

Don't be surprised that people have no idea who Boulez was if you choose to ignore other manifestations of culture.

[Beef Oven!]

............and the fact that he went so suddenly, without warning, makes me sad. It's a personal thing, I'm certainly not being whipped into a frenzy of shock by the media.

Indeed. I think that if people believe that we are being agitated by the press, then they simply don't understand what this man, his music and his art were about.

[eighthobstruction]

...quite so kb, your last two para' being particularly relevant....I'm just reading a book about E M Forster and his being trapped /unable to express himself....I think your whole post brings my thoughts on DB clear to me....I would only put one or two DB tracks in my top 500, I didn't get carried away by his work. I knew he was clever, I was scared by his androgeneity, I knew was widely influential ( I'm talking 1970's), but I didn't want any of his records (I was a King Crimson and Matching Mole devotee ++ jazz rock)

....Mary C ....I remember when Lou Reed died, you had not heard of him either....oh well no problem....but it does remind me of a thread I'd like to start Ref: What People Really Do Do in Their Spare Time....(say in the evenings)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Indeed. I think that if people believe that we are being agitated by the press, then they simply don't understand what this man, his music and his art were about.

I think this is right - to confuse Bowie with "celebrities", or to presume that he was just another 70s Pop Star, is to miss the quality of what he did: as a teenager (BeefO and I appear to be exact contemporaries) I disliked the personae of Ziggy and Aladdin Sane, and particularly so after his "Britain would benefit from Fascism" comment. His later interviews suggested a much more mature and sympathetic human being, and the Music was closer to my own preferences, too. Only when I had to "deliver" a course on 70s British Pop Music in the late '90s, did I reacquaint myself with his early work, and realized both how much it had permeated my memories, and how much better it was than anything else going on at that time in that genre. Bowie was an Artist who happened to work with the materials of Pop Music - his death takes an original and deservedly popular thinker from us, and for that, and the manner of his death (including the dignity and courage with which he faced it) is not hype (as those who perhaps do not know his work might wish to believe) but a genuine cause for grief and sympathy.

[Tapiola]

... to confuse Bowie with "celebrities", or to presume that he was just another 70s Pop Star, is to miss the quality of what he did ... Bowie was an Artist who happened to work with the materials of Pop Music - his death takes an original and deservedly popular thinker from us, and for that, and the manner of his death (including the dignity and courage with which he faced it) is not hype (as those who perhaps do not know his work might wish to believe) but a genuine cause for grief and sympathy.

and far better than I could have expressed it myself.

[Tapiola]

But Bowie was larger than 'Pop and Rock'. Calling him a Pop Star is like saying Mozart was an Austrian composer. Bowie was a formative influence, and integral to, a society that was changing rapidly

Excellently put.

[eighthobstruction]

and far better than I could have expressed it myself.

....yes you are right....

[kernelbogey]

Thank you Anna.

Eighthh (no 51): I realise that I elided - it being so obvious - that being gay has, in itself, come out in the last fifty years. Before that, cross-dressing, camp behaviour and androgynous dress were considered threatening by the mainstream. In the course of Eddie Izzard's career (the last 15 years?) his crossdressing has become quite unremarkable. (So much so that he doesn't seem to do it any more.) And think how much camp behaviour was considered an acceptable target for humour (Are you being served?, passim, for example).

It should be said (and I do so, for what it's worth, as a straight man) that this whole movement, if it can be called that, has been liberating for men. I don't just mean for gay men, although their liberation (in most of the West, at least) has been important. But difference of all kinds, rather than conformity, in men is celebrated today in a way that was unthinkable in my teens.

[Nick Armstrong]

Bowie was an Artist who happened to work with the materials of Pop Music - his death takes an original and deservedly popular thinker from us, and for that, and the manner of his death (including the dignity and courage with which he faced it) is not hype (as those who perhaps do not know his work might wish to believe) but a genuine cause for grief and sympathy.

This echoes my views. His music has always left me pretty cold (but that's not a criticism of him - as regulars know, I feel the same about Tchaikovsky, for instance, so he's in good company); but the man was extraordinary, more and more so as he matured. It's perhaps relevant to say that in the early years of my career, the firm I was at were his solicitors and I was involved in advising him and his family. I remember vividly a moving visit to his mum's house in Beckenham to look after something for her - to go into her suburban house and as in millions of other homes to see framed photos all round the living room of her little son at school and on holiday, and to recognise already those teeth and those eyes; and then to go out into the hall to see the platinum discs on the wall... He was a wise and loving and unique chap, and I'm sorry for his passing (and impressed with the manner of it). I don't have any of his music though; and haven't engaged with the media reaction.

[teamsaint]

Overkill.....

We all know already that the media report things badly out of proportion to their significance all the time.
In part, but only in part, this is a function of " What is the biggest story right now".
EG Manchester United have ( i think I read somewhere) 5% of the football fans in England, but get far more than 5% of the column inches, because they are usually the easiest way to use football to sell papers.
Yes, the reaction to Bowies death over a day or two seems, and is, extreme.But actually this will last a few days, but compare it to his fifty years as a star ( more or less), and the millions of people whose lives he genuinely affected,and it suddenly seems a little less extreme.
And people looking for targets for accusations of media overkill might look elsewhere . Concentration on political parties spin, wall to wall football,endless column inches devoted to reality TV, or alternatively the dreadful lack of exposure of so many ills, such as the tentacles of the arms industry through the west and its allies in the middle east, to give just one example.

Of course Bowie's extraordinary leave taking shouldn't oust the misery of suffering people in Syria,Africa,or wherever from our media.( is it really ours?)
But the picture is so much bigger and more complicated than that.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Could have been worse. What about Prokofiev ?

Prokofiev was an interesting case in that the Soviet authorities delayed announcing Prokofiev's death until Stalin's demise had died down. Solti was just forgotten. It was only when Pavarotti mentioned it when interviewed at Di's funeral that it finally got out.

[doversoul1]

Do you think that the fact that you and your family know or care very little about Bowie is important, or even relevant?

To whom? I’m sure Christopher Hogwood’s death meant nothing whatsoever to most people on earth. What’s the difference?

If David Bowie had such massive influence on society, should he be blamed for some of the prevailing modern ills of which we are aware today? Or was his influence all virtuous?

David Bowie passed by two generations of this household and I cannot honestly say we feel we have missed something we shouldn't (of course one does not know how important something that one missed).

Anybody remember Bye Bye Birdie?