Overkill

[teamsaint]

I think S_A doesn't realise that it's a song by Simple Minds, and thinks you were insulting us both!

If I Could insult you both in a single two word post I would be both proud and ashamed !!

Is there a word for that ?

[Beef Oven!]

Night all!

Don't forget to bolt the back door and take out all plugs from the sockets.

[teamsaint]

Don't forget to bolt the back door and take out all plugs from the sockets.

Did You at one time work on those public information films at all ?

[Beef Oven!]

Did You at one time work on those public information films at all ?

[Bryn]

... Last week no-one was interested in him.

As I recall, the 8th of January 2016 fell during last week. That was the date of a prominent review of Bowie's final CD, Blackstar in the Daily Telegraph.

Best to check basic facts before you start digging your hole.

[P. G. Tipps]

As I recall, the 8th of January 2016 fell during last week. That was the date of a prominent review of Bowie's final CD, Blackstar in the Daily Telegraph.

Best to check basic facts before you start digging your hole.

I'm genuinely surprised some forum members managed to miss that when they picked up their copy of the Telegraph that day ...

Not that I'm being in any way facetious.

[Mary Chambers]

I think you're being very hard on Mary. There's no reason why she would know her friends' views on Bowie unless the conversation, at any point in time, had turned to the subject of him. His death obviously sparked such a conversation in which they expressed their liking for him which has dumbfounded her. (It would only be cause for concern if she then had a lower opinion of her friends' opinions on other subjects for their liking an aspect of popular culture)

Conversely I've no idea of my friends' views on Schubert's lieder - I imagine they're the same as mine (I cannot abide lieder of any sort) - but again I don't know as it's a subject that's never been aired. Perhaps I should do so, I may be shocked!.

.

My reply to this may be a bit inarticulate, since it's ten past six in the morning.

I was talking about general opinions about Bowie as expressed in the media, more than about my friends. The 'people I respect' referred to musicians and critics, and some people on boards such as this one.

Among my own circle of friends and relations, opinions seem to be much the same as mine. I have discussed the Bowie phenomenon since his death with several of them. Before now, the subject has never arisen! I have often discussed Schubert lieder with my closest friends and my more musically inclined relations, though. Some, like me, love them passionately. One or two are indifferent, or simply don't know them well.

Last night I asked my forty-something offspring how they felt about Bowie. They know much more about him than I do, but are not particularly interested. They said they were basically ten years too young!

What it all boils down to is that among my immediate circle, of both friends and relations, Bowie is simply of no importance or interest (whereas Schubert is, for many of them) - so we are fascinated and surprised by the response in the media.

[Tapiola]

Last night I asked my forty-something offspring how they felt about Bowie. They know much more about him than I do, but are not particularly interested. They said they were basically ten years too young!

I am a forty-something, Mary, but perhaps just a late developer!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

As I recall, the 8th of January 2016 fell during last week. That was the date of a prominent review of Bowie's final CD, Blackstar in the Daily Telegraph.

Ah, now I understand why the PM knew who he was.

[french frank]

Best to check basic facts before you start digging your hole.

I don't think it was contradicting what Alpie said: the review opens with the words, 'After a 10-year absence' and describes his 'surprise return to music in 2013'. That doesn't suggest his name has constantly been on everyone's lips, which was surely the point Alpie was making? And Neil McCormick, the journalist, is just coming up to 55 (on March 31st), just the generation we've been speaking of.

No great signs among the younger members of our family (all under 40) that he was recognised as an exceptional formative influence, aside from his music. The eldest - just coming up to 40, and a journalist - posted a long musing about mortality, but this seemed more related to the deaths of his mother and his closest friend (the same age as himself) during the past year.

So I still think Bowie's wider influence was appreciated most by those now in their 50s and 60s.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I know,I was trying to be clever,funny or something[/I]

Unfortunately, others always have the last laugh on both of us, in view of our football allegiance.

[Richard Tarleton]

This article got me thinking;.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/13/david-bowie-life-on-mars-radical-singularity-fantasy

And that’s my Bowie problem. His work was the fantasy of life without constraint, without the restrictions of (moral) gravity and directed exclusively by the lone star of choice. This philosophy can only work in the realm of fiction and fantasy. Back on planet Earth, the unencumbered life turns out to be more of a curse than a blessing.

Another quote from the article:

Paul Weller had it right when he inverted Bowie: “I don’t believe he was an astronaut. I must insist he was a socialist”

Hmmm. A (friendly, by an admirer) opinion piece in yesterday's Times, by Daniel Finkelstein, comes to a rather different conclusion. He refers to Bowie's answers to the 1998 Proust Questionnaire: DF writes: 'The most revealing, however, was in his response to the question "Who are your heroes in real life?". Proust had cited Emile Boutroux, the 19th century historian of philosophy. Bowie replied, truthfully and insightfully: "The consumer". '

Finkelstein argues that Bowie was very much, and consciously, a construct of capitalism, and in a good way. Pop music was stamped on in the 1960s by the Musicians Union (who did not like too much recorded music being played on the airwaves because it takes work from live musicians) and by a Labour government - Tony Benn supported the state initiative to close down the pirate radios. 'Commerce', writes DF, 'is and always has been the engine of rock music. And rock was never the counter-culture, it was the culture. It didn't rebel against the postwar era, it created it.....When Bowie recorded "The Bewlay Brothers" for his "Hunky Dory" album he quietly said to the producer: "Don't listen to the words, they don't mean anything. I've just written them for the American market, they like this kind of thing". '

DF goes on, "He was possible because in a consumer capitalist society nobody can ultimately stop anybody doing anything. He understood this better than almost all his contemporaries.....To say that David Bowie created a product - himself - and then recreated it to suit changing tastes is not to belittle him. It is simply to argue that pop, with Bowie at it's head, saw that consumerism isn't base and philistine. It can be the ally of artistic endeavour. Commerce, liberty and art, arm-in-arm. That was the great David Bowie".

Well worth a read.

As for me - I'm one of those on this thread who just didn't get him, but following Anna's excellent advice I'm not worrying about it.

[doversoul1]

Time I stopped reading The Guardian. I must be getting too old for the paper.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/13/dont-deride-those-mourning-david-bowie-this-grief-serious-and-rational

I have every respect for those who grieve the loss of a great musician. I still moan the passing of Christopher Hogwood but this article doesn’t seem to be very much about music. It’s all about a person as a phenomena like Diana whom the author declares, adored.

I may be ge getting too old even for this society.

[P. G. Tipps]

Some of us (me!) are not at all worried about 'not getting' David Bowie. I think I did 'get him', though. He was a canny, commercial pop-star who was way ahead of the pack when it came to enduring success. Finkelstein has quite clearly 'got him' as well. Surely that is not to be disparaging, quite the opposite! Mr Bowie was a very clever and successful performer, whatever one thinks of his music.

It is reported this morning that the deceased pop-star has now been secretly cremated as he didn't want a funeral and 'any fuss'. In his personal life he kept a very low profile. Many of us can easily relate to and 'get that' as well.

No, the only thing I still 'don't get' is what the media presented us with on Monday. Maybe it simply should have followed the example of the admirably hysteria-phobic Mr Bowie himself, if he had, as some claimed, really 'changed the world'?

Or is that just too logical a concept for some ...?

[Richard Tarleton]

Time I stopped reading The Guardian. I must be getting too old for the paper.

Follow David Bowie's excellent example and read The Times. It was his daily newspaper of choice in recent years.