Overkill

[Beef Oven!]

So in what sense were you referring to the letter-writer as 'representative' - the bow tie? In what way would any individual be 'representative'?

15p to the first person to correctly name this unrepresentative, musical bow-tie wearer.

[teamsaint]

You still niggly coz I dissed your Siècle des Lumières bargain post?

all in a days work for the committed Bargain hunter.
I should know, having worked with Paul Martin.

or is that another show?

[french frank]

If I'm honest, that bow-tie had something to do with it.

Prejudice?

The point about age/generation isn't an obsession: it was offered as an explanation as to why a recently demised person was hugely important to some and of no importance at all to others. Generation seemed to be one factor.

Speculating - would there have been the same coverage if the demised person had been 79 or 89? Or even known to have been terminally ill for quite a while? I made the point earlier that part of the coverage was because the news came as a shock. David Bowie's importance seems to have ended some while ago, unless you think that with the recent albums he was influencing a new audience in a more contemporary way.

PS Colin Davis - I claim my 15p.

[Beef Oven!]

Speculating - would there have been the same coverage if the demised person had been 79 or 89? Or even known to have been terminally ill for quite a while? I made the point earlier that part of the coverage was because the news came as a shock. David Bowie's importance seems to have ended some while ago, unless you think that with the recent albums he was influencing a new audience in a more contemporary way.

Some speculation can be falsified, but not this one.

[french frank]

Some speculation can be falsified, but not this one.

Sorry, that conveys nothing to me. Where's my 15p?

[Anna]

15p to the first person to correctly name this unrepresentative, musical bow-tie wearer.

It's Sir Colin Davis, looking very dapper.

[ahinton]

Bough-ie or Beau-ie? I think that I overheard part of some discussion of this on today's edition of R4's Broadcasting House.

Never mind any of that. The pronunciation of Bowyer seems not to be in doubt, any more than does his brilliance; when he shuffles off his mortal coil, however, I do not expect this to be reflected in widespread coverage in the meedja (but I could be wrong, I suppose)...

[Beef Oven!]

It's Sir Colin Davis, looking very dapper.

True to my word - just reply to this post on this thread with your account number, sort code, date of birth, name, address and the name of your first pet, and I'll transfer the money to you.

[Beef Oven!]

Sorry, that conveys nothing to me. Where's my 15p?

We can't test the speculation.

see post#248, you'll have split the prize with Anna.

[P. G. Tipps]

It's a Bowie-Tie, anyway ...

...

[french frank]

We can't test the speculation.

We can't test whether the speculation is true, but the point of it was not to 'prove' anything, but perhaps discuss the reasons why a demised person who in fact was not that young given the life expectancy of many figures in the (popular) music industry received so much news coverage. Was a major factor the shock of the unexpected? Did people want him to go on living longer? Why? So that they could buy more new albums? Did they feel he was still influential in some way? These are questions that individuals can answer for themselves, if not about the response of the media.

see post#248, you'll have split the prize with Anna.

Happy to do so. In fact Anna can have 8p and I'll settle for 7p. In fact, I don't mind if she pockets the lot However, I posted my PS within seconds of posting the message (you hadn't posted the photograph when I started replying, and only saw it the instant I posted my message).

Now I shall leave this thread and go to What Are You Reading Now …

[Beef Oven!]

Dear all, that was ff letting her hair down, a bit.

[Lat-Literal]

I agree with most of what's been written since I last posted - ferney, Lat and Mr Tipps (as at the moment I take up my pen) but some thoughts occur:

On the school assembly story, ferney says this it is indeed appropriate to explain why there has been so much coverage of DB's death. But will there also be an explanation as to why there has also been a question about 'too much coverage' (and not just here!) or will it be the one-sided view of someone (in [his] 50s or 60s ) for whom Bowie was a hero? Will there be any consideration of the aspects of society in which so many people invest to much of themselves in popular music, style &c. and make them question their own absorbtion in Bieber, Adele et al?

Lat's 1) is relevant: do their own 'popular heroes' (for want of a better phrase) play the same role in their lives as Bowie played to older generations? Why are they so important to them? Should they be so important? And in 2) Yes, the media do play a part in focusing attention on what the media have selected and how they choose to present it: that's its role in society. It isn't 'wrong', but strong, repeated messages do influence public thinking.

Mr Tipps makes the point about Bowie representing a message that being 'different' is okay. But 'being different' changes from generation to generation. As do musical tastes. If one were to list all the ways in which Bowie was considered to be important, would these still be the kind of issues that are, in absolute terms (i.e. for ever), 'important'? Or can you not question why they're important and say 'they just are'?

Thank you.

A "Letter From America" style ramble without any obvious beginning, middle and end.

I saw Bowie at Glastonbury in 2000. The performance was solid although he apologised for having a sore throat. It was also emotional and while much of the emotion had to do with seeing him live, the music actual and memories through the years, it peaked with a two word statement from him. A rather loving sounding "Ah, Glastonbury". There wasn't any originality in it. It had been done in previous years by other artists and it was repeated subsequently. I couldn't be specific but among the names that spring to mind are Travis, David Gray and Coldplay. Very possibly it started with Tony Bennett in 1998, an older artist who was hardly to have been expected there let alone enjoying huge popularity because of his performance. That performance changed a lot. The sentiment was one about inclusiveness and connection via music in an increasingly disconnected world. It crossed all age and genre barriers. Bear in mind that rock and pop music from the 1950s to the 1980s had emphasised generational difference and it was highly nuanced in terms of cliques both musically and in age terms. 20 year olds' tastes were old hat to 16 year olds and 16 year olds' tastes were old hat to the pre-teens. How silly we were to have been so narrow!

Spending three days with such a sense of togetherness in a temporary city the size of York is to some extent an illusory experience. Differences between people of whatever nature and social needs for competitiveness are not so much abandoned as silenced by musical and cultural connections in a specific terrain. What the experience does, though, on any return to Blighty is prompt questions like "couldn't life always be more like this?". Just to hear Radio 1 being played on the bus back to the station is a horrid jolt back into adult organisation that seems more commercial, urban, employment based and contrived. It can seem like another world even if the music being played on the radio involves highlights from the festival during the weekend. Symbolically, this is significant. Politicians and media people tend to be fairly hard bitten. Frequently childish but rarely childlike, what they have increasingly perceived in such events is some sort of feeling that was largely lost in their professional and personal lives even though it is still seemingly accessible to others of various ages including their own. And it would be fair to say that the feeling is not merely about inclusion and youthfulness but other-worldliness and suspended reality in a place where real people mix. That is the draw for liberal conservatives and their ilk. It is why the Telegraph some years ago noted that there were so many Tory MPs and similar types in those fields, Glastonbury could almost have become Glyndebourne. It may be why when one leading Conservative MP became a Minister in my Department, we were told not to send her briefing on the first weekend as she was spending it at the festival. I have to say that the place has had less allure for me with these developments and my own aging.

From these reference points, one can move in a couple of directions. The first concerns those who are powerful in the modern age and their motivations. It would probably be wrong to suggest that they are only there to be seen and know little about the music. They like any others of their age were not removed from popular culture and arguably one of their few remaining links back to the past is their early record collections. Nevertheless, there is an element of the football syndrome about it. That idea of Cameron sitting down with Merkel to watch England playing Germany to show that he is just a normal kind of guy. Blair, of course, claimed to have seen Jackie Milburn play for similar reasons but could not in truth have remembered doing so given his age. Then there is the territorial aspect. Such people have a natural way of spotting any sort of vacuum in new capitalism and orientate towards it to colonize it. That has been witnessed in the organisation of football and other sports. Plus it helps that many of the old rock gods as well as modern sports people became multi-millionaires so there is a connection with them on that level. To have the news of Bowie's death on umpteen pages of newspapers day after day is in this context symptomatic of a "we are all in this together" just as is conveyed with references to the Royal Family. Obviously ordinary fans will take in as much or as little of it as they wish. But that is not to say that the connection extends that far from their particular angles. Those are different and may as I have heard this week range from the questioning - "was he that original when "Rebel Rebel" sounded like the Rolling Stones, "Golden Years" like Stevie Wonder's "Superstition" and "This is Not America" like the Pet Shop Boys?" - to the oblique - "He and his music seemed so not of this world it was impossible to think that he could ever die." In overkill, we are, folks, in the areas both of myth and reality.

The second direction goes way back in time. It is about Bowie himself but it is also about the role of pop and rock music in young or youngish lives in the early 1970s. First, the idea of the teenager as a distinct cultural phenomenon was still relatively new - 15-20 years - and so people of a certain age connected with each other via music noting differences of viewpoints from those older. Secondly, I do think especially in that era that music joined football as a device for enabling male children to communicate better with each other when girls were often perceived socially to have a greater number of natural connections. Some rock artists from that time - eg Rick Wakeman - have noted that there was rarely a woman or girl in their audience. Consequently, for all of the cliques which were to be expected in what was often an ostensibly male domain, there was a connectivity that pre-dated the festival experience albeit it was narrower in age and gender terms. In a sense, it was the counter to the new capitalism in which everyone subsequently was employed. It could almost have been a junior trade union. So again one can look at those in power now and see how their social backgrounds may or may not have elided with those dynamics. Whatever their individual situations at that time, the conveying of similarity for them today is paramount and may partially explain the extent of news coverage in the past week.

I think one can also look at the emphasis on androgyny and sexuality in Bowie's work in the light of recent social reform. It may well have been that for those around 60 now his positioning was truly groundbreaking. Certainly, it became seen as such by subsequent generations but then it was only after their career that Abba were commonly depicted as camp. Myths take time to develop. Glam rock had very young followers in the early 1970s. With everything so new I am not sure that the average nine year old saw any of what was depicted as historically relevant. That Bowie and Ronson cavorted with each other on Top of the Pops was viewed with the same excitement as Rod Stewart playing football on the stage during "Maggie May". Hence it was both different and wholly ordinary. This is not to take away from his significance in sexual politics but it is to remind people of what was actually taking place and to show how the machinery works. It suits the Camerons of this world to seize upon that aspect and old style conservatives like Widdecombe to do the same. The media revel in those stances as if it is 1953 and it is the very opposite of the togetherness described. For many, what was truly bizarre towards the end of the 1970s was seeing young males choosing short hair but most in the media and politics have no doubt acquired too many artificial layers in their professional money-making to recall it!

[Bryn]

A great film. I will try and watch it.

I wonder is any contributors here were playing in the recording of The Planets used in the film?

[Beef Oven!]

If people want to ventilate about the relative coverage afforded to people in the public eye who have recently died, would they mind starting a separate thread on that subject, rather than using the RIP threads? We had all this on the Lou Reed, David Bowie RIP threads, now it's starting up on the PMD thread. We have established a simple protocol on this, and ff has underlined it on several occasions.