Our giants continue to depart as this version of reality sheds its skin. Western popular culture is excrement now. We can only make our own lifeboats at this stage.
Life on Mars was the first seven inch record I bought. I was nine years old at the time. If there is one person you can point to and say all the vital cultural forces in my lifetime emanated from, it was Bowie.
Every aspect of my life revolved around him in some manner and to some degree. I met my first girlfriend when she invited me over to her house to listen to Low after school. My old band The Children’s Zoo (here we are playing at Bowie’s Scream club in New York) would perform cover versions of Always Crashing in the Same Car and Panic in Detriot.
In fact, every band and I was ever in played Bowie tunes either as covers or during rehearsals. Only a few weeks ago I played bass (poorly, I might add) on Ashes to Ashes and China Girl with Waterford singer/songwriter David O’Sullivan on the Ridge of Wicker stage here in Sligo.
Humans were and will be forever fascinated and have their lives in some manner connected to the Goblin King, Ziggy Stardust, Major Tom etc… Icon is a term thrown about too freely these days. David Bowie deserved it. I am not that sad as he had already attained immortality.
Only a couple of weeks ago some friends and I were like excited teens watching and loving Blackstar. I remarked that this must be the final part of the Major Tom trilogy.
Like a true artist he finished the triptych in perfect time. Demonstrating not only how a person should live their mortal life, but also how they should move on from it.
