David Bowie Ruled the 00s

I've been swimming in David Bowie's final album again; it's perfect for my headspace at the moment, which I can only describe as 'weird.'

Something kickstarted a full-blown, days-upon-days reverie for the 00s, which is the definition of the word weird because it largely feels like a decade of my life that didn't really end up belonging to me. Not that it belonged to anyone else, but... well, can ten years be a corridor? I've ruminated on the philosophical context/ramifications of Soundgarden's Room a Thousand Years Wide, now we're readjusting that concept to a more micro version. Whether a decade can be a hallway or not, I've stepped back into that - triggered, I think, by a huge Warren Ellis reading binge - and it's very interesting, this mix of my ongoing current headspace, reinforced daily by the world I've built, and these elements of my previous operating system. What will be the outcome? Not quite sure yet, but it's pleasurable to walk around in two personal eras at once (again, a micro version of Philip K. Dick's experience, but without the out of body stuff).


**

There's a couple new Horror Visions up, and one more to come this weekend. Topics of discussion range from Doctor Sleep to The Lighthouse to True Blood to Jennifer Kent's The Nightengale to, ah, turtle sex? The second oldest is a very tangental 'after dark' episode where we start out as a four-piece and become a three-piece whose conversation runs all the fuck over the place, but it's pretty cool to have captured and edited it to be, you know, coherent.

The Horror Vision on Apple

The Horror Vision on Spotify

The Horror Vision on Google Play

**

Yes, I too signed up for Disney +. I will be unsubscribing when The Mandalorian is finished for the season, but in the meantime, holy smokes do I LOVE this show. Now THIS is Star Wars; I actually consider this an apology to old school fans for that crap that's been in the theatre the last few years. And yes, I know this show was very specifically engineered to appease people like me: 40+ year olds who grew up with it and love the old, Sergio Leone approach. They've utilized so many characters that are based on my favorite action figures as a kid that there was no way this wasn't going to work for me. Contrived? Sure. Do I mind? Nope.



**

Weird Walk is a wonderful little 'zine published by some fascinating people over in Great Britain. I received my copy of issue number two after reading about it in Warren Ellis' newsletter a few weeks, and have so far had the pleasure of reading an interview with author Benjamin Myers about how the rural English landscape has influenced and inspired his writing. This seems like it fits right in with that 'Haunted', Hypnogogic aesthetic that, you guessed it, fits in with my current re-assessment of the 00s.

You can order Weird Walk and peruse their sight HERE.

**

Playlist:

David Bowie - Black Star
Clavicvla - Sepulchral Blessing
Greet Death - New Hell
Burial - Eponymous
Burial - Untrue
Federale - No Justice
Mastodon - Once More 'Round the Sun
Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen
Oh Baby - The Art of Sleeping Alone
The Cure - Carnage Visors
The Cure - Pornography
Black Pumas - Eponymous
Mayhem - Daemon

**

No card today, however, I wanted to note how exact my last two pulls were. Exact like in a creepy, "Tarot is never this on the nose" way.

Friday I pulled the Ten of Disks Wealth and received an unexpected Royalty check in the mail for my books. Three days later I pulled the Five of Cups Disappointment and received a notification that the submission I sent via FedEx to an anthology I adore failed to deliver and that I'd have to re-send it through the post office to get it there.

That's pretty accurate.

2019: May 20th - Joe Bob Briggs on the Demons "Series"

As we entire the final week of Joe Bob Briggs' inaugural season of The Last Drive-In on Shudder, I thought I'd post one of my favorite clips from the man.

I didn't have cable growing up, so I never got to experience JBB in his previous iterations. I seriously don't think I'd ever even heard of him before Shudder brought him on last summer for that first, 25 hour marathon - the origin of this clip. I've fallen in love fast, though. After last week's episode (The Stuff and Street Trash), I actually threw on his Thanksgiving Dinners of Death to watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre with his asides (I missed the beginning of it during the original, Holiday airing). That's something I never thought I'd do - watch a film I respect as much as TCM more for interruptions than the film itself. But JBB is a fount of information, and despite the weakening of a viewings immersions with his interruptions, I've seen TCM many times, but never with the Joe Bob's annotations, which I'd imagine will add quite a bit of context to subsequent viewings, much the same as Brad Shellady's 1988 documentary Texas Chainsaw Massacre: A Family Portrait, which I love as much as the original film.

I'll miss Joe Bob in the off season; there's been something amazing about watching this live every week I'm able, and I'm sure I'll be revisiting these episodes throughout the interim between this and what I hope will be another season somewhere not too far down the line.

**

I was able to catch up on a lot of reading this weekend, and one of the comics I blew through several issues of was Gunning for Hits. This book - published by Image Comics - is fantastic, especially if you're a music lover. Writer Jeff Rougvie brings all the insight from a career producing some of the biggest and most influential bands in history - David Bowie and Elvis Costello to name a few - into the story of Martin Mills, former Government Black Ops Agent turned A&R man, signing bands in 1987 New York. What we have is a brilliantly entertaining and educational book that really shows how the industry used to work, woven in with dramatic situations that range from the on-the-road hi jinx of a newly signed band in the pre-Grunge era (think Noel Monk's 12 Days on the Road) combined with a whirlwind tutorial of the back-room goings on of the men who made the hits. And the back matter alone is worth the price of admission, where Rougvie further hashes out for the laymen just how that giant dinosaur system used to work.

Also, as you can see, there are a lot of allusions in the book for music nerds to get excited over.

**

Playlist from 5/19:

Melvins - (A) Senile Animal
Melvins - Stoner Witch
Hall and Oats - Essentials

Card of the day:

Careful consideration; be aware of anxious motivation, and those who might be anxiously motivated.

2019: March 13th

For the last two days, I've actually woken up before my first alarm at 4:07 AM and had time to do my daily entry early. Both days I've begun things with Talking Heads' 1980 album Remain in Light on headphones. On an album where every song is my favorite song, Born Under Punches is probably my favorite of the favorite. There's something so huge about this song; so many moving parts that comprise the whole. If you listen to Remain in Light on headphones, Brian Eno's production becomes entrancing. This pairing was so well suited; on Eno's three collaborations with David Bowie you can hear how he brings a certain approach to rhythm. The only way I can think to describe it this early, while I wait for my first pot of coffee to complete its brew cycle, is he thickens it. This works wonders for Bowie's music, transforming it into something those who'd followed the Thin White Duke to that point hadn't heard before from him. When we apply the same aesthetic techniques to a band like Talking Heads, a band that already looks at rhythm from a slightly non-rock perspective (not to diminish Bowie), well, you get Remain in Light. This live version further emboldens that approach, only in a live environment, and the result is mesmerizing.

Such a great freakin' band!

Virtually nothing for me on this NCBD, although I'd been on the fence about continuing The Dreaming and I may stop in and pick up the three issues I've missed; having recently completed reading issues three and four, I'm finding I really want to continue. Lucifer, the book I previously thought I would be reading consistently, has kind of fallen by the way side for me, and I'm not sure I will go back to it.



Oh! After a quick check on today's release (I use THIS SITE), I've realized Dan Wickline's Freeze #4 hits stands today, so that's a definite reason to stop in at the Bug and hang out a bit.

Like I need a reason.

David Lucarelli, author of The Children's Vampire Hunting Brigade and the BRILLIANT Tinsel Town, just launched a Kickstarter for the expanded graphic novel edition of the five-issue series. Link to it HERE:



I can't wait to support this, and I suggest you do the same. Tinsel Town is a fantastic historical series about Abigail Moore, the first woman police officer in fictionalized version of the early Twentieth Century Universal City, when Universal Studios was had its own police force! Inspired by Lucarelli's mother, who was a Police Officer for twenty years in Pittsburgh, Tinsel Town is expertly plotted, beautifully told, and personal enough to give it a meaty emotional resonance that will linger in your thoughts well after having read it.

Playlist from 3/12:

Talking Heads - Remain in Light
Fela Kuti - The '69 Los Angeles Sessions
Fela Kuti - Sorrow, Tears, and Blood
Prince - Sign O' The Times
Nick Lowe - Jesus of Cool
Misfits - Earth A.D.
Le Butcherettes - bi/MENTAL
Bells Into Machines - Eponymous
Dillinger Escape Plan - Ire Works
King Woman - Doubt EP
King Woman - Created in the Image of Suffering

No card today.

2019: February 14th

My health is much better today, which means I'm back to work. It's been raining here in LaLaLand off and on for days; today the heaven water is planted firmly in the 'On' position, which is cool with me. I always get a kick out of what heaven LA rain does to the city - green sprouts up everywhere instantaneously, as if all this plant life you didn't even know is there has just been waiting for a few drops to come back to life and flourish. And the LA river? Right about now you could probably take a canoe to it.

NCBD this week; I haven't been in to pick up my books in weeks, so despite tracking what came out each of the last few Wednesdays in these pages, I haven't picked up a single one. This week was a big one though, so I'll probably head in today for this, along with everything else:

Second Arc conclusion is bound to be a doozy; firmly the book I look forward to the most each month. No offense, TWD, you're still up there, too:

 Soooo good! The idea that we are living in a world with a monthly Criminal book is invigorating beyond description:

 And forgot that this hit last week:

Playlist from 02/13:

Secret Chiefs 3 Traditionalists - Le Mani Destre Recise Degli Ultimi Uomini
Pink Floyd - Animals
Jimi Hendrix - Axis Bold As Love
Jimi Hendrix - Electric Ladyland

Card of the day:

Ah, the extra card. Most people take these out, I leave them in. That said, I've never drawn this before so I've never had the occasion to research it. If you do a little quick reading, this is the Unicursal Hexagram Crowley used in Ritual situations. It is a symbol of Crowley's 'religion,' Thelema. Not sure what this is saying; perhaps I should take a few moments today and peruse some of my Crowley texts, just to see if anything relevant bites.

2019: January 12th

Missed it again! I wanted to post this yesterday and just be a day late, but I ended up not really having a chance to post at all. Better late than never.

Three years. Wow.

NCBD - another thing I'm late on. Here was the haul this week:

New book by Jeff Rougvie. Who's that you ask? Well, there's a ton of awesome backwater in this one that explains how Jeff worked for Rykodisc in the 90s and was instrumental in putting together their Bowie reissues and boxset Sound and Color. He even worked closely with Bowie himself on these releases, and lo and behold, this is Mr. Rougvie's first comic and it came out with Bowie on the cover on the anniversary of his death! Wow. Bowie doesn't feature into the story of Gunning for Hits, which looks as though it will revolve around Martin Mills, a hitman-turned-Record company A&R man in 1987. This one is chock full o' great inside the music industry that was stuff, and looks as though it's setting up a fun tale to boot!

Another outstanding number one, but with Brubaker and Phillips, is there ever any doubt? Nope.

Another newer book I'm reading. The concepts go deep and I can't wait to get into the heart of the world that author Dan Wickline is building here. I had the pleasure of meeting and talking with Mr. Wickline for quite a while last month when he did a signing at The Comic Bug, and Freeze sounds like it is going to be fantastic!

Speaking of Ed Brubaker, in his most recent newsletter - which you can sign up for HERE - he describes Warren Ellis and Jason Howard's Cemetery Beach as a multiple-issue-long chase scene. He's not wrong, and it's awesome!

Playlist from 1/11:

Steely Dan - Alive in America
The Black Angels - Death Song
Grinderman - Eponymous
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Baroness - Purple
Odonis Odonis - Post Plague
The Knife - Silent Shout
Moderat - II
Apparat - The Devil's Walk

Card of the day:

This is, I believe, a direct acknowledgment of a character in the book, so I'll take it as an, 'on the right path, mate!' kinda thing.

2018: November 20th

From Iggy's debut record The Idiot. Reading that Hugo Wilkcen 33 1/3 on Low really opened my eyes to a lot about this album as well (Station to Station also). Wilcken really goes in depth on these two records because they give a lot of context to what Bowie was into doing with music at the time. I'd never realized that the musicians involved in both Low and Station to Station often recorded not knowing which album the tracks would wind up on. Considered in that context, it really changes the way I hear both.

Having finished Low, I started reading the copy of Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book that my Horror Vision/DwC co-host Chris gifted me a couple of months ago. So far, pure Gaiman and arriving just at the right time, when night falls early.

Playlist from 11/19:

Opeth - Ghost Reveries
David Bowie - Low
Gavin Bryars Ensemble - Bryars: The Sinking of the Titanic
Iggy Pop - The Idiot
David Bowie - Station to Station
The Fixx - Shuttered Room
Opeth - Deliverence

No card today.

2018: November 19th

Ended up falling into a Bowie spiral Saturday when I finished Cold Cuts and immediately picked up the copy of Hugo Wilcken's book on Low, published as part of the wonderful 33 1/3 series, that Brown lent me some time ago. Can't put it down, and in turn it's given me a new perspective on Iggy Pop's The Idiot, one of the few Iggy solo albums I'm extremely familiar with. The book also sent me in all sorts of new musical directions, cueing up albums by Neu!, Can (whose discography I worked through a few years back but didn't completely integrate into my musical vocabulary), Elton John, Gavin Bryars, and Sad Barrett's solo stuff, which despite having been an enormous Pink Floyd fan in high school, I've never really gotten around to.

Also, for an idea of Bowie's state of mind while in the Station to Station/Low period, go HERE and read this short except from Angela Bowie's autobiographical book Backstage Passes: Life on the Wild Side with Bowie. Suggestion: skip the religious espousal at the top and go straight to the quotation marks. This is fascinating stuff.

K and I began The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina on Netflix yesterday. While I can't say the high school stuff is overly interesting to me, I love the set design and ALL of the Satanic imagery! The Dark Lord is just awesome and the fact that we're living in a world where this is a 14+ series makes me happier than I can explain. Just thinking of all the repressively religious types twisting with rage that a show where characters commonly exclaim, "Praise Satan" as a colloquialism of happiness or relief is currently a major part of pop culture puts a damn large smile on my face!

Playlist from Saturday, 11/17:

Ghost - Meliora
Merciful Fate - Don't Break the Oath
Dean Hurley - Anthology Resources Vol. 1
Opeth - Ghost Reveries
Burial - Kindred EP
Thought Gang - Eponymous
David Bowie - Station to Station
David Bowie - Low

Playlist from Sunday, 11/18:

David Bowie - Low
Elton John - Honky Chateau
Iggy Pop - The Idiot
Neu! - Neu! 2
Ghost - Meliora
Metallica - ... And Justice For All
Kraftwerk - Autobahn
Claudio Simonetti & Goblin - Phenomena OST
Vangelis - Heaven & Hell
Friendly Fires - Paris (Airplane Remix)
Opeth - Deliverance

Card of the day:

I believe this draw to be completely non-writing related and primarily based around one aspect of my social life at the moment. I'm not going to discuss that here, however I can also say that despite the hanging on of this drab illness, I managed to push myself out and to my writing place yesterday in preparation for returning to work today, and I had a killer writing session for about two and a half hours where I cinched up the transition into the third act. I'm relying heavily on the Aeon Timeline program at the moment, and it would be A LOT more cumbersome to integrate something so heavily plotted as this without the help of this program. Here's a screen cap:

2018: February 21st, 4:23 AM

More Bowie in my head upon waking. It's a wonderful way to open your eyes:



Playlist yesterday:

TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain
Darkness Brings the Cold - Devil Swank Vol. #1
Somnium Nox - Apocrypha
The Knife - Shaking the Habitual
Somnium Nox -
David Bowie - Dollar Days*
Deafheaven - Sunbather
Roy Ayers - Ubiquity
Playlist: K**

.............

* I had been thinking about listening to David Bowie's Blackstar to start off my writing session but was tired and a little out of sorts so I figured I should stick with the music I know works for these sessions, i.e. lately Deafheaven. However, before I could choose one of their albums, my iTunes jumped into random and picked Dollar Days. I treated this as something of a sonic Tarot pull and listened to the song. Lyrics for it are HERE - I'm not sure how these pertain to my life at the moment, rather hope they don't. It's a great song, one of the saddest deliveries on a final album filled with sad deliveries. I'm going to re-engage with the album today, as my original impetus for almost picking it yesterday was realizing it'd been quite a long time since I had, preferring for the last year or two to stick to Bowie's older material and also some of his more obscure, probably because as awesome as Black Star is, it's an emotional tour de force.

** The second or third CD I made for K after we started dating. The part of the playlist we made it through before dinner looks like this:

Card of the day:

Interesting interpretation when I juxtapose this card resurfacing with the 8 of Swords almost popping out of the deck as I shuffled (I always shuffle three times - unless I'm around a lot of people I know, like at work, and want to avoid being super ostentatious - and cut once). The 8 of Swords is, of course, Interference, and in keeping with that we are poised to move but have a sudden setback. The 2 of Disks coming up confirms putting our heads down and plowing through.

2018: February 20th 4:41 AM

Upon waking I was pleasantly greeted by David Bowie:




Playlist from 2/19:

Windhand - Soma
Electric Wizard - Dopethrone
Electric Wizard - Wizard Bloody Wizard
David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
David Lynch and John Neff - BLUEBOB
The Cramps - Psychedelic Jungle/Gravest Hits
Algiers - The Underside of Power
Grimes - Halfaxa
Tears for Fears - Songs From the Big Chair
Roy Ayers - Ubiquity
Funkdoobiest - Brothas Doobie
Tha Grimm Teachaz - There's a Situation on the Homefront


Card of the day:

Enlightenment; you're on the right path. Good things to come. A turning point for the positive - still interpreting this as juxtaposed to the last few pulls, all as an ongoing statement on our prospective move. K and her Mom saw the place yesterday and we have the applications. It is happening.

David Bowie - We Prick You

One of my favorites from 1995's excellent Outside, another reinvention for the Starman.

1 Year, 2 Days

I still remember it in crystal clear replay. Sleeping on the couch downstairs, ex and her parents up in the bedrooms. The last time I'd see her. The welcome end of an era. Phone alarm sounds at 4:30 AM. My hand strikes out, snatches the device and silences the annoying klaxon that heralds another week of work. Not a complaint exactly. Text message from Tori. I hardly hear from Tori anymore. No bullshit, just the erosion of time, distance. These six words:

Holy shit. David Bowie is dead.

Holy shit indeed. Maybe I've belabored the point; don't care. Read this if you want to understand my possibly overly dramatic reaction, which still resounds like the after image of a film you wish you hadn't watched and are afraid you can never unsee.

We need you David Bowie. The world's gone Phillip Jefferies in your absence.

My Favorite Records of 2016

A couple of days ago I published the list of my favorite albums of 2016. This song is from one of them. You can see them over on Joup.

David Bowie's Reality is this week's Joup Friday Album

You can read my thoughts and subsequently listen to Reality here. This is actually, I think, considerably more than just me talking about my favorite Bowie record. This  piece is the product of four long weeks of contemplating what the icon meant to me and why I have previously always gravitated more toward his later works.

David Bowie - Heroes Live 2004 A Reality Tour

I had a Bowie party this past Saturday night. Good friends, a bunch of alcohol and nothing but Bowie. It was wonderful.

The highlight of the night was my good friend Grez picking up my now long-neglected acoustic parlor guitar and leading a sing-along of Space Oddity, Ziggy Stardust, and - of course - Heroes. It was wonderful that Grez was able to time his trip to land smack dab in the middle of this (I picked him up from LAX at 8:15 and the party began pretty much as soon as we got back to my crib.)

It has now been a week since David Bowie passed and I'm still in a funk. I'm not the super-fan that has every record, knows every lyric, every everything about Bowie. His importance to me has evolved over the course of my life, from the guy on the classic rock radio station in the car whose songs I dug, to the enigma that surfaced in David Lynch's Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (that's when I became really interested) to the man who made one of my all-time favorite records in 2003 - Reality. That led to the full-on, "Now I start buying a bunch of his music" phase and, well, here we are. Still hard to believe the Starman is gone.

David Bowie - Lazarus... and some thoughts on his death

It's hard to look at Bowie at times during this video. Upon the release of the Black Star video/short film last month I found myself slightly unsettled at how he looked as though he had aged 30 years in the three years since we'd last since him in the videos released for The Next Day. After news of his death first thing this morning I learned of the release of another video after Black Star just a few days ago on the 7th of this month. Lazarus is, as this AV Club article so succinctly posits, a farewell.

The wherewithal and sheer force of will to complete make an album as a final statement, knowing you are dying, is unbelievable. I'm reminded of author Jay Lake, how he blogged his own death realtime, narrating his battle with cancer. As horrible as this is it is also amazing, as death is most inevitably a part of life, and a part that we know little about- emotionally, mentally - because it is private, and hard, and difficult to discuss, even with ourselves. Finally David Bowie died as he lived - bold, up front and totally owning his situation, converting it to Art.

If that's not one of the best ways to go I've ever heard I don't know what is. We often look to musicians and artists as inspiration, role models for how to live. Knowing that I will one day die I hope I can do so with at least a modicum of the dignity and creative force that Bowie died with. It's truly magnificent.

RIP David Bowie

This particular arrangement is, in my opinion at least, the perfected version of this song.

Sad day. The Man Who Feel to Earth has returned to where he came from. As is often the case when we lose an artist we love we binge their music, scrambling suddenly to acquire some of the albums we may have put off buying. In Bowie's case there are SO MANY I don't have them all, you probably don't either (although some of you most certainly do). If you're looking to celebrate the life of this wonderful, wonderful artist by adding to your Bowie collection I strongly recommend purchasing his 2003 album Reality and the accompanying double live disc from that tour.

Reality is BY FAR my favorite Bowie album - and that's saying something because I really like Bowie. It is the most original and unique of his work, in my opinion. The live disc is 33 career-spanning tracks, many of which have been re-worked, re-arranged and re-vitalized. Loving the Alien is a great example of that, but there's also an unbelievable arrangement on Earthling's I'm Afraid of Americans and Outside's Motel.

David Bowie - Black Star

Mr. Brown sent me this at least a week ago and I've only just gotten around to watch it. New Bowie is always a good thing, and with what I keep hearing about the upcoming album of the same name (Out Jan 8th, 2016) being the 'weirdest' Bowie record in a long time, I for one am more than eager to have this in my hands.



Some observations:

I LOVE the return to the sax. Saxophone was once synonymous with Bowie - for me at least - and I feel like he hadn't really found a way to incorporate it into the new sound he's been toying with since 2005's Reality. No longer the case. Hopefully there'll be more on the record.

I also LOVE the return to utilizing synths and some of the overall aesthetic he experimented with in the 90s during his "industrial" phase.

This is weird as fuck and I LOVE it.

Lying about Widows

image courtesy of dc.wikia

So this is what I was staring at when I momentarily titled the previous post "New Young Liars Track Streams" by accident. The fifth issue of Drinking with Comics - which we shot three weeks ago but have not been able to align our schedules to edit yet - will feature our Sierra Nevada-ingesting interview with Young Liars/Stray Bullets creator David Lapham that took place when he signed recently at the best comic shop in Southern California, Manhattan Beach's The Comic Bug.

Now granted, I don't even think we mention Young Liars in what we recorded, as the return of Stray Bullets was practically all I could think about for most of March. However, Young Liars is a fantastic story in its own right and this particular art is one of my all time favorite comic book covers and it was one of the three books I brought to the event to have Mr. Lapham graciously sign.

As an interesting side bar, you'll see the image is a play on David Bowie's classic Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars record and the moment after Mr. Lapham signed my books that exact song began to jam from the Comic Bug's stereo!

T. Rex - King of the Mountain Cometh

Awesome closing track on Electric Warrior. T. Rex is one of those bands that I know very little about. Really, aside from some very basic info the main thing I know about T. Rex is that I need to know more about them, as they inspired EVERYBODY during the 70's - Bowie especially.

David Bowie - Love is Lost

Bowie's visual output this year has been fantastic! Seriously, has he ever made this many videos in a year before? Keep it going Mr. Bowie, and be pre-pared if David Lynch asks you to reprise your role as the long-lost Philip Jefferies ("Well now, I'm not goin' to talk about Judy. In fact, we're not goin' to talk about Judy at all, we're going to keep her out of this.")

This is, of course, the remixed by James Murphy version and I think the arrival of this video answers my confusion a week to two about that other one.

I think.

Thanks to Brooklyn Vegan for this one, tho I'm sure it's everywhere by now.