Listening to The Self-Titled Show on KXLU while driving home from work tonight I heard this song and it just sank straight through my center mass. Wow. Reminds me of the first time I heard The Vanishing Kids, back at Chicago's now defunct long-time club Neo (sad face). The entire record by Drab Majesty - who I am going to try like hell to go and see on March 5th at The Smell ( this Saturday's gig opening for Black Queen is, of course, sold out) - is just fantastic and is available on the band's bandcamp here. Digital copies are limited to 300 copies so if you dig this, grab it NOW!
In the forthcoming Drinking w/ Comics #30 one of our guests was/is Curtis Fortier, stand-up comedian, writer, actor... jack of all entertaining trades on infinite Earths. He dropped a mention of this web series he wrote and starred in and I finally got around to watching it this evening. I love it and can't wait for more.
I forgot to post this here when it went up. Ruben Gerard, creator of the wonderful Penny Strikes is the guest, Monkish, Anchor and Inland Empire beer is consumed and a good time talking about an artist's process, comics and caricatures is had by all!
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.
My good friend John hit me with this last night but I was stuck in the editing suite finishing Dw/C #30. Watched this first thing this morning and well, I can honestly say I CANNOT WAIT!!!
It's hard to look at Bowie at times during this video. Upon the release of the Black Starvideo/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.
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.
...at 7:30 PM, streaming Live from Manhattan Beach's The Comic Bug, the best damn comic shop in So Cal! Our guests will be several of the cast of the Bug's recent live table read of Joss Whedon's Wonder Woman script. D w/C is excited to welcome Jennifer Wenger - to you that's Wonder Woman! - Curtis Fortier - aka Steve Trevor - and sound designer extraordinaire Chris Saunders (also upright bass player for the inimitable Thirsty Crows and the man who designed this beee-ooo-tiful flyer!)
If you haven't watched/heard the read you can watch it on youtube here or on iTunes. Steaming of Dw/C issue #30 will be available on the Dw/C youtube channel here, or like us on Facebook and watch for the live link to magically appear around 7:30 PM on Monday, January 18th.
...is one of the best damn horror stories I've read in some time that doesn't have the name "Laird Barron" on it somewhere. Mr. Ballingrud is the real deal and what he does in 60 something pages is worth 500 of a lot of other horror writers. What's he do you ask?
Gives me the heebie goddamn jeebies, that's what! The Visible Filth plays with that special place horror doesn't always know how to get to, the modern world; it is a story that makes small incisions in our technological awareness of ourselves, and once inside lays eggs of paranoia and revulsion. To borrow the name of Mr. Ballingrud's publisher and use it as an exclamation, This is Horror.
Also, many thanks to Justin Steele for the indirect recommendation.
