Show #144 DAVID BOWIE TRIBUTE January 16, 2016

Dedicated to Janine and the great David Bowie!

Janine- David Bowie Man Of Words/Man Of Music 
Rebel Rebel- Joan Jett and The Blackhearts Flashback 
Ziggy Stardust- Bauhaus Ziggy Stardust 
The Last Shadow Puppets- In The Heat Of The Morning In The Heat Of The Morning 
The Jean Genie- Enuff Z'nuff 10 
Moonage Daydream- Milky Edwards and The Chamberlings Starman 
Boys Keep Swinging- A Camp Covers EP 
Rock 'N Roll Suicide- OK Go and Bonerama Rock 'N Roll Suicide 
^China Girl- David Bowie China Girl 
Suffragette City- Steve Jones Fire and Gasoline 
Queen Bitch- Eater The Album
*Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)- Superchunk Cup Of Sand 
*Ashes To Ashes- Warpaint We Were So Turned On: A Tribute To David Bowie 
*Teenage Wildlife- Ash Little Infinity EP 
Let's Dance- The Futureheads Q Covered: The 80's 
Chant Of The Ever Circling Skeletal Family- The Wedding Present The Hit Parade 
Changes- The Muffs A Salute To The Thin White Duke - The Music Of David Bowie 
**The Man Who Sold The World- The Wally Brothers The Man Who Sold The World 
**John I'm Only Dancing- The Polecats John, I'm Only Dancing 
**Life On Mars- Barbra Streisand ButterFly 
Under Pressure- My Chemical Romance and The Used Under Pressure 
Candidate- Dramarama Cinema Verite 
Blue Jean- Electric Six A Salute To The Thin White Duke - The Music Of David Bowie 
>Liza Jane- Davie Jones With The King Bees Liza Jane 
Black Country Rock- Big Drill Car No Worse For The Wear 
Heroes- Blondie Heroes 
Space Oddity- The Langley School Innocence and Despair

^Power Pop Prototype:   #10 Billboard Hot 100 6/4/83

*SacroSet 1:  Scary Monsters Covers
**SacroSet 2:  Unlikely Bowie Covers 

>Power Pop Prototype:  1964

My earliest memory of David Bowie goes back to the 70's.  As a child I was a television addict, marking each day of the week by the TV shows I planned to watch.  While violent shows like Starsky and Hutch, Baretta and S.W.A.T. were my preferred fare, I also watched variety shows with my parents like Sonny and Cher, Donnie and Marie and The Carpenters.  It was on one of these shows, or another like it (in the 70's it seemed like everyone had their own variety show) that I saw David Bowie perform "Space Oddity."  He

was the only person on stage, standing with his legs spread, hands on his hips staring expressionless into the camera.  Bowie was practically in grayscale, wearing baggy gray clothes with white face make up and his short hair slicked back.  He had an acoustic guitar strapped to his back but only played it during the acoustic guitar break- which is halfway into the song!  The rest of the time he just stood there motionless doing what I later learned was called lip-syncing.  I had never seen anything like this on television- it has taken on a mythic role in my rock and roll upbringing, especially because I can't find any reference to this performance on the Internet and that pretty much never happens.

A second formative Bowie experience came a year or so later.  I was sitting beside my sister Sarah in the spacious backseat of the family's Mercury Montego MX Villager- the ultimate suburban luxury station wagon.  

My dad was driving with my mom riding shotgun when "Suffragette City" came on the radio.  The song struck me as as dripping with attitude and swagger but the the thing that stood out most was the "AHHHH WAM BAM THANK YOU MA'AM!"  My dad laughed as my mom quickly changed the station but David Bowie had once again entered my consciousness.  I still didn't go looking for Bowie records though because the songs of his I heard on the radio were all over the place.  For every rock and roll "Suffragette City" and "Rebel Rebel"  there was a what I considered a borderline disco "Golden Years" or "Fame."  Plus, as interesting as I found Bowie's Ziggy Stardust persona it struck my as completely incongruous that he was usually playing an acoustic guitar.  What kind of Spaceman plays an ACOUSTIC GUITAR???  I was a hard rock fan in the mid-70's and thus wary of acoustic guitars- in my mind, this is what a rock and roll spaceman was supposed to look like:

While the "Space Oddity" TV performance should have prepared me for future Bowie curve balls, I was completely thrown by his Saturday Night Live appearance on December 15, 1979.  First there were his otherwordly background singers, Klaus Nomi and Joey Arias, respectively clad in skin tight black and red dresses.  Always on the look out for edgy performers, Bowie saw opera singer Nomi and performance artist Arias in New York clubs and asked them to back him up on SNL.  Their first song is a cool new wave update of "The Man Who Sold The World" starting with Nomi and Arias carrying Bowie downstage in this very heavy looking tuxedo structure thing.  Nomi and Arias are striking poses throughout the song which ends with an operatic coda highlighting everyone's vocal talents with Bowie being picked up and carried upstage for one final pose.  

The Man Who Sold The World

The second song they perform is "TVC 15," Bowie now in a stylish grey skirt combo that reminds me of a Women's Air Corp uniform.  Note the pink robot poodle in the photo- Nomi and Arias drag it around the stage and at one point we see it has a video monitor in its mouth showing the performance we are watching.

TVC 15

Bowie and Puppet

On the first SNL after Bowie's death Fred Armisen came back to pay tribute and he talked about the 12/15/1979 appearance.  Armisen mentioned the back up singers and the poodle, but neglected to talk about the third and most bizarre performance that night.  For "Boys Keep Swinging" Bowie was off stage in front of a green screen animating this weird shirtless puppet.  NBC homophobically censored the lyric "when you're a boy, other boys check you out" so perhaps in retaliation Bowie decided to do something ten times more offensive.  Check out the gif below, specifically the front of the puppet's pants:

Boys Keep Swinging

HA!  How awesome is that!!!  I watched the show and completely missed this the first time but there is no denying it's there.  Bowie's puppet penis!  Not Ready For Prime Time indeed!  Thank you the Internet!

When I got to college at Emerson in Boston there was an RA at Charlesgate, the dorm across the street from mine.  She was a huge Bowie fan rocking a colorful array of leotard tops and a Ziggy Stardust haircut.  The "Old Wave/New Wave Then There's Bowie" ad at the top of this post was on her dorm room door.  She was interested in the punk and new wave we were listening to but would always bring things  back to Bowie.  It was this woman's influence (unfortunately I can't remember her name) that made me go out and buy Changesonebowie.  My favorite song on that was "Diamond Dogs" so a few weeks later I bought Diamond Dogs and was blown away. 

"Dressed like a priest you was/Todd Browning's freak you was"

That Christmas my parents gave me Lodger  and then I bought Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps).  At this point my personal Bowie train was completely derailed by the MTV-ready pop of 1983's Let's Dance.  In retrospect, it seems like this was just another Bowie persona; following Ziggy Stardust and The Thin White Duke there was... "International Pop Star."  

Blackstar

In the years since I've gone back and discovered the genius of the Ziggy Stardust... and Hunky Dory albums though Diamond Dogs is the one I keep returning to.  Thanks to a Twitter feed I watched Bowie's "Blackstar" video the day before he died.  I can't say I liked the music, but the

Buttonface

image of his bandaged button eyes was unsettling.  (Didn't help that it reminded me of the murderous Buttonface character played by David Cronenberg in Clive Barker's Nightbreed.) That night Jaime and I were in the car listening to Bill Stalling's Rox Files show on KSVY and Bill played Bowie's "Rock and Roll Suicide." Jaime asked me what Bowie was up to and I said, "from what I

Bowie and Lexi

hear, mainly walking his daughter to school in Manhattan every day."  (Turns out she is 15, so it's probably been a while since he walked her to school, but I couldn't resist this picture.)  Jaime and I were watching TV the following evening when my son Jack came in and told us David Bowie was dead.  Needless to say, it was shocking news having just seen his new video and read about his new album and his Off-Broadway play Lazarus, starring Dexter himself Michael C. Hall.  Jaime shrieked when I showed her "Blackstar" but we both love the message of the "Lazarus" video, which to me is:  our bodies die but our art lives on.  

Watching "Lazurus" I thought I recognized the suit Bowie is wearing:

Lazurus Video 2015

An on-line search showed Bowie wore it in a 1976 photo session where he's drawing kabbalah figures on the floor. 

1976

It showed up again in an ad in the 70's and a CD reissue in the 90's.

70's Magazine Ad

Station To Station reissue 1991

There is no way the reappearance of the suit in the "Lazarus" video is an accident. I am truly amazed at David Bowie's tremendous creative output while he was literally dying.  It is a true testament to the man's spirit.

While I was researching this post I came across a bunch of other Bowie stuff I'd like to share with you:

Bowie's First Recording in 1964
and tonight's Power Pop Prototype

An ad I remember from Circus Magazine

Lou Reed and Bowie getting close, blocking a third person...

...who happens to be Mick Jagger!

I love this photo of Bowie and Iggy!

Ziggy and The Spiders From Mars

"Lost" 70's tribute of Motown versions of Bowie songs that
ended up being a 2012 Internet hoax, but is still awesome!

Coolest mug shot ever!

On March 25, 1976 in my old stomping ground Rochester, NY Bowie was busted for weed (a half pound!) at the Americana hotel after playing a show at the War Memorial.  According to the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle (which is unfortunately nicknamed the "D and C") members of Bowie's entourage were also arrested, including "James Osterberg, Jr., 28, of Ypsilanti, Mich."  (That's Iggy of course- man the 70's were amazing!)  At the time Bowie said he had no hard feelings and the grand jury didn't indict, but he never played Rochester again.  I've only been back there one time myself, so I get it.

Finally, who would've though the guy in the MIDDLE of the photo above would be the last man standing.  Bowie and Lou, R.I.P.  Long live Iggy!

Download link for the ALL KINDSA GIRLS tribute to David Bowie is below, click to stream or to download right click and "Save Link As"
ALL KINDSA GIRLS #144 BOWIE TRIBUTE

Show #143 THE YEAR END DEDICATION SPECIAL Jaunuary 1, 2016

The Year End Dedication Special is dedicated to.... ALL KINDSA GIRLS!

All Kindsa Girls- The Real Kids Real Kids 
Do You Want To Build A Snowman- The Genuine Fakes Do You Want To Build A Snowman 
Cecile- The Marshalls Wicked Good Music! 
I Wanna Know Her- Warm Soda Symbolic Dream 
Valentina- Jack Green Humanesque 
Labor Of Love- The Connection Labor Of Love 
Joanne- Times Square Joanne 7" 
Daydream- The Ravines Everything's Fine 
^Sorry Suzanne- The Hollies 30th Anniversary Collection 1963-1993 
Just Let Me Know- Imperial State Electric Honk Machine 
Lorraine- Bad Manners Lorraine 
I Don't Need No Doctor- The Sonics This Is The Sonics 
Christianne- The Early Hours Evolution 
Sorry About Tomorrow- The Rezillos Zero 
Josephine Geraldine- Ben's Diapers Middle Eights For Modern Lovers 
Hung Myself Out To Dry- Pugwash Play This Intimately (As If Among Friends) 
Beth- No Use For A Name Making Friends 
*Out Of My Mind- Tommy Keene Laugh In The Dark 
*Something's Wrong- Nick Piunti Beyond The Static 
*Where Does the Time Go?- Chris Stamey Euphoria 
*Enough's Enough- Kurt Baker Play It Cool 
*How Do You Do- Reno Bo Lessons from a Shooting Star 
Emily- Sylvain Sylvain Sylvain Sylvain 
King of the Scene- Greg Pope Fanboy 
Venus- Television Marquee Moon
>Barbarella- The Glitterhouse Barbarella 
Out With The Tide- Datura4 Demon Blues 
Amerie- Big Kid All Kidding Aside 
You Close Your Eyes- The Orange Humble Band Depressing Beauty 
Longships- The Bevis Frond Example 22 
Life Saver- The Grip Weeds How I Won The War 
You'll Be Back- Jonathan Groff Hamilton (Original Broadway Cast Recording) 

^Power Pop Peak: #56 Billboard Hot 100 2/28/69

*SacroSet:  Top 5 Albums of 2015

>Power Pop Prototype:  1968  

Happy New Year Everybody!  2015 had its ups and downs.  On the upside, I had a great time in our local production of Stephen Sondheim's Assassins and my radio show ALL KINDSA GIRLS has been proudly purveying Power Pop for eight years now.  On the downside- my teenage children are killing me.  That said, everyone is healthy and once again my 2015 was considerably brightened by the many great movies, TV shows, music and books I saw, heard and read.   Now, in a tradition that dates back to 1999, I humbly submit my 2015 Top 5's:

TOP 5 MOVIES
Room (12x12 heaven/hell)
Inside Out (= 5 years of therapy)
It Follows (and you thought chlamydia was bad!)
Me and Earl and The Dying Girl (Greg gains)
Spotlight // The Big Short (systemic failures that couldn't happen again.... right?!?)

TOP 5 DVD'S/WEB STREAMS
What We Do In The Shadows (vampilarious!)
Frank (=genius+mental illness)
Blue Ruin (revenge cuts both ways)
The Tall Man (parental nightmare)
'71 / Starred Up (Jack O'Connell has arrived)

TOP 5 ALBUMS
Nick Piunti- Beyond The Static (back to Detroit)
Kurt Baker- Play It Cool (my Maine man)
Chris Stamey- Euphoria / Tommy Keene- Laugh In The Dark (the masters reign)
Reno Bo- Lessons From A Shooting Star (my Nashville music)
Hamilton Original Cast Recording (an American original)

TOP 5 BOOKS
Fourth of July Creek- Smith Henderson (social work)
Redeployment- Phil Klay (horror stories)
The Good Lord Bird- James McBride (little onion blossoms)
Purity- Jonathan Franzen (in praise of Pip)
All The Light We Cannot See- Anthony Doerr (spirit of the radio)

TOP 5 TV SHOWS
Bloodline Season 1 (family feud)
The Bridge Season 1 (over seriously troubled water)
Scrotal Recall (great series, HORRIBLE name)
Rita Seasons 1 and 2 (hot for teacher)
The Americans Seasons 1 and 2 (the couple that spies together...)

Yes I cheated on the "Top 5" a little but it was that kind of year.  Also, not all of the above were released in 2015 but this is the year I caught up with them.  Please send your own 2015 favorites- I'm always on the look out for quality viewing/listening/reading material and maybe your selection will show up on next year's list.  If you're interested in past year's lists, I've compiled them on the Rick's Top 5 Lists Blog.  Here's to an awesome 2016!!

Download links for this show are below, click to stream or to download, right click and "Save Target As:"
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Show #142 November 21, 2015

Rosemary light up the world!


Rosemary- The Smirks Rosemary 7"
Turn on The Light- Bram Tchaikovsky Strange Man/Changed Man 
All The Lights Are Alive- Tommy Keene Laugh In The Dark 
Light Love- Free Energy Stuck On Nothing 
All In Light- The Bye Bye Blackbirds We Need The Rain 
See A Little Light- Bob Mould See A Little Light 
Blinded By The Light- This Perfect Day Don't Smile 
I Do Love The Light- Tommy Hoehn Losing You to Sleep 
^I Saw The Light- Todd Rundgren I Saw The Light 
I Saw The Light- Dash Rip Rock Dash Rip Rock 
I Saw The Light- Raspberries Raspberries 
I Saw The Light- Spoon Transference 
Every Light On- Nick Piunti 13 In My Head 
There Is A Light That Never Goes Out- The Smiths The Sound Of The Smiths 
Lady (Put The Light On Me)- Dead End Kids Breakout 
Into The Light- Soul Asylum Delayed Reaction 
Light Of Love- T-Rex The Very Best Of T-Rex 
Day In The Lights- Speedometors Day In The Lights 
Bright Lights- The Outlets Outlets 7" 
Morning Light- Ida Maria Fortress Round My Heart 
Under the Light of the Moon- The Merrymakers Bubblegun 
The Light- Bracket Hold Your Applause 
All For The Love Of City Lights- Dog Rose Glitterbest 
Perfect Light- Arrogance Mondo Montage 
>You Are The Light- The Easybeats It's 2 Easy 
Out Into The Light- Turning Curious Teen Line no. 3 
The Light Pours Out Of Me- Magazine Real Life 
See The Light- Green Day 21st Century Breakdown 
Bring In The Morning Light- Motors 1 
Guiding Light- Television Marquee Moon

^Power Pop Peak:  #16 Billboard Hot 100 6/10/72

>Power Pop Prototype:  1966

I was afraid of the dark until I was about 10 years old.  The bane of my young existence was the lack of a light switch at the bottom of the stairs going up to my bedroom at our house on 30 Gordon St. in Brockton, Mass.  In the early '70's my parents had major reconstruction done on our house, adding a dormer to the second floor making two bedrooms into four and adding a much needed upstairs bathroom.  When they first started building I thought it was cool to bed down in sleeping bags in the living room but this lost its charm after the second week or so.  

30 Gordon Street, with upstairs dormer

Somehow during construction they forgot to put an overhead light on the upstairs landing so at night from the bottom of the stairs you'd stare up into inky blackness- I mean anything could've been up there!  At first, I'd turn on the upstairs bathroom light while it was still light out but my mom would invariably turn it off.  (She is a notorious electricity saver- as I am myself, though judging from my kids, this trait has skipped a generation.)  In any case, I had to climb the stairs and cross the landing to turn on the light in my room in PITCH BLACK!  After the first few ascents in a blind panic, I developed a complex and no doubt insane looking eyes-closed crab sprint up the stairs on all fours finished off with a mad lunge across the landing to slam on my bedroom light.  

While my active imagination has served me well in later life, it sometimes made my childhood years difficult.  My fear of the dark was innate, yet was no doubt helped along by things I saw on television, one of which I still remember today.  It is the opening of an episode of the British TV show The Avengers called "The Living Dead" that 40+ years later I finally managed to track down.

Patrick Macnee as John Steed

Originally airing February 25, 1967, I'm guessing I saw the episode in re-runs sometime in 1972 when I was seven or eight.  I was a big fan of The Avengers. John Steed was super cool- no matter how tense things got he always kept his sense of humor and never once spilled his Champagne.  Dude was unflappable!  This was a quality I would later recognize in James Bond and was disappointed to find that not all Brits possess.  As for Emma

Diana Rigg as Emma Peel

Peel, well she blew my young mind.  At the time I had no idea what "sexy" was, I just knew I couldn't take my eyes off her.  To this day, I think of Emma Peel every time I see a woman in a leather bodysuit- and that's a lot in these superhero saturated times we live in.  Seriously,  from Julie Newmar's Catwoman on the 60's Batman TV show to Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow- they all owe a debt to Diana Rigg's Emma Peel.  

Now back to "The Living Dead," the Avengers episode that scared the crap out of me.  It starts with this drunk in a pub called The Duke of Benedict.  He stumbles out with a bottle and starts walking through a graveyard:

tripping in front of a grave, the top of which starts moving and this happens:

This guy dressed all in white rises out of the grave!  Then the guy goes into the church and starts ringing the bell!

I realize this doesn't seem that scary and I had watched my share of Creature Double Features but for whatever reason it scared the bejesus out of me.  Looking at it now on Hulu, the whole graveyard is clearly a set on a soundstage outfitted with cheap stuff that wouldn't make the cut at a second rate Halloween store.  The ghost of the Duke isn't even that threatening looking.  Yet, I didn't even finish the episode, I ran out of the living room and hid in my bedroom.  I had nightmares for two weeks!  

Of course if I had stuck with the show I would've seen Steed and Emma find a cool underground city, like the one under the crater in the Bond film You Only Live Twice.  She gets kidnapped, he tries to rescue her, he gets caught, she rescues him.  If I'd just stuck with the episode, "The Living Dead" wouldn't have been nearly as traumatizing.  I think this is why I forced my kids to watch all of Edward Scissorhands that fateful night when they were little.  Of course, that didn't work out too well either, though I don't remember Jack or Nica having nightmares so maybe I was right after all.  (My wife Jaime wholeheartedly disagrees.)

A few years after The Avengers incident I remember thinking "will I ever NOT be afraid of the dark?!?"  I don't remember when I got over this fear, perhaps it was so gradual I didn't even notice.  Even so, not being afraid of the dark didn't stop me from almost killing my friend Paul's grandmother.  I was sleeping over at his house after he, our friend Mo and I went to see Friday The 13th at the Hanover Mall. That movie freaked me out!  We'd seen Halloween but were in no way prepared for the non-stop onslaught of Friday The 13th.  Tweaked and exhausted after- wards,  we were jumping at shadows the whole ride home.  Later in Paul's downstairs rec room we'd just about settled down when someone started opening the outside door. He grabbed a baseball bat, I picked up a golf club and we yanked the door open on his startled grandmother who was coming back from, I kid you not, Bingo at the Catholic church.  Even now, young Jason coming out of the water at the end of Friday The 13th ranks up there with my all-time movie scares.

But what about the boy?

I still like a good scare at the movies, but these days I go for subtler fare.  I've never seen the Saw or Hostel films, but I'll still gladly shell out my hard-earned for The Babadook or It Follows or Goodnight Mommy.  In fact I think a strong litmus test of a person's imagination can be found in their reaction to horror movie The Blair Witch Project.  There isn't one drop of blood spilled in the film, nor does the titular witch ever appear.  Blair Witch filmmakers Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez were asking us as audience members to meet them halfway-

they supplied the story and the dread while we filled in the "gaps" with our imagination.  The movie freaked me out- when the lights came up I was hugging my knees in my seat.  Two rows in front of me though a young guy turned to his girlfriend and said "that SUCKED!"  As I self-consciously lowered my feet to the floor I realized this guy might not have enough imagination to appreciate the film- he was only able to react to what was on the screen.  I feel bad for this guy, because to him the image below is just a dude in a basement but to me it is something that will haunt me the rest of my life.

I re-create this scene EVERY time I am in a windowless stone room, so far my sister is the only person who has ever laughed

And just to see if I know how to do it, here's the clip from The Avengers episode "The Living Dead" that I pulled off Hulu

Links for this show are below, click to stream or to download, right click and "Save Link As"
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