David Bowie Has Died
hollywoodreporter.com
hollywoodreporter.com
Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity. So it’s like, just take advantage of these last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again. You’d better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that’s really the only unique situation that’s going to be left. It’s terribly exciting. But on the other hand it doesn’t matter if you think it’s exciting or not; it’s what’s going to happen.
~ David Bowie, 2002
[0] http://www.radiosurvivor.com/2016/01/05/why-american-indepen...
IMO Spotify/Rdio/Pandora could only ever hope to go the advertising route over subscription because they couldn't crack the much harder distribution problem (e.g. the HypeM's, SoundCloud's, Drip's, etc).
EDIT: it stopped working after 15.04. Something with an old version libgcrypt. I didn't care enough to debug it.
Not true in my case. (I've had Pro for a long time, not sure which if any of these are Pro-only...) I can audition as much unheard-by-me recommended-by-Spotify music as I want through its Weekly playlist, its various curated genre "browse" playlists, its "trending" playlist (where you will often hear things that only become "visibly" popular MONTHS later, the playlist content is actually determined via algorithm to spot trendings super early)
Spotify actually made discovering music way easier to me.
BTW there was one website that I used very often. It was called "We are Hunted"[1] and unfortunately it was acquired by Twitter, and as we all know Twitter Music is dead. That website had a playlist of emerging new tracks and I found a lot of good music there (and I heard some artists just 1-2 years before they became very famous)
That's what record companies would like you to think. Counter-example, Milk Records, Melbourne. It's might be a record company but it looks so much like a startup.
- http://messandnoise.com/features/4666617
- http://diymag.com/2015/03/23/courtney-barnett-its-like-turni...
On the same topic, sports is a religion. If you disagree, or don't yet understand, please compare and contrast the two for me.
Here are some differences: sports fans don't think that their team is capable of supernatural feats. I don't think I've ever seen a fan of one team try to convince a fan of another to change allegiance, or proselytizing on a street corner. Sports fans know that the teams of the other fans exist, while religious people usually deny that other gods exist. Similarly, religious people don't have to worry about whether Yahweh could beat up Vishnu, but sports fans get to actually see what happens when their teams compete.
Then again I think atheism is a religion too.
And why is atheism a religion. Isn't its definition a lack of religion?
In numbers, yes.
> Isn't its definition a lack of religion?
I thought it was defined by the lack of belief in deities / supernatural powers. I might be wrong.
Precisely. A lack of belief.
> A lack of belief.
In deities and supernatural powers.
In other aspects I find many forum atheists to believe strongly in theories that are way above their heads.
It's a social and organizational concept, not theological or philosophical, relating to gods or otherwise. For example, environmentalism is a type of religion.
thinking that something is capable of supernatural feats is not required for something to become a religion.
Quite on the contrary I present you exhibit A: "forum atheists", non-believers that believe so strongly in the non-existence of anything they haven't personally seen that they will hijack any thread that is remotely near using any religious word.
To be fair, IMO a whole lot of atheists are great people. A few of them though seems to be more religious and more proselyting about it than almost any other religious group. Which is so ironic it would be quite funny if it wasn't so annoying.
Edit: removed dumb Meh
I basically agree, but I think the concept of "religion" invokes a lot of correlated things, and belief in the supernatural is one of the main ones. I expect most religions to differ from the 'prototypical' religion in a few ways, but I think sports differs in lots of ways.
(edit: or perhaps better, "beliefs about the supernatural". Religions say something specific. Atheists believe something specific. Sports teams make no claims one way or the other.)
> non-believers that believe so strongly in the non-existence of anything they haven't personally seen that they will hijack any thread that is remotely near using any religious word.
This seems like another example. I've seen that behavior from atheists and from religious people. I haven't seen it from sports fans.
People who dislike sports, on the other hand...
--- What does this have to do with the supernatural? Secondly what does this have to do with religion. If religion was 'people who feel strongly about something' then the definition of the word would no longer represent what it does.
But I will still argue that whenever I see people proselyting atheism because "big bang, stupid" and it is clear they haven't studied to much of neither physics or biology, then we have:
* proselytizing
* stronger belief than many Christians and Muslims
and I will argue that they qualify as religious even if they don't have a deity.
Remember though, that SEA is just part of Asia. China and India are huge music markets. Additionally, Japan and Korea have very strong, local music scene as well.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_music_industry_market_s...
It's the same thing musically (though admittedly there is a bit more, not a huge amount more, of cultural influence here); there is a formula for music that most people find really satisfying. The record companies have software that analyzes songs and scores against the common patterns that produce hits. Of course, the business of music is about more than just the music, it's about the whole package.
The worst thing about both kinds of products is that they destroy local diversity and teach people to consume things that are worthless at best and actively harmful at their worst.
Do people want to do drugs as much as possible? Yes. Do people want to pretend that candy is normal food and eat candy for every meal? Yes. Coke and McDonald's are supplying the latter demand. It doesn't absolve them of responsibility and it doesn't mean they're not manipulative or dishonest. It just means that there is a real, physiological desire backing their products that's not artificially created by cartoon clowns or polar bears.
All other things (e.g. marketing budgets) being equal, much better music could be in the top 10. In the 60s and 70s, before MTV and tightly controlled playlist radios, it was.
The difference between now and the 60s through early 90s was that labels were willing to put their weight behind more oddball artists like Bowie. He wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell of achieving the same fame if he were starting now. We're in a weird time where mainstream music is the most timid and cynically commercial it's ever been but the fringes are exceptionally vital.
So, you can look at it as Mercury took a chance, didn't succeed and dropped him. RCA tried again and succeeded. But, he changed his approach and style around this time in an attempt to market himself better. Then, EMI would reap the rewards again in the 80s for Let's Dance which hit number 1 in a half-dozen countries and close to it in a few others.
That's just not true. While the very few artists that do sell albums nowadays (Taylor Swift, Adele, Kanye West, etc.) are on major labels and do have promotion from major labels, these artists are also already successful enough to have done their own promotion if they wanted to.
On top of that, these successful artists by todays standards are selling what would have been considered disappointing numbers for artists at their levels 20 years ago. In the 90s Hootie and the Blowfish (an act with no staying power) sold 16 million albums in the US. By comparison Adele's 25 which is a huge hit by today's standards has only sold 3 million copies in the US (though 16 million worldwide.) In the 90s many albums sold tens of millions of copies, nobody does that any more.
Bowie was 100% right.
The data says exactly the opposite of what you're saying.
> I don’t even know why I would want to be on a label in a few years,
> because I don’t think it’s going to work by labels and by distribution
> systems in the same way.
>
> --David Bowie, 2002
These are social activities. People don’t judge music solely by some kind of independent metric of appeal. They also judge whether the music is popular within their social circle. Choice of music is one of the mediums people use for communicating.
To listen to something nobody except you likes is a little like programming in a language nobody you know uses. We make up all sorts of stories about how network effects affect the quality of a language, the availability of tools, and so on, and all that is true.
But it’s also true that we self-identify in a tribal way with our choices, and that those choices have social import. Even if you brag defiantly that you’re a pragmatist who doesn’t care who does or doesn’t use a tool: That’s a lot like being a hipster growing a beard and putting on plaid.
So back to music. The vast majority of people wish to belong to the tribe of “The vast majority of people.” They work very hard to study what is and isn’t “mainstream.” There is thus a very natural force by the market to want to have some kind of pop music dominated by just a few superstars at a time.
This, I believe, drives a winner-take-all market for pop music, which in turn is a huge incentive for the existence of massive pop marketing machines. Even if you take all the friction out of distribution and discovery, the mainstream want there to be a massive marketing push for pop artists, it helps them judge who is going to be popular.
It’s not that much different than picking a JavaScript library because some large and well-heeled organization is devoting themselves to support it. You may personally say it has something to do with bug fixes, but for most people that fact helps them judge whether other people will adopt the library, which helps them judge whether they want to belong to that particular tribe.
And most people want to belong to the biggest tribe, and will follow the signals with the biggest boost.
Thus, labels or some other kind of very big, very efficient machine for manipulating pop culture.
If you'll forgive the hyperbole, he is the archetypal outsider, the patron saint of the dispossessed. So for all those who don't feel that they belong, Bowie's activities provided a message - 'It's OK to be an outsider', and, curiously, through that message provided a sense of belonging - I'm going to get all metaphysical and say that that is alchemical / transformative in a very profound way for many people.
The music industry is just as adept at monetizing those feelings as they are of monetizing teen-age angst or adolescent her-worship of boy bands.
My point being, that while Bowie and many others can stand outside of the industry, I don’t believe the basic dynamics are going to change. Radio may go away. Physical media may go away. Apple may disrupt the labels.
Bt I believe that massive marketing machines will continue to slice and dice the market for music and continue to dominate people’s choices.
Remember, you only heard of Bowie because he played the game.
I'm not actually a big fan of Bowie, I'm a bit too young, but it's something I'm observing. I'm also aware that those feelings of alienation are keenest for teenagers and that the music industry exploits that. However, whilst the music machine exploits the latest pop star - if you were to compare and contrast say, Justin Bieber or Taylor Swift with Bowie, then there is a difference in what they symbolise for the fan, and, whilst the outcome of a sense of belonging is effected in both instances, Bieber / Swift do not represent the outsider, they are just more grist for the mill.
While that may have been one of his target markets, make no mistake: Bowie worked his socks off to find a market that worked for him - in addition to quite an incredible musical talent - and it took years and years of hard, often unrecognised work, for his success to come.
I mean - his first hit was a novelty song about garden gnomes, his second was (admittedly, possibly slightly unfair to argue it) cashing in on the space race, and it took a further couple of years for him to figure out his marketing and reach consistent success.
That means that music is without question a social construction. Simply look at how non-western music is so radically different from popular western music, yet still appealing within those cultures.
It's very possible Bowie could have been too avant garde or too much of an outsider, but what he excelled at was tweaking the establishment just enough (both musically and performance-wise) to find a huge audience whilst still being "outside" the mainstream.
>Music follows rules, rules that we all grew up internalizing. There's no "universal music", just music who's rules you are familiar with. Tweak those rules just enough and in the right way and you are innovative (see: The Beatles). Tweak them too much and you are simply avant garde (see: Captain Beefheart).
I can enjoy music who's rules I am not familiar with. I don't need to know the rules to enjoy tonal and rythmic arrangements.
> That means that music is without question a social construction
That means it's culturally specific, NOT a social construction.
> It's very possible Bowie could have been too avant garde or too much of an outsider, but what he excelled at was tweaking the establishment just enough (both musically and performance-wise) to find a huge audience whilst still being "outside" the mainstream.
Which is perhaps the point I am trying to make. Within a specific culture, his work (not just his music) had a broad appeal that helped people deal with the human condition. However it was achieved, the world is a better place for it.
Most people don't, hence western harmony is what sounds like music to most westerners and anything else sounds weird or like noise.
> That means it's culturally specific, NOT a social construction.
It actually means both. All culturally specific tastes are also social constructs.
You don't need to know the rules, but most people will enjoy music whose rules they are familiar with. It's entirely possible I can put on some Mahori music or Trout Mask Replica and you will enjoy it, but I strongly suspect you are in the minority. Most people (myself included) will need time to adapt to music that is radically different than what they are used to.
Which is why I don't think it's fair to call Bowie a "consummate outsider". There is no question he became a beacon for those who were outside of cultural norms, but he achieved that by working in one of the most culturally constricted artistic mediums available.
I guess that does parallel tech, though - the youth follow the trends, while labels/VCs drive certain cherry picked groups to success, while at the same time, us older folk live in quieter places, create our own works, do our own thing, and live satisfying lives, not really being impacted by whatever the tribes currently label as "mainstream".
Lol what? That's stupid. Some people listen to the music that sounds good to them, some people listen to music that brings them and their friends together, some people listen to music for other reasons.
Your analysis bad because you think you can group people so simply. Stop that.
This is not obvious to me at all. Would someone please explain?
You have a group of people who just want to hang out with their friends and whatever is popular with them is "good enough" to meet that need. This is analogous with multiplex viewers. Then you have people with specific tastes or interests. They are often willing to spend more (by an order of magnitude) than "typical" listeners and less likely to care if lots of other people come along with them or not. This is similar to art house film-goers judge what to watch. Finally, you have people who may be amateur or part time musicians themselves and appreciate a different take from everyone else. They can even be trendsetters in whatever new music that comes out. In the film analogy, they could be people who set up, run, review, and/or submit movies to film festivals.
The thing is, you may be able to influence one group of people with your approach to controlling and marketing music even if the music is self is mediocre, but those people also care less and are worth less than the other segments. And the way the music industry is going, they may not be worth much at all individually (which I think was the point of the OPs quote from David Bowie).
In tech, this would be the Bing.com approach to search versus alot of other startups which seek to grab the early adopters first and then pull in more mainstream stuff later. It can work, but not as well over time.
David Bowie sold the rights to future royalties from his music, in the form of bonds. Presumably influenced by his thinking that music was going to be napsterised.
my favorite is the collab he did with Trent Reznor on I'm Afraid of Americans https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPVrFIP0CMs
Quoting from the article:
Q: How does an aspiring artist bridge the gap between distribution and commerce?
A: We have to be very clever about those things. You have to remember that it’s only a few hundred years, if that much, that artists are working with money. Artists never got money. Artists had a patron, either the leader of the state or the duke of Weimar or somewhere, or the church, the pope. Or they had another job. I have another job. I make films. No one tells me what to do. But I make the money in the wine industry. You work another job and get up at five in the morning and write your script.
This idea of Metallica or some rock n’ roll singer being rich, that’s not necessarily going to happen anymore. Because, as we enter into a new age, maybe art will be free. Maybe the students are right. They should be able to download music and movies. I’m going to be shot for saying this. But who said art has to cost money? And therefore, who says artists have to make money?
In the old days, 200 years ago, if you were a composer, the only way you could make money was to travel with the orchestra and be the conductor, because then you’d be paid as a musician. There was no recording. There were no record royalties. So I would say, “Try to disconnect the idea of cinema with the idea of making a living and money.” Because there are ways around it.
You have to remember that it’s only a few hundred years, if that much, that artists are working with money.
I'm pursuing a CS PhD; in my free time, I'm working on a science fiction novel. In some ways, I think a PhD is the perfect vehicle for this since I'm free to "explore" intellectually, as long I still publish in my field. And I make things work: I squirrel away bits of time for writing, and still have enough left over to get my work done.
But I look at the industry (especially in Silicon Valley), and I'm not sure I can expect to keep going on my side projects. Work weeks of 50, 60, or more hours are common at companies in the area, and even more so at startups. I did a lot of interviews for internships and such in undergrad and early grad school, and I would ask interviewers whether they worked on any open source projects during their free time. The answer was almost always no. I found it perplexing at the time, but looking back I think it's a relatively straightforward consequence of the environment people are working in. Most people aren't in a position to take up serious hobbies, and a big part of that is work culture and the sorts of hours employers expect.
I think Coppola is very lucky if he has a job where he can do this balancing act. Perhaps I'll be lucky too, I don't know. But I hope we're not driving our society towards a situation where you need to have some sort of exceptionally flexible day job in order to make progress on your other pursuits. And while I wouldn't want to be a professional artist myself (I love CS too much for that), I do hope that it'll be possible to be paid to do art in the next 100 years.
Same might happen with software - as more and more software moves "online" you won't be able to "copy-it" - you need to subscribe to a service and use it.
I'm gladly paying for "netflix", as $10 seems not much off our budget, and even it it doesn't have the latest shows I'm satisfied, in case I need to see (say Outlander, or Badlands - there is Vudu, Hulu, Google Play, Amazon, many others..)
But DVD/BluRay copying is gonna get easier and easier, and streaming and trying to save to disk to play later is going to get more cumbersome and cumbersome, to the point no significant amount of people would really bother.
Games fully running behind servers, with the video being streamed, would be impossible to copy - it won't work for Street Fighter, Racing Games and First Person Shooters very well, but there are plenty others for which this would be totally acceptable - heh, especially my favourite genre - Turn Based Games & RPGs :) :) :)
To be a little glib: is that just something you've resigned yourself to because you think it's inevitable?
And you're all right, of course, no one could ever compare. He was the best, period, in my mind, and while he may not be in your mind, but his accomplishments and career are undeniable.
But every rock and pop singer today has something from Bowie. Kanye and Gaga found ways to navigate both pop stardom and the art world; bands like Of Montreal incorporated theatricality blended with musicianship in their records and live shows. I could list, so, so many more, from Janelle Monae to St Vincent, but unfortunately I think a list of every rock or pop musician since 1970 would take up significantly more room than I have in this comment box. They created something new using his life and music as inspiration - and that's fine.
Because we like to act as if Bowie is this fount of perfect originality, ideas springing from the ether - and, don't get me wrong, he certainly was inventive - but to ignore his influences is to create a myth. We talk about him as the chameleon, but he never morphed into truly untread ground - he always found what was there, and improved, innovated, found new ways to incorporate it. Young Americans followed Philadelphia soul. "Blackout" followed "Nite Flights". The man operated a goddamn ISP in the late 90s, as another comment mentioned. Blackstar followed experimental jazz and had inspiration from everyone from Kendrick Lamar to James Murphy.
I wouldn't dare to try to distill his life into a single takeaway, as there's far, far too many angles to cover. But here's the lesson that springs to mind first, which, now that I write it, comes out slightly more inspirational-poster than I'd like, but maybe that's okay:
Creative work isn't made in a vacuum, and to try is futile. Embrace what's next, no matter how different, how weird. Keep your eyes forward and your ears and mind open.
Not because I listened to a lot of Bowie. I mean, I did, but only relatively recently. But because of how insanely influential his stuff is on almost everything we listen to. The ripples of his work are close to incalculable. You don't have to have listened to a minute of David Bowie to go "oh, shit" right now and mean it wholly.
> When in doubt, listen to David Bowie. In 1968, Bowie was a gay, ginger, bonk-eyed, snaffle toothed freak walking round South London in a dress, being shouted at by thugs. Four years later, he was still exactly that – but everyone else wanted to be like him, too. If David Bowie can make being David Bowie cool, you can make being you cool. PLUS, unlike David Bowie, you get to listen to David Bowie for inspiration. So you’re one up on him, really. YOU’RE ALREADY ONE AHEAD OF DAVID BOWIE.
In 1968 Bowie was 2 years off getting married and 3 years from having a son by his wife.
The lead single is called "Lazarus" and the first line of the song is "Look up here, I'm in heaven."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-JqH1M4Ya8
That's one hell of an exit.
The video and song for Blackstar are even more astonishing.
For various reasons I was never a big Bowie fan, but Blackstar was one of the few tracks from anyone ever that made me think "WTF did I just hear/watch?!" - and I mean that in a good way.
Some people make music. Bowie invented mythologies, turned them into sung performance art, and put them out on vinyl and CD.
I'm a huge Bowie fan and I just watched the video clip for Blackstar for the first time.
Genres redefined again with masterful production by all involved. I'll be having stranger than usual dreams tonight.
> That's one hell of an exit.
Yes, yes it is. I'll miss him.
Bowie's music meant a lot to me. He was a weirdo that made it cool to be a weirdo. His music was always on while I was coding, running, having a drink, taking to my daughter. Everyone in the house are asleep - they will be heartbroken tomorrow morning. His music was part of the soundtrack to our lives. My sister got me into Bowie and my older daughter and wife love his music. I thought that Bowie would somehow live forever.
You just have to love modern copyright.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xnleeu_extras-david-bowie_s...
It's available from Malta, whereas the Youtube one isn't.
I wouldn't claim that any idea I had was original but for sure I see a similarity between the way people seem to curate their social media profile so that they appear in a certain light to others to the way my peers and I used to curate our record collections to portray something about ourselves as kids
Among the artists he invited to perform with him was Marianne Faithful. It made such a deep impression on me that when I visited London for the first time two years later I made certain to visit the Marquee Club. It looked one hell of a lot smaller in person than it ever did on TV.
"Not just upset by Bowie's death but disorientated: like I've woken up and the ... I think I assumed he was immortal."
~ from Changes
Bowie is a legend.
David Bowie relentlessly delivered bold, daring new products. He never, ever sat on his laurels, never was content with what he'd done before. He produced the best work he possibly could, with the best collaborators. So, so many artists had their finest moments playing on his records or in his bands.
His only peer, as far as I'm concerned, is Miles Davis.
I'm a musician myself, and it's hard to even describe how I feel about Bowie's music. "Role model" is woefully insufficient. I think I feel about him the way priests feel about saints.
Mind expanding on this? I don't know too much about him.
Besides making his own records, he produced albums for barely-controllable outsiders like Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, helping them achieve pop crossover success and survive their own demons.
In the late 70s, he went to Berlin and cranked out three albums of ambient, experimental music that kicked open doors for radical new sounds that fueled the New Wave movement (again with shallow imitation). But he ignored New Wave himself, and instead made fresh, soulful, pop with Let's Dance. In the 1990s, he got heavily involved in the early internet, putting multimedia content on cds and even founding an ISP.
He dialed things back in the 2000s, as age and health took their toll. His two most recent albums were his first in many years. The Next Day was a throwback to his 1970s rock styles. Blackstar brought in jazz and modern hip-hop ideas.
One of the most amazing things about his output, besides how many times he forged new sounds and new visuals for the entire industry, is how timeless it all is. Pretty much all of his records, especially the best ones, sound timeless and modern, even decades later.
Paul McCartney and Co. put together a concert to cheer us up (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Concert_for_New_York_City), and that was the first time I had a chance to listen to Bowie live.
It turned out to be the last time. RIP.
I had to lift Em over the barrier so the roadies could take her off to get medical treatment and I spent the rest of the concert trying to find her. Poor Em was a bit stunned by the blow so when they asked her if she wanted to meet Bowie, she said, "no, I need to find my boyfriend."
She and I dated for a few more months but kinda drifted apart as teenagers do, though we're still keep in touch. That's always a fun memory to relive.
If you're sad today, just remember the world is over 4 billion years old and you somehow managed to exist at the same time as David Bowie.
A quote attributed to Simon regarding the sad loss of the great David Bowie seems to have originated from tweeter, @JeSuisDean, not Simon.
Nice tweet however.
Listen to Low and then listen to music today, he was just so far ahead of his time.
His constant changes in image, his unapologetic flamboyance and willingness to sacrifice commercial success for his are.
I dont think we'll see anyone quite like him again.
Farewell, Major Tom.
Very glad managed to see Blackstar released, it's a fascinating, eerie album. The eponymous track was playing when I read the announcement he had passed.
Long Live Bowie.
So don't judge the current generation by what you see in the top 40. Dig around on Bandcamp instead and be amazed.
I'll seek through bandcamp, I rarely hear things intersting these days but maybe I'm under a passeist phase.
http://hcmj.tumblr.com/post/135300528373/hcmjs-favorite-albu...
Twenty years from now, Bowie and Kanye will be spoken of in the same breath (and sure, that happens today, but that's by the people who pay attention), and that's fine. Great work is done today just as much, if not more, as it was in the past, and you're being That Guy and you should never, ever, ever be That Guy.
I don't understand how Kanye West is anything but an arrogant dude, but I'm biased against Hip Hop nowadays. Radiohead is very much a 90s in my eyes.
But I don't think that's the problem here, is it? :) He's "arrogant"--and my, but your choice of adjective here is so interesting!--so, well, that's all she wrote.
Bowie was just a shrinking violet, right?
> > I'm biased against Hip Hop nowadays Congratulations: you know your
> biases. Overcome them. Because if you can't draw a straight line
> between David Bowie and 808s and Heartbreak, that is on you. But he's
> "arrogant" (my, but the coded language, isn't that interesting!), so
> that doesn't matter I guess. Bowie was just a shrinking violet, right?
I just heard '808s' and I quit before half. I never heard anything from West that was worth being arrogant that what I meant. Most of what I heard from him was just mundane flat post 2000s hip hop that I can't bear anymore. It's far from my definition of music, flat, processed, easy. It's barely even music to my ears. People should dig in Jazzy Jeff, Dilla, D'angelo then reflect on todays mainstream.
I think you're getting caught up in marketing. While you're not the target it still effects you and how you enjoy music. I've started to ignore what artists say or do and it's really allowed me to appreciate a lot more music because I can just enjoy it for what it is instead of thinking about the image they're trying to sell.
You don't win 21 grammys for no reason. He really is that influential and responsible for a generation of music and a generation of artists that took after him (and continue to do so). I don't think anyone comes close to being a "rockstar" in the classic sense in the modern era than Kanye.
Take a look at some of the big EDM acts. It may not be your thing (and it's not really mine) but it's undeniable that acts like Swedish House Mafia and Avicii changed youth culture. If you take a listen to popular music from the 2000's it was all indie rock and then there was this dramatic shift late in the decade.
When I hear "major, youth-oriented cultural movement which challenged the status quo" I think about house, hip hop, and rap.
So nothing's safe.
For what it's worth Kanye West is still regarded like a sort of a joke in most of Europe, at least for people like me, who are over 30.
> and we have Jack White
At first I said to myself "who's that?", then I saw that he used to sing for the White Stripes. It's a so-and-so band, at least one of their songs got pretty popular among the football ultras, as did the Pet Shop Boys' "Go West!" back in the 90s.
> we have Radiohead
This is a late '90s - early 2000s band. Some say (at least I say) that they haven't been able to produce anything quite as good as the albums from that time in the last 10+ years. At the very least they are not as influential as they used to be back then.
I'm not sure old people were known for being massive Bowie or Stones fans in the 60s either.
No, it's because you don't like it and can't feel superior any longer if you were to enjoy it. It's just incredibly elitist to assume the music you don't like doesn't have any quality.
One of the best "mainstream" albums in recent times was Kanye's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. A record with such masterful production, songwriting and depth that is absolutely high quality.
In 40 years people will look back on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy much in the same way we look back on Ziggy Stardust now. Likewise it will be remembered for it's fearlessness, creativity and influence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oS0geQsfcHk
Or this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJae2OpoHeE , his latest YT video is basically an ad. And while I tried listening to some of his other melodies I found out that most of them are about his material accomplishments, and that's about it. Or maybe this is all a post-modernist thingie where this is a veiled critique about today's society, in which case I'll pass.
For comparison, take this IAM piece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uQ_X6nQ8xk , which talks about real people with real problems from the real world. They're miles ahead in terms of artistic performance and impact.
That's a Bowie quote I think of with unusual regularity. It appeared 16 years ago in Spin Magazine. He was asked why his then newest album wasn't as contemporary sounding as his previous album, Earthling.
It's advice that may be applicable to the projects worked on by many here as well.
http://payload342.cargocollective.com/1/16/514318/9158551/DB...
His memory will live on with his music.
RIP David.
http://www.avclub.com/review/david-bowie-goes-noir-intoxicat...
i now understand why some prefer to think Elvis is still alive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUK4FMAGc4M&index=4&list=PLJ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enOETfTI62A&index=2&list=PLJ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESLG10PejwQ&list=PLJ8y7DDcrI... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDRi30GNFMc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP2SS8ggLtU
Edit: Edit: ah, no... "This channel was generated automatically by YouTube's video discovery system."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRcPA7Fzebw
Really, go listen to it. It's just beautiful. It captures imagination and hope for the future. And I think it has a perfect message for us, about both his legacy and our responsibility.
There's a starman waiting in the sky
He's told us not to blow it
Cause he knows it's all worthwhile
Thank you, David Bowie.
Still, his 69 years were far more filled than most.
Loved "The Man Who Fell To Earth" - he made it fantastic.
Devastating news.
RIP
An artist in every sense of the word.
> 1) Each week we pick a guest
> 2) We give the guest a critically acclaimed album they've never listened to.
> 3) The guest explains why they've never listened to it, laying out any potential prejudice in advance. i.e. "I've never liked the cut of Pink Floyd's jib" or "Mark E Smith frightens me".
> 4) The guest has to listen to the album at least three times, this acclaimed album that they've never bothered listening to, and then tell us whether it was worth it or not.
RIP
I remember listening to Earthling for the first time and feeling those hyperkinetic d'n'b beats and thinking "How does this 50 year-old man continue to make himself so relevant?"
I tend to have momentary sadness when a celebrity I appreciate passes away, but it feels like this one will last for a bit longer.
- Nancy Erlich, July 11 1971 New York Times (http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1971/07/11/9130...)
RIP Ziggy Stardust.
It seems like HN's content is becoming less and less technical over time and much more political and social, and this thread is a great example. I've also noticed more and more "agenda pushers" posting here, people who can't contribute on the technical threads but aggressively upvote and comment on the non-technical threads.
I was about to suggest new, clearer guidelines restricting much of this non-technical content to reverse the decline, but according to the current guidelines, it seems like it's already prohibited:
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.
Maybe stricter enforcement would be in order (dang? jascquesm?)
But you're correct; if I consider HN to be heading inexorably in a direction I dislike, I shouldn't waste my time here. Have fun posting and commenting on celebrity news, articles from the The Guardian and The Intercept without me.
Comparing the stories about Bowie, Naur, and Amdahl isn't valid. Their fame is of different orders of magnitude, even among a sophisticated technical audience.
So basically, you're complaining about a problem/trend that doesn't exist. Your proposed solution isn't really helpful as this article will likely have traveled down to the bottom of the list in a week, and your quoting the guidelines also isn't relevant since this is not about "politics, crime, or sports".
A true visionary of an artist. He really understood technology, and what changes would be wrought by it for people, the arts, social systems, the music business, etc.
Dance, magic dance, Mr. Bowie. Dance, magic dance.
Wrong bit in the article... Tony Sales was the drummer in Tin Machine. His brother is Hunt Sales, who was the bass player in the same band.
Bowie has a half-brother, Terry, who passed in the mid-80s.
There are so many news crews outside... Pretty crazy.
ps. if you start humming "ice ice baby", thats ok too I guess :D
We sure know Mr. Bowie. We sure know.
I don't have a source but I heard that David preferred this version to the original.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/w...
http://boingboing.net/2014/05/18/bowies-takedown-of-hadfield...
What you've also missed is how sick and tired techies are of artists and musicians seeking to "deserve a good living" by controlling techies. To express contempt for our work while expecting unlimited cringing subservience.
Why is it that so-called "artists" are so quick to demand creative control over the work of others who work in different mediums? I have a few guesses.
In any event, I suspect that you don't know many "so-called artists". May you have a long and prosperous career, and retire young before the market value for your passions is reduced to zero.
An album in which an artist has key creative control is not bespoke labor. It's self-expression, a very different form of work. Software engineers generally perform bespoke, custom, specified labor for others who control what that labor looks like and produces. For this, said engineers are compensated for their time and labor. Said engineers do not generally expect to own the result, just as a portrait artist does not expect to own the commissioned piece.
May you have a long and prosperous career in which you fit your business model to the times in which you live. With luck, you'll even manage what the rest of us have - a way to profit from your passions.
They don't; that's simply a fact, no one is owed or deserves a living, you have to work for it like everyone else. If there is demand for what you do, monetize it, if you can't, then pick another career because the market has spoken. You can't mandate that X career deserves to be paid, the market does that naturally via demand.
> It's a tremendous sense of entitlement on the one hand, to express contempt for the individual while expecting unlimited access to their work.
Stating facts about their lack of being entitled to anything isn't expressing contempt. If they don't want people accessing their work, they don't have to publish it, but expecting perpetual payment anytime anyone looks at what you put out is absurd; intellectual property is a flawed notion that only worked well when distribution was a challenge. With virtually free distribution, you cannot prevent information being free, i.e. copying, and thus you cannot rely on making money from distribution; you better learn how to make money performing live, as has been done historically.
Engineers have always been compensated for custom production. There's nothing new about that. We have more in common with tailors than with tycoons of imaginary property.
First Lemmy, now David - one hell of a supergroup is gathering in the skies.
And Bowie was such an artist that he shaped multiple generations.
When a stone hits your windshield and causes a small crack, that's unfortunate.
Losing a glove is unfortunate.