BOWIE
I can’t pinpoint exactly when I encountered the creative genius of David Bowie. If I had to guess, it was an FM radio station out of Seattle with the call letters KZOK. Sometimes I got a good atmospheric skip; then blazing stereo rock and roll came over my little radio.
Pretty sure it was “Suffragette City” that I heard first. That crunchy, raw, guitar riff that launched into a high-energy freight train of a song. Still a favourite of mine to this day.
As the 70’s morphed into the 80’s it seemed some track of his was always on the radio. But like a trend-setting chameleon he was both a leader in music and yet fit right in with the sound of the moment, a sonic and mutually beneficial relationship.
I remember driving with my parents in the summer of 1983, and spotted a billboard for his “Serious Moonlight Tour” in of all places, sleepy little Powell River. My buddies and I at the time were into the likes of The Police, Men at Work and Rush. Bowie somehow fit into that, at least in my young mind. But I did not have the freedom to see the tour as it went through Vancouver and have regretted the missed opportunity ever since.
I’ve been a DJ since the 1990’s and even then, it was not hard to find a way to play Bowie. So many tracks, so many sounds and so many of them with dancey hooks. Along the way I took the time to listen to his catalog. So many gems.
Yet few musical icons of his stature remain on this earth. In media, he retained an otherworldly persona, a Blue Steel visage that belonged on a high-fashion runway. He influenced so many as well and raised the bar in the art forms he touched. Yet he seemed eternally pleased, cracking that disarming British smile from his porcelain mask.
He blazed a trail of Stardust that we should be honoured to follow.
Let’s Dance? Yes, let’s. He would have wanted us to.
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written by Scotty Evil