I need, like, a music blog, or something
An act of anti-sanity: staying up until 3am on a work night, watching The Man Who Fell to Earth. For the second time.
*feels out of it and is going to bed early tonight*
It was better on rewatch, but even more depressing. I just wanted to curl up and cry at the end. Plus ![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
jaydk and I got drunk beforehand and watched the first two Death Note movies. Kind of a dark-themed night!
Watching The Man Who Fell to Earth while drunk is extra-weird because it’s largely a movie about alcoholism. That’s not the theme that intrigues me–more just the way it captures social isolation and the inability to communicate. The way you can want so desperately to connect with another person and it still doesn’t work–that love isn’t enough.
*gets depressed again*
Meanwhile I’m trying Low. I’m kind of sad because I feel like I can’t viscerally appreciate the full impact of this music, just because it was so groundbreaking at the time. Whereas I was raised on stuff like The Downward Spiral and just take the industrial / electronic / ambient thing for granted.
Still, nothing can take away from the fact that this is really good. Although not as dark as I was led to believe–but then, see: raised on The Downward Spiral.
Maybe Bowie’s just dark in a more subtle way than Reznor. I can barely listen to NIN anymore because Reznor’s lyrics hit my embarrassment squick so badly. I like to think he just pulls them verbatim from the diary he kept at age 16; the possibility that he’s writing them fresh as an adult is almost too horrible to contemplate.
Although actually, this reminds me even more of PIG (whose lyrics thankfully are not embarrassing), particularly of the instrumentals on Sinsation.
Anyway, Low. Is nifty, and I will listen to it more.
Also I am throughly absorbed in this David Bowie encyclopedia. It’s great–it’s entirely about Bowie’s creative output and skips the trashy bio stuff unless it’s directly relevant to the art. It’s divided into different sections–an entry on every single song, album, music video, film role, etc. The guy writing it seems to have a good head on his shoulders–he explains the history of each song, describes the creative contributions of everyone involved, points out the allusions and references, peppers his commentary with direct quotes as much as possible and explains his speculations with evidence, and includes both a historical overview of each piece in addition to quotes from the major reviews of the time.
It’s really fascinating both as a look at Bowie and at one sliver of the world of the 1970s, which is this whole other intriguing thing for me–this is the first time I’ve been a major fan of someone working in a era I didn’t live through, so it’s almost a study of the time as much as it is of him. It really hits you how much artists are influenced by the time and place they work in. I suppose the closest I’ve come before is my Sergio Leone obsession, which led to this whole interest in post-war European perspectives on America (which is also an aspect of Bowie’s work… and of Raymond Watts’… I wonder why I keep being drawn to that).
Sorry, babbling.
Current Mood: 
tired
10 Responses to “I need, like, a music blog, or something”
txvoodoo on April 21, 2009 12:22 am | Link
Seeing you go through Bowie, especially the earlier works, brings me back to my teen years, when I wore out at least 3 of his albums.
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rusty-halo on April 21, 2009 12:27 am | Link
Awww. Which ones???
I want a TARDIS so badly, seriously. I would never run of out places I wanted to go and concerts I wanted to see!
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txvoodoo on April 21, 2009 12:31 am | Link
I found Bowie when I was about 13 or 14 – I got Hunky Dory first, then all the rest that were available to that point – that would have been Diamond Dogs or Young Americans. And I kept buying them.
But I def. went thru at least 3 copies of Hunky Dory. “Oh You Pretty Things” was my very favorite!
So imagine me, with really bad wild hair (no gel, mousse, or John Frida FrizzEase back then!) dancing carefully around my room – cause if you bbounced too much, the record skipped! :)
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rusty-halo on April 21, 2009 12:52 am | Link
That’s the best era. I started with Ziggy Stardust and went backwards and forwards from it, adding Hunky Dory first and then Diamond Dogs (and then Aladdin Sane, so slightly out of order).
Now I’ve got my playlist running Space Oddity to Low … but skipping Young Americans. I still can’t quite get into that one. I should probably just put it in there and see if my brain adjusts…
I love that image of you as a kid. With a record player! There is something so much more romantic about a record than an MP3 or CD. The artwork is so big and you can see the physical grooves… *is nostalgic for something I never actually had*
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txvoodoo on April 21, 2009 11:50 am | Link
Vinyl is romantic, but gosh, the quality is so much better now :) And don’t foget, we mved to 8 tracks and casettes, too, ICK. :D
Also, I don’t mind not having to replace albums all the time. They were damaged so quickly!
I love Young Americans – it is kind of topical to the era, but maybe that’s part of why I love it.
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rusty-halo on April 21, 2009 12:43 pm | Link
Oh, I remember cassettes! I started buying music with allowance and babysitting money when I was eleven, so I built my collection with cassettes because they were slightly cheaper than CDs. I would join those music clubs where you’d get 12 free cassettes and then have an obligation to buy one a month for the next year or whatever. Then I’d quit and join again under a slightly different name. (Ah, the days before MP3s!)
In retrospect this was incredibly stupid–I have 200 cassettes in a box under my futon, and still haven’t managed to replace them all on CD yet. If only I’d gone with CDs to begin with…!
I remember replacing cassettes–the squeaking sound they’d make when my boom box started eating them! And desperately trying to spin the unraveled tape back together. I had to buy Nine Inch Nails’ Broken three times!
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orange_crushed on April 21, 2009 9:50 am | Link
Maybe Bowie’s just dark in a more subtle way than Reznor.
This made me lol for some reason, because it’s oh so true. For some reason we’ve been listening to a lot of NIN in the office lately, probably to psych up for seeing them later this year… and it’s really a nostalgic indulgence, because neither of us (me and my office BFF) are truly angsty people at all. We remember it as beloved teenage music but it’s like an artifact now.
Bowie, on the other hand, never loses me. There’s a lot of layers, and as you say, his darker themes are more deep psyche and melancholy and less petulant teenage rage.
Is it weird to say I’ve been following your Bowie posts with interest ? :D
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rusty-halo on April 21, 2009 11:23 am | Link
Is it weird to say I’ve been following your Bowie posts with interest ?
No, it’s really cool! When people don’t reply I assume that I’m talking to myself and that everyone on my flist is annoyed at me. :P
“petulant teenage rage” – That’s pretty much the perfect phrase to describe NIN. It was ideal when I was a petulant teenager. At this point in my life I’m making a concerted effort to outgrow the last vestiges of that stage.
I do think Trent Reznor is a brilliant musician, which partially redeems his work at the same time as it exaggerates the frustrating contrast between his skillful music and his painfully awkward lyrics.
I’m a verbal person–it doesn’t matter how good the music is if the words don’t interest me. Bowie writes really interesting lyrics, and he usually writes them well. He also has the wit and sense of self-aware irony that I’m finding essential to my enjoyment of pretty much anything these days.
That Bowie encyclopedia is helping me to understand why I’m drawn to Bowie lately. While he switches musical styles, he’s consistent in the topics he chooses to explore–he looks at the same ideas from different musical angles. And the encyclopedia’s list of Bowie topics was like, well, duh, that’s why I like him — he explores all this stuff that I’m already interested in. (Gender ambiguity, social isolation, being an “outsider,” (fear of) fascism, the end of the world, the search for a meaningful purpose in life, the constructed nature of “stardom,” religious questioning, disillusioned idealism, science fiction…)
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orange_crushed on April 21, 2009 12:53 pm | Link
Yeah, I would agree that Reznor’s music is a lot more nuanced than the words. In the end, that may be why I can re-listen even after outgrowing it, because the dichotomy is interesting: the music is very slick and awesome and together, and the words are raw and young and a little stupid. Hmm.
The Bowie encyclopedia is blowing my mind btw. Those topics, like you said, are thoughtful and meaningful… but, child that I am, I think it’s funny that it’s pretty much a crossover list of topics for being interested in Doctor Who. ;)
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rusty-halo on April 21, 2009 1:38 pm | Link
I think it’s funny that it’s pretty much a crossover list of topics for being interested in Doctor Who.
That is awesomely true!
It’s all Doctor Who’s fault that I got into Bowie anyway. Doctor Who made me fall in love with Simm!Master, which made me watch Life on Mars, which inspired me to obtain the complete works of David Bowie.
(BTW, the Bowie encyclopedia’s description of the themes of the song “Life on Mars?” are almost a perfect description of the themes of the UK series. It’s awesome how well it fits together, and how perfect that song is for where it’s used in the TV series.)
And I love that there’s a real Bowie/Doctor Who connection–the police box on the back of the Ziggy Stardust album, maybe even the “Starman” song… it amazes me that Doctor Who was around so long ago that it counts as part of the mix of Bowie influences…!
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