Bowie

David Bowie--"The Man Who Sold The World" (mp3)
David Bowie--"Hang On To Yourself" (mp3)
David Bowie--"Panic In Detroit" (mp3)
David Bowie--"Cracked Actor (live)" (mp3)
David Bowie--"TVC15" (mp3)

Most music listeners these days know who David Bowie is, and I suspect that most would also admit to liking some of his songs. The flat-out David Bowie fanatic, though, is a much rarer encounter. Why?

I think it's because Bowie has been such a chameleon. More than any classic rocker, including Neil Young and Bob Dylan, David Bowie has been nearly impossible to pigeonhole. In about eight years of the late 60's and early 70's alone, he was the folkie of Space Oddity, the androgynous folk-rocker of Hunky Dory, the underground, pre-Cure downer rocker of The Man Who Sold The World, the mainstream glitter hard rocker of Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane, the pre-disco urban rhythm and blues singer of Young Americans, the coke-driven Euroman of Station To Station.

By around 1977, when bands like the Talking Heads, Patti Smith, and the Ramones were ushering in music with new sensibilities, it was Bowie who declared "I am the New Wave" and went to Berlin to create a trilogy of distant, ambient, droning, synthesizer-driven techno-ish music with Brian Eno. For the 80's, he connected immediately with throwaway, MTV-friendly hits like "Let's Dance," "Modern Love," and "China Girl."

Whew.

That's a lot of different styles. Who is this guy? Do we know? Does he? He sheds skins like a snake. He hangs out with the hippest people of the moment--Warhol, Lou Reed, Mick Jagger, Eno, Freddy Mercury, even Arcade Fire--and seems to know when is the best moment to connect with them in a way that boosts their career or his or both.

David Bowie has played the popular music/rock game about as well as anyone has ever played it. Unlike Dylan and Young, he doesn't seem to be following his muse in some kind of "career be damned" fashion. He's been far more intentional than that. At the same time, he's far too gifted and iconoclastic to be accused of merely cashing in on whatever the latest trend might be.

Ultimately, he seems to be an amalgamation of all of the personas that he created, with an ability to channel what he needs from whichever of his previous "skins" are relevant. If a chameleon adapts to its environment for self-preservation, then Bowie the chameleon has done not only that, but has absorbed the ever-changing environment of popular culture and allowed it to change him as well, knowing that his talents as song writer, arranger, producer, vocalist, guitarist, keyboard player, and saxophonist provide him with an ample palette for contextual innovation.

I saw Bowie once, in about 1977, during the Station To Station tour, on a sparse industrial set, a show introduced by the classic surrealistic French short film, "Un Chien Andalou" (you know, the one where the flat cloud crosses in front of the moon and then someone draws a knife blade across someone else's eye). This is when Bowie's persona was the "Thin White Duke," a circumstance rumored to be driven by heavy cocaine, but I don't know about that. It was a grinding, pulsating show, almost an assault on the audience, with thick-sounding instruments and blinding white lights. The funny thing is, and here's one of Bowie's gifts, that in addition to the new album, he of course included a variety of old hits, all of which seemed to fit seamlessly into the new sound. Not only can Bowie reinvent himself, he can reinvent the songs to fit the new persona.

If you've lost touch with Bowie over the years, I suggest trying his post-9/11 cd, Heathen. While it never explicitly connects to that horrific day, the tone of the songs (even the covers of Neil Young's "I've Been Waiting for You" and the Pixies' "Cactus") somehow captures the desolation, the loss, the disconnectedness of the immediate post-9/11 world. Given how Bowie has always assimilated, I would have expected nothing less.

The ample David Bowie catalog is availabe at Itunes.