WFMU: Explorers Room with Flash Strap: Playlist from January 14, 2016

Listener comments!
	6:58pm Flash Strap: Evening all
	6:59pm Riz: Howdy Flash
	6:59pm Anne F.: Ready for more. Welcome back!
	6:59pm melinda: Welcome back Flash!
	7:00pm Flash Strap: Hey Riz, glad ya made it
	7:00pm hyde: hiya. i've been in new york all week where i only have my laptop for tunes and it's got no bowie on it. so this works for me.
	7:00pm Flash Strap: Hello Anne, Melinda! Wonderful to be back!
	7:00pm ndbob: Welcome back Evan!
	7:00pm Flash Strap: Ah, hello Hyde!
	7:00pm Flash Strap: Hi Bob!
	7:01pm Flash Strap: ok here we go!
	7:01pm Doug Schulkind: Flash in the Woods!
	7:01pm northguineahills: Flash is back, lets do a flash dance!
	7:01pm ndbob: And hello NGH, Riz, Melinda, Hyde
	7:01pm Doug Schulkind: Happy almost birthday, ndbob!
	7:01pm ndbob: TY Doug and hello!
	7:02pm hyde: hiya ndb! (and all others)
	7:02pm melinda: hi Bob & everyone else!
	7:02pm Flash Strap: Doug! NGH! Happy Borthyday Bob! all my friends are here! I feel like I just woke up from a dream
	7:03pm northguineahills: cool, are you(ndbob) still in indy or did you go back to nd?
	7:04pm ndbob: I'm in Bloomington IN actually
	7:04pm Carmichael: Heya Flash and gang. Even more Bowie!
	7:04pm ndbob: It felt like ND yesterday morning when it got down to 1
	7:04pm Flash Strap: Hey carmichael!
	7:05pm Carmichael: ND, you could be Bloomin' Bob now ...
	7:06pm ndbob: Yep - the white buffalo avatar is a little out of date but..
	7:07pm ndbob: and hello Carmichael!
	7:15pm Flash Strap: This is really my favorite sax performance Bowie ever did
	7:17pm hyde: so in 2016 music has already lost Bowie, Pierre Boulez, Giorgio Gomelsky and Paul Bley. This sort of thing needs to stop.
	7:17pm Doug Schulkind: There have been so many and so many FINE Bowie tributes and memorials over the past week. But here is the astonishing thing of it. The excess just make it better and richer and more deeply meaningful. It is a wallowing of wonder and it has made me really happy all week.
	7:19pm northguineahills: And everyone's Bowie's tribute has been really personalize since there's so much material and so many genres. I still haven't heard any one play anything from Earthling.
	7:20pm Flash Strap: I agree, Doug. Though I have had to avoid most of them so far... weird how dealing with the death of the most famous human can be so personal
	7:21pm Carmichael: I found some early David Jones-type material in my iTunes the other day. "I'm Not Losing Sleep" is a slick pop number that pre-dates his Modern Love era material. I also found "Can't Help Thinking About Me", credited to The Lower Third. Great driving strumming guitar and his statement style of vocalizing.
	7:22pm Flash Strap: I love the early stuff, Carm. We're about to dip into a bit of it, actually
	7:23pm Carmichael: Yay!
	7:23pm Doug Schulkind: It took my five consecutive 3-hour shows to work out my grief over Yusef Lateef's death. (Right, like I worked it out.) Having this magical public/private platform with which to do it is a blessed gift.
	7:23pm Flash Strap: God this song kills me. So simple
	7:24pm melinda: @Doug: so true. The group wallowing has been very meaningful and enjoyable for me. I like hearing everyone's personal interpretations. I was obsessed with him in junior high-high school time, but it was partly a huge crush and my way of obsessing meant playing a few records over and over, not exploring the whole ouvre, so I'm learning a lot of new music from these tributes too.
	7:24pm Flash Strap: Man, Doug, you said it. It helps
	7:26pm coelacanth: greetings Flash Welcome back Happy new year! (well,as happy as can be had considering...) hello Explorers.
	7:26pm Flash Strap: This is my very favorite early Bowie track–though the next one gives it a run for "best"
	7:27pm Flash Strap: Hi, C!
	7:27pm Doug Schulkind: The weird thing for me is, I was never that huge a fan. I never found anything not to like or even love from Bowie. But his music/art/presence was never in my personal wheelhouse. But listening deeply to so many smart, thoughtful retrospectives has pushed me over the top. And now I have an even greater capacity for love. Headspinning.
	7:29pm Flash Strap: I like hearing that. I really feel that he was one of the ten or so greatest artists, in any medium, of the 20th century. though that feels crazy to type
	7:30pm ndbob: I was a Bowie fan primarily for the first three LPs - it's funny I remember in detail the first time I heard The Man Who Sold the World and Ziggy Stardust - both when they were new
	7:30pm Flash Strap: "my essays lying scattered on the floor fulfill their needs just by being there... I'm invisible and dumb and no one will recall me" now that's a song for the academics amongst us
	7:31pm ndbob: I remember walking into a record store and hearing "Five Years" - I was blown away - and bought it immediately - never forgot that moment
	7:32pm melinda: That Conversation Piece was beautiful. And yeah, what a great line! Lyrics about failure, insecurity and self-doubt always leap out at me.
	7:32pm ndbob: @Doug I do remember those Yusef shows
	7:33pm Flash Strap: Brecht and Bowie had long been on my mind before I discovered the existence of this record... such a major user of Brechtian strategies
	7:33pm ndbob: Indeed Evan
	7:34pm Flash Strap: Me too, Melinda, me too
	7:34pm ndbob: and - exactly Melinda
	7:35pm Dean: I had -- note the tense -- this record on 8-track.
	7:36pm Flash Strap: hi Dean and wow
	7:37pm Doug Schulkind: The New York Times ran a piece by Jon Pareles on Iggy Pop's reaction to Bowie's death. Embedded in the story was a video of Bowie and Iggy being interviewed on the Dinah Shore show in '77. It is absolutely captivating and the interview is shockingly well done. Bowie comes off as massively loving and generous. Well worth watching — after Explorers Room: youtu.be...
	7:38pm Flash Strap: There's no substitute for Brel's performance of this song, and Scott Walker's is probably better, but this is always sort of my favorite
	7:38pm Dean: I have been listening to, and loving, the WFMU tributes. It just occurred to me that I haven't yet heard or read a reference to Bowie's narration of "Peter & the Wolf."
	7:38pm Flash Strap: I'm familiar with and absolutely adore that interview, Doug
	7:40pm ndbob: Thanks Doug!
	7:41pm Dean: Pretty sure I watched that Dinah episode when it aired.
	7:57pm ndbob: excellent first hour Evan can stay in chat but will hear the rest of the show on the archive
	7:59pm Flash Strap: Thanks, bob!
	8:00pm Flash Strap: I should note that Bowie plays all the guitar and sax on this suite
	8:03pm Flash Strap: My favorite Bowie records are Station to Station&the Berlin trilogy–I don't think they can be touched– but damn if I don't think this is one of his grandest achievements
	🥁 8:04pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: Diane K played the whole DD album today. Blew my mind just like when I was 10 y.o.
	8:05pm Flash Strap: Hey there, Rabbit!
	8:09pm Flash Strap: I always felt there was a suspiciously close resemblance between this Neu! and the coda to Sweet Thing, and always wanted to play them back to back. Generally people identify the title track of Station to Station as the first sign of krautrock influence, but I think it happens on Diamond Dogs
	🥁 8:11pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: Very interesting. What many see as Bowie appropriating everything, I see as him educating me! The Stones informing me of Blues doesn't devalue the Stones...Zep taking credit tho' is a little...uh...
	8:11pm Flash Strap: One of the great pleasures of Bowie's body of work is the absolutely cunning syncretisms and imperialisms of/with his various influences and interests
	8:12pm Flash Strap: heh, yeah, Zep's a different kettle of fish in my opinion.... Bowie does it better than anyone else though, with great grace and artfulness
	8:15pm coelacanth: i have 9 favorites,including the new one. i wont place each one, but all but one are pre-lodger. i loved low & heroes, then was terribly disappointed by lodger. i will give it a new listen now- along with so many albums i ignored completely between let's dance and ✭.
	🥁 8:17pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: Zackly that. & he was hugely Popular doing it. Everybody is Influenced - even Neu! So have good taste in doing it...Iggy says Johnny Cash informed the Stooges' 1st album's minimalism that defined Punk - & bellydance rhythms! ('Our tastes were sophisticated - & our skills limited'.) All this this week has me thinking how much Bowie is Thee Greatest @ putting things together as his natural gift & way - Concept & Pop - 'cetera 'cetera...I just smh - awes me yerknow...
	8:19pm Flash Strap: @C: Lodger is really one of my very very favorites. It underwhelmed so many people but I think it's just brilliant. It's hard to follow up Low and Heroes, you know?
	8:20pm Flash Strap: Bowie used cut-up techniques for many of his lyrics, quite notably so in this song
	🥁 8:21pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: On Destination Out Jeff J just posted: Here's Bowie talking with William S. Burroughs about his fans. Underlining how his project was more aimed at them than anything else: "I don't like to read things that people write about me. I'd rather read what kids have to say about me, because it's not their profession to do that. People look to me to see what the spirit of the Seventies is, at least 50% of them do. Critics I don't understand. They get too intellectual. They're not very well-versed in street talk; it takes them longer to say it." - & that floors me. He's the smartest & makes it street. No wonder Ziggy prefigured Punk...
	8:23pm Flash Strap: it's funny too, seeing as he's likely the most earnestly intellectual musicians of his time, alongside maybe Scott Walker
	🥁 8:23pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: Townshend saying Bowie was his Salvador Dali - which I take as the realizer of extraordinary imaginings...
	8:25pm Flash Strap: so contradictory: on Bewlay Brothers he once said, dismissively “it's Star Trek in a leather jacket.” Yet it seems likely that it's a dense poetic reference to his half brother Terry Burns, who had schizophrenia and seizures. Always eliding, distancing, disguising his intentions
	8:27pm Flash Strap: this is the only Ziggy song I'll play. the best one from it, I think
	🥁 8:27pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: ...Iggy saying he never met anyone else that brilliant, Yoko saying he was Lennon's match... Yeah but - 'Star Trek in a leather jacket' is like him trying to say it before his critics do, & be one up on them - because of course he knows...
	8:28pm melinda: I think this is my favorite from Ziggy too.
	🥁 8:29pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: Cinematic. All those white dudes playing passable R&B trying to do Concept Albums - & Bowie's writing Short Stories like this as top-shelf PopSongs...smh...
	8:29pm Flash Strap: It paints such a startling, sophisticated scene of horror and catharsis
	8:30pm Ham: "my brain hurts a lot!"
	8:30pm Flash Strap: it's better than, and of a piece with, virtually any 70s Sci Fi dystopia flick
	🥁 8:31pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: Sophistication - can't get around that. But a Rawk Idol if anyone was.
	8:43pm Flash Strap: we may have to agree to disagree, RRN63
	8:45pm Flash Strap: Sula vie dilejo Solo vie milejo Cheli venco deho Cheli venco deho Malio Helibo seyoman Cheli venco raero Malio, malio
	8:46pm Flash Strap: So fuckin beautiful, like exotica at the speed of a glacier
	8:50pm Flash Strap: This song was on one of the LPs Bowie bought during his very brief walk through a snowy, bleak Warsaw, during a train stop. It is a beautiful hidden key to one of the most mysterious songs ever to appear on a "pop" record
	🥁 8:50pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: Wow. Thx.
	🥁 8:53pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: (...Rawk/Pop/Glam Idol - what have you...)
	8:53pm melinda: Thanks for playing Young Americans. Brings back happy memories of youth.
	8:54pm Flash Strap: I don't care what anyone thinks: this is one the best songs he ever wrote. Imagine it as a Brecht song, and it is ashes in the mouth. But the disconnect between the buoyant music and the bitter, nightmare-vision in the lyrics makes it an astonishing work of wholly subversive pop
	8:55pm Flash Strap: My pleasure, melinda!
	🥁 8:56pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: - & it sounds great.
	🥁 8:57pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: ...that's always been the Blues, after all, the Code...
	8:57pm Doug Schulkind: Amazing how often fools misappropriate that song to bluster about a wholly antithetical imagining of America.
	8:57pm Flash Strap: and here we have one of the best vocal performances, THE best cover...
	8:58pm melinda: I have to confess that I'm often not good at picking up on lyrics in their entirety. If I am moved by the melodies I'm even less likely to. Until tonight it didn't occur to me that Five Years was as bleak and dystopian as it is.
	9:00pm Flash Strap: I agree Doug. It was so celebrated in the American market, and right so I suppose, but the fact is: it paints a portrait of america as a pop art armageddon, a land of cardboard people consumed by the society of the spectacle
	9:04pm Flash Strap: I have to counter what you said earlier, Rabbit, and posit that Bowie, more than anything, was an artist of the highest caliber; the pop song was merely his medium of choice. Rock idol, pop star, what have you: those are shadows cast by the true form
	🥁 9:05pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: His diction is clear in the mix - you can hear what he says clearly in it. I think the Audience picked up on it a lot - but I can't totally understand or represent what the 'average' listener got...There is ambiguity - Bowie celebrates the American rhythm & sound - & they are Kids he portrays after all - so a little wiggle room? Compare to 'Born in the USA' in the misreading... Okay - here's what I think happens a lot: people get that a bad situation is alluded to - they think in passing - & think that's enuff - give it a nod like you're in on it, & you're validated to carry on boogieing on Saturday night w/ no further disturbance...So yeah - they miss it...& smugly...
	🥁 9:07pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: Sure - but he is certainly an Idol to people - whatever his intentions. & that's just it - he Used it.
	9:09pm Flash Strap: indeed, indeed
	9:11pm Doug Schulkind: I have been struck at just how literal Bowie has been all along. He has been telling us all straight to our faces what he thought and felt. The artifice was just artifice.
	🥁 9:12pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: - & it bowls me over he could do that - I mean, Scott Walker kind of chose one or the other! & Eno isn't a RawkStar on the Pop40 like Bowie. Oh that's good Doug.
	9:13pm Flash Strap: Yes Doug! Me too! That's the marvel of it, what makes the whole thing feel like a vaguely unified project of magisterial proportions, an extended work of high, tricky art composed of disparate elements in a grand web
	🥁 9:14pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: He's Meta.
	9:16pm Flash Strap: he had to be a pop star for it all to work, as it's largely a meditation on false messiahs, antichrists, fascism&art, crumbling societies and media spectacle
	9:17pm coelacanth: me too Doug. and even though i really disliked what some of his characters represented, i (by reading interviews with him) always knew that he never was trying to convince people that they were he. ...and even when i didn't like much of his music, i still liked him.
	🥁 9:22pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: - in that - a precursor to Punk as AntiRock Rock - all of which almost unconscious? It's weird to be so retrospective after decades - just trying to remember, not that it isn't still very relevant...It really emerges what a heavy dude. How the world feels gutted for a week...something else...
	9:22pm Doug Schulkind: I was too shallow to get him most of the time. I never looked past the sequins to see the beauty and sadness and truth. The loss of Bowie as a mortal among us can't be reversed. That his death can help bring about the loss of my own ignorance—that is a loving gift.
	🥁 9:30pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: You're on it man. It's very English too, of course - this view of America. Bowie as Vocalist - this alone is worth discourse. Always a very important instrument to me - his voice. A R&R singer - but very much a Crooner - which all devolves thru Sinatra inevitably.
	🥁 9:32pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: - & Theater is always an element - & that's a certain kind of singing.
	9:32pm Flash Strap: I love his croon the most, I think
	9:33pm Flash Strap: yeah, totally. There's also this weird Anthony Newley music hall influence I've never really unpacked
	9:34pm Flash Strap: I love what you're saying Doug, it's moving me in my soul
	9:35pm Flash Strap: God, this song
	9:38pm coelacanth: part of my devastation is that i gave up on Bowie, musically (sort of - i always listened for his radio hits,but none impressed me much) on the 3rd album straight that i disliked. (let's dance). ...then last friday when i heard some of ✭, i immediately decided i may have missed something worth my attention over all those years i ignored him, and i will go back for it all. ...and then...
	9:39pm Flash Strap: Definitely give Scary Monsters another chance, too. I know I really love it (mostly). I don't go much past Let's Dance myself, though I've really liked the last two
	🥁 9:40pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: Isn't that so often the case w/ Artists? Something about them being gone & retrospective - the perspective is immediately different. See how we're decoupling him from the image of the active Pop producer & scratching our chins standing in the museum now ...I feel that too coelacanth - & he does after all have a large body of work w/ many phases. I think most people checked in & out.
	9:43pm melinda: I tend to check in and out like that with many of my favorite musicians.
	9:43pm Doug Schulkind: @coelacanth That has been my sensation all week, that I missed something. And that I am getting a second chance. And Blackstar has choreographed the unbinding (by exciting me and, in part, inspiring all these fucking amazing inspiring tributes and memorials). It's all so consistent with Bowie's now eternal humanity.
	9:43pm coelacanth: trust me i'll check ALL of it out! (at least once) and i know i missed something in "the next day" and "outside"...and the tin machine albums. i'll check out Scary Monsters again, even though i greatly dislike "ashes to ashes".
	🥁 9:44pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: ...trying to sum up my personal remembrance - how I related & what he meant to me - one thing I recalled clearly is how much it was imperative to Pay Attention when Bowie came out w/ new things for a long time - he was on that short list...
	🥁 9:47pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: W/ Bowie's passing - I feel a combination of surprisingly (!) strong & enduring sadness - & - satisfaction @ how successful & productive he was - this is not tragic, this is affirmative ...& this also holds up an example of a purposeful, smart, creative life that is a distinct challenge, just as it is affirmative...
	9:49pm Doug Schulkind: Yes, RevRab.
	9:50pm Flash Strap: @C: well, Ashes to Ashes is one of my favorites, so your mileage may vary. I love that track, I love the savagery of its epitaph
	9:50pm coelacanth: his earlier stuff always meant a Great deal to me- since i was about 9...but "blackstar"..........✭!!!!!!!!!!!!!!..... nothing that Brilliant can emerge now without proving that amazing things were bubbling all along.
	9:51pm Flash Strap: I really admire how long he waits before the vocal on this track
	9:51pm melinda: I have that feeling of having missed out on a lot, too, which is funny because the music is still there. Still catching up on Lou Reed, too. ALways catching up and that's ok.
	9:51pm Flash Strap: alright fellow travelers, good night
	9:51pm coelacanth: Thank you Evan. glad you're back.
	9:52pm melinda: Great song to end with. Thanks for the tribute!
	🥁 9:52pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: Thx You - very impressive insight!
	9:52pm hyde: thanks!
	9:52pm Flash Strap: thanks for going down that road with me my dear friends
	9:53pm coelacanth: yes. sound and vision.
	🥁 7:54pm jaywbabcock: Hi Evan — Really enjoying this! BUT... the archived recording of the show ENDS prematurely, during the Flo & Eddie conversation. Any chance of re-upping?
	8:30pm Flash Strap: oh man, I thought I got that fixed a while ago! yeah, will do as soon as I get a chance. will take until the weekend, probably
	🥁 9:23pm jaywbabcock: Thank you so much Evan. This is a very special show. So enlightening
	3:30pm Flash Strap: Whole thing is up now, Jay! Thanks for bringing that to my attention... that whole Flo&Eddie bit is too lovely to cut off

Explorers Room with Flash Strap: Playlist from January 14, 2016

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This is where all of culture and all of time are collapsed into one seductive portal and viewed through the panoramic lens of the exotic. Come and embark on an armchair-travel virtual-voyage to the heart of timeless darkness and beyond; embrace the numinous monolith of the exotic immensity. Let us find that place where hybridization meets its destiny as pure fantasy. Let us become observers observing those others who are ourselves. You wear your mask and I'll wear mine.

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January 14, 2016: Alienation, Loss, a Lack of Conclusions: In Which I Try to Address David Bowie's Passing

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Artist	Track	Album	Year	Comments
	Intro "Intro"
David Bowie	Please Mr. Gravedigger	David Bowie	1967
David Bowie	Fantastic Voyage "Fantastic Voyage" by "David Bowie"	The Lodger	1979
Music behind DJ: David Bowie	Sense of Doubt "Sense of Doubt" by "David Bowie"	"Heroes"	1977
David Bowie	Neuköln "Neuköln" by "David Bowie"	"Heroes"	1977
David Bowie	Introduction to "The Snowman"		1982
David Bowie	Oh! You Pretty Things	Hunky Dory	1971
David Bowie	Eight Line Poem "Eight Line Poem" by "David Bowie"	Hunky Dory	1971
David Bowie	In the Heat of the Morning	Bowie at the Beeb	1968
David Bowie	Conversation Piece "Conversation Piece" by "David Bowie"	B-side to "Prettiest Star"	1969/1970	rec. 1969 for "Space Oddity" sessions
David Bowie	Baal's Hymm "Baal's Hymm" by "David Bowie"	David Bowie in Bertolt Brecht's Baal	1982	written by Brecht in 1918
David Bowie	Gospel According to Tony Day	David Bowie	1967
David Bowie	Amsterdam "Amsterdam" by "David Bowie"	B-side to "Sorrow"	1971/73	rec. 1971 for Ziggy Stardust, released 1973
David Bowie	the Bewlay Brothers "the Bewlay Brothers" by "David Bowie"	Hunky Dory	1971
Music behind DJ: David Bowie	Moss Garden "Moss Garden" by "David Bowie"	"Heroes"	1977
David Bowie	Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing (Reprise)	Diamond Dogs	1974
Neu!	Negativland "Negativland" by "Neu!"	Neu!	1972
David Bowie	We Are the Dead "We Are the Dead" by "David Bowie"	Diamond Dogs	1974
David Bowie	Candidate (Demo Version Recorded In 1973)	Diamond Dogs bonus tracks Ryko edition	1973
David Bowie	Five Years "Five Years" by "David Bowie"	The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars	1972
David Bowie	Memory Of A Free Festival	Space Oddity	1969
Music behind DJ: David Bowie	Weeping Wall "Weeping Wall" by "David Bowie"	Low	1977
David Bowie	Warszawa "Warszawa" by "David Bowie"	Low	1977
Śląsk	Helokanie "Helokanie" by "Śląsk"			written by Stanislaw Hadyna
David Bowie	Young Americans "Young Americans" by "David Bowie"	Young Americans	1975
David Bowie	Wild is the Wind "Wild is the Wind" by "David Bowie"	Station to Station	1976
David Bowie	Blackout "Blackout" by "David Bowie"	"Heroes"	1977
	1977 interview with Flo & Eddie "1977 interview with Flo & Eddie"
David Bowie	Some Are "Some Are" by "David Bowie"	Low (Bonus track)	1977
David Bowie	Subterraneans "Subterraneans" by "David Bowie"	Low	1977
Music behind DJ: David Bowie	All Saints "All Saints" by "David Bowie"			Followed by Crystal Japan
David Bowie	It's Gonna Be Me "It's Gonna Be Me" by "David Bowie"	Young Americans (Bonus Track)	1975
David Bowie	You Feel So Lonely You Could Die	The Next Day	2013
Music behind DJ: David Bowie	Art Decade "Art Decade" by "David Bowie"	Low
David Bowie	Sound and Vision "Sound and Vision" by "David Bowie"	Low	1977

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Listener comments!
	6:58pm Flash Strap: Evening all
	6:59pm Riz: Howdy Flash
	6:59pm Anne F.: Ready for more. Welcome back!
	6:59pm melinda: Welcome back Flash!
	7:00pm Flash Strap: Hey Riz, glad ya made it
	7:00pm hyde: hiya. i've been in new york all week where i only have my laptop for tunes and it's got no bowie on it. so this works for me.
	7:00pm Flash Strap: Hello Anne, Melinda! Wonderful to be back!
	7:00pm ndbob: Welcome back Evan!
	7:00pm Flash Strap: Ah, hello Hyde!
	7:00pm Flash Strap: Hi Bob!
	7:01pm Flash Strap: ok here we go!
	7:01pm Doug Schulkind: Flash in the Woods!
	7:01pm northguineahills: Flash is back, lets do a flash dance!
	7:01pm ndbob: And hello NGH, Riz, Melinda, Hyde
	7:01pm Doug Schulkind: Happy almost birthday, ndbob!
	7:01pm ndbob: TY Doug and hello!
	7:02pm hyde: hiya ndb! (and all others)
	7:02pm melinda: hi Bob & everyone else!
	7:02pm Flash Strap: Doug! NGH! Happy Borthyday Bob! all my friends are here! I feel like I just woke up from a dream
	7:03pm northguineahills: cool, are you(ndbob) still in indy or did you go back to nd?
	7:04pm ndbob: I'm in Bloomington IN actually
	7:04pm Carmichael: Heya Flash and gang. Even more Bowie!
	7:04pm ndbob: It felt like ND yesterday morning when it got down to 1
	7:04pm Flash Strap: Hey carmichael!
	7:05pm Carmichael: ND, you could be Bloomin' Bob now ...
	7:06pm ndbob: Yep - the white buffalo avatar is a little out of date but..
	7:07pm ndbob: and hello Carmichael!
	7:15pm Flash Strap: This is really my favorite sax performance Bowie ever did
	7:17pm hyde: so in 2016 music has already lost Bowie, Pierre Boulez, Giorgio Gomelsky and Paul Bley. This sort of thing needs to stop.
	7:17pm Doug Schulkind: There have been so many and so many FINE Bowie tributes and memorials over the past week. But here is the astonishing thing of it. The excess just make it better and richer and more deeply meaningful. It is a wallowing of wonder and it has made me really happy all week.
	7:19pm northguineahills: And everyone's Bowie's tribute has been really personalize since there's so much material and so many genres. I still haven't heard any one play anything from Earthling.
	7:20pm Flash Strap: I agree, Doug. Though I have had to avoid most of them so far... weird how dealing with the death of the most famous human can be so personal
	7:21pm Carmichael: I found some early David Jones-type material in my iTunes the other day. "I'm Not Losing Sleep" is a slick pop number that pre-dates his Modern Love era material. I also found "Can't Help Thinking About Me", credited to The Lower Third. Great driving strumming guitar and his statement style of vocalizing.
	7:22pm Flash Strap: I love the early stuff, Carm. We're about to dip into a bit of it, actually
	7:23pm Carmichael: Yay!
	7:23pm Doug Schulkind: It took my five consecutive 3-hour shows to work out my grief over Yusef Lateef's death. (Right, like I worked it out.) Having this magical public/private platform with which to do it is a blessed gift.
	7:23pm Flash Strap: God this song kills me. So simple
	7:24pm melinda: @Doug: so true. The group wallowing has been very meaningful and enjoyable for me. I like hearing everyone's personal interpretations. I was obsessed with him in junior high-high school time, but it was partly a huge crush and my way of obsessing meant playing a few records over and over, not exploring the whole ouvre, so I'm learning a lot of new music from these tributes too.
	7:24pm Flash Strap: Man, Doug, you said it. It helps
	7:26pm coelacanth: greetings Flash Welcome back Happy new year! (well,as happy as can be had considering...) hello Explorers.
	7:26pm Flash Strap: This is my very favorite early Bowie track–though the next one gives it a run for "best"
	7:27pm Flash Strap: Hi, C!
	7:27pm Doug Schulkind: The weird thing for me is, I was never that huge a fan. I never found anything not to like or even love from Bowie. But his music/art/presence was never in my personal wheelhouse. But listening deeply to so many smart, thoughtful retrospectives has pushed me over the top. And now I have an even greater capacity for love. Headspinning.
	7:29pm Flash Strap: I like hearing that. I really feel that he was one of the ten or so greatest artists, in any medium, of the 20th century. though that feels crazy to type
	7:30pm ndbob: I was a Bowie fan primarily for the first three LPs - it's funny I remember in detail the first time I heard The Man Who Sold the World and Ziggy Stardust - both when they were new
	7:30pm Flash Strap: "my essays lying scattered on the floor fulfill their needs just by being there... I'm invisible and dumb and no one will recall me" now that's a song for the academics amongst us
	7:31pm ndbob: I remember walking into a record store and hearing "Five Years" - I was blown away - and bought it immediately - never forgot that moment
	7:32pm melinda: That Conversation Piece was beautiful. And yeah, what a great line! Lyrics about failure, insecurity and self-doubt always leap out at me.
	7:32pm ndbob: @Doug I do remember those Yusef shows
	7:33pm Flash Strap: Brecht and Bowie had long been on my mind before I discovered the existence of this record... such a major user of Brechtian strategies
	7:33pm ndbob: Indeed Evan
	7:34pm Flash Strap: Me too, Melinda, me too
	7:34pm ndbob: and - exactly Melinda
	7:35pm Dean: I had -- note the tense -- this record on 8-track.
	7:36pm Flash Strap: hi Dean and wow
	7:37pm Doug Schulkind: The New York Times ran a piece by Jon Pareles on Iggy Pop's reaction to Bowie's death. Embedded in the story was a video of Bowie and Iggy being interviewed on the Dinah Shore show in '77. It is absolutely captivating and the interview is shockingly well done. Bowie comes off as massively loving and generous. Well worth watching — after Explorers Room: youtu.be...
	7:38pm Flash Strap: There's no substitute for Brel's performance of this song, and Scott Walker's is probably better, but this is always sort of my favorite
	7:38pm Dean: I have been listening to, and loving, the WFMU tributes. It just occurred to me that I haven't yet heard or read a reference to Bowie's narration of "Peter & the Wolf."
	7:38pm Flash Strap: I'm familiar with and absolutely adore that interview, Doug
	7:40pm ndbob: Thanks Doug!
	7:41pm Dean: Pretty sure I watched that Dinah episode when it aired.
	7:57pm ndbob: excellent first hour Evan can stay in chat but will hear the rest of the show on the archive
	7:59pm Flash Strap: Thanks, bob!
	8:00pm Flash Strap: I should note that Bowie plays all the guitar and sax on this suite
	8:03pm Flash Strap: My favorite Bowie records are Station to Station&the Berlin trilogy–I don't think they can be touched– but damn if I don't think this is one of his grandest achievements
	🥁 8:04pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: Diane K played the whole DD album today. Blew my mind just like when I was 10 y.o.
	8:05pm Flash Strap: Hey there, Rabbit!
	8:09pm Flash Strap: I always felt there was a suspiciously close resemblance between this Neu! and the coda to Sweet Thing, and always wanted to play them back to back. Generally people identify the title track of Station to Station as the first sign of krautrock influence, but I think it happens on Diamond Dogs
	🥁 8:11pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: Very interesting. What many see as Bowie appropriating everything, I see as him educating me! The Stones informing me of Blues doesn't devalue the Stones...Zep taking credit tho' is a little...uh...
	8:11pm Flash Strap: One of the great pleasures of Bowie's body of work is the absolutely cunning syncretisms and imperialisms of/with his various influences and interests
	8:12pm Flash Strap: heh, yeah, Zep's a different kettle of fish in my opinion.... Bowie does it better than anyone else though, with great grace and artfulness
	8:15pm coelacanth: i have 9 favorites,including the new one. i wont place each one, but all but one are pre-lodger. i loved low & heroes, then was terribly disappointed by lodger. i will give it a new listen now- along with so many albums i ignored completely between let's dance and ✭.
	🥁 8:17pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: Zackly that. & he was hugely Popular doing it. Everybody is Influenced - even Neu! So have good taste in doing it...Iggy says Johnny Cash informed the Stooges' 1st album's minimalism that defined Punk - & bellydance rhythms! ('Our tastes were sophisticated - & our skills limited'.) All this this week has me thinking how much Bowie is Thee Greatest @ putting things together as his natural gift & way - Concept & Pop - 'cetera 'cetera...I just smh - awes me yerknow...
	8:19pm Flash Strap: @C: Lodger is really one of my very very favorites. It underwhelmed so many people but I think it's just brilliant. It's hard to follow up Low and Heroes, you know?
	8:20pm Flash Strap: Bowie used cut-up techniques for many of his lyrics, quite notably so in this song
	🥁 8:21pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: On Destination Out Jeff J just posted: Here's Bowie talking with William S. Burroughs about his fans. Underlining how his project was more aimed at them than anything else: "I don't like to read things that people write about me. I'd rather read what kids have to say about me, because it's not their profession to do that. People look to me to see what the spirit of the Seventies is, at least 50% of them do. Critics I don't understand. They get too intellectual. They're not very well-versed in street talk; it takes them longer to say it." - & that floors me. He's the smartest & makes it street. No wonder Ziggy prefigured Punk...
	8:23pm Flash Strap: it's funny too, seeing as he's likely the most earnestly intellectual musicians of his time, alongside maybe Scott Walker
	🥁 8:23pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: Townshend saying Bowie was his Salvador Dali - which I take as the realizer of extraordinary imaginings...
	8:25pm Flash Strap: so contradictory: on Bewlay Brothers he once said, dismissively “it's Star Trek in a leather jacket.” Yet it seems likely that it's a dense poetic reference to his half brother Terry Burns, who had schizophrenia and seizures. Always eliding, distancing, disguising his intentions
	8:27pm Flash Strap: this is the only Ziggy song I'll play. the best one from it, I think
	🥁 8:27pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: ...Iggy saying he never met anyone else that brilliant, Yoko saying he was Lennon's match... Yeah but - 'Star Trek in a leather jacket' is like him trying to say it before his critics do, & be one up on them - because of course he knows...
	8:28pm melinda: I think this is my favorite from Ziggy too.
	🥁 8:29pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: Cinematic. All those white dudes playing passable R&B trying to do Concept Albums - & Bowie's writing Short Stories like this as top-shelf PopSongs...smh...
	8:29pm Flash Strap: It paints such a startling, sophisticated scene of horror and catharsis
	8:30pm Ham: "my brain hurts a lot!"
	8:30pm Flash Strap: it's better than, and of a piece with, virtually any 70s Sci Fi dystopia flick
	🥁 8:31pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: Sophistication - can't get around that. But a Rawk Idol if anyone was.
	8:43pm Flash Strap: we may have to agree to disagree, RRN63
	8:45pm Flash Strap: Sula vie dilejo Solo vie milejo Cheli venco deho Cheli venco deho Malio Helibo seyoman Cheli venco raero Malio, malio
	8:46pm Flash Strap: So fuckin beautiful, like exotica at the speed of a glacier
	8:50pm Flash Strap: This song was on one of the LPs Bowie bought during his very brief walk through a snowy, bleak Warsaw, during a train stop. It is a beautiful hidden key to one of the most mysterious songs ever to appear on a "pop" record
	🥁 8:50pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: Wow. Thx.
	🥁 8:53pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: (...Rawk/Pop/Glam Idol - what have you...)
	8:53pm melinda: Thanks for playing Young Americans. Brings back happy memories of youth.
	8:54pm Flash Strap: I don't care what anyone thinks: this is one the best songs he ever wrote. Imagine it as a Brecht song, and it is ashes in the mouth. But the disconnect between the buoyant music and the bitter, nightmare-vision in the lyrics makes it an astonishing work of wholly subversive pop
	8:55pm Flash Strap: My pleasure, melinda!
	🥁 8:56pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: - & it sounds great.
	🥁 8:57pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: ...that's always been the Blues, after all, the Code...
	8:57pm Doug Schulkind: Amazing how often fools misappropriate that song to bluster about a wholly antithetical imagining of America.
	8:57pm Flash Strap: and here we have one of the best vocal performances, THE best cover...
	8:58pm melinda: I have to confess that I'm often not good at picking up on lyrics in their entirety. If I am moved by the melodies I'm even less likely to. Until tonight it didn't occur to me that Five Years was as bleak and dystopian as it is.
	9:00pm Flash Strap: I agree Doug. It was so celebrated in the American market, and right so I suppose, but the fact is: it paints a portrait of america as a pop art armageddon, a land of cardboard people consumed by the society of the spectacle
	9:04pm Flash Strap: I have to counter what you said earlier, Rabbit, and posit that Bowie, more than anything, was an artist of the highest caliber; the pop song was merely his medium of choice. Rock idol, pop star, what have you: those are shadows cast by the true form
	🥁 9:05pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: His diction is clear in the mix - you can hear what he says clearly in it. I think the Audience picked up on it a lot - but I can't totally understand or represent what the 'average' listener got...There is ambiguity - Bowie celebrates the American rhythm & sound - & they are Kids he portrays after all - so a little wiggle room? Compare to 'Born in the USA' in the misreading... Okay - here's what I think happens a lot: people get that a bad situation is alluded to - they think in passing - & think that's enuff - give it a nod like you're in on it, & you're validated to carry on boogieing on Saturday night w/ no further disturbance...So yeah - they miss it...& smugly...
	🥁 9:07pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: Sure - but he is certainly an Idol to people - whatever his intentions. & that's just it - he Used it.
	9:09pm Flash Strap: indeed, indeed
	9:11pm Doug Schulkind: I have been struck at just how literal Bowie has been all along. He has been telling us all straight to our faces what he thought and felt. The artifice was just artifice.
	🥁 9:12pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: - & it bowls me over he could do that - I mean, Scott Walker kind of chose one or the other! & Eno isn't a RawkStar on the Pop40 like Bowie. Oh that's good Doug.
	9:13pm Flash Strap: Yes Doug! Me too! That's the marvel of it, what makes the whole thing feel like a vaguely unified project of magisterial proportions, an extended work of high, tricky art composed of disparate elements in a grand web
	🥁 9:14pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: He's Meta.
	9:16pm Flash Strap: he had to be a pop star for it all to work, as it's largely a meditation on false messiahs, antichrists, fascism&art, crumbling societies and media spectacle
	9:17pm coelacanth: me too Doug. and even though i really disliked what some of his characters represented, i (by reading interviews with him) always knew that he never was trying to convince people that they were he. ...and even when i didn't like much of his music, i still liked him.
	🥁 9:22pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: - in that - a precursor to Punk as AntiRock Rock - all of which almost unconscious? It's weird to be so retrospective after decades - just trying to remember, not that it isn't still very relevant...It really emerges what a heavy dude. How the world feels gutted for a week...something else...
	9:22pm Doug Schulkind: I was too shallow to get him most of the time. I never looked past the sequins to see the beauty and sadness and truth. The loss of Bowie as a mortal among us can't be reversed. That his death can help bring about the loss of my own ignorance—that is a loving gift.
	🥁 9:30pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: You're on it man. It's very English too, of course - this view of America. Bowie as Vocalist - this alone is worth discourse. Always a very important instrument to me - his voice. A R&R singer - but very much a Crooner - which all devolves thru Sinatra inevitably.
	🥁 9:32pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: - & Theater is always an element - & that's a certain kind of singing.
	9:32pm Flash Strap: I love his croon the most, I think
	9:33pm Flash Strap: yeah, totally. There's also this weird Anthony Newley music hall influence I've never really unpacked
	9:34pm Flash Strap: I love what you're saying Doug, it's moving me in my soul
	9:35pm Flash Strap: God, this song
	9:38pm coelacanth: part of my devastation is that i gave up on Bowie, musically (sort of - i always listened for his radio hits,but none impressed me much) on the 3rd album straight that i disliked. (let's dance). ...then last friday when i heard some of ✭, i immediately decided i may have missed something worth my attention over all those years i ignored him, and i will go back for it all. ...and then...
	9:39pm Flash Strap: Definitely give Scary Monsters another chance, too. I know I really love it (mostly). I don't go much past Let's Dance myself, though I've really liked the last two
	🥁 9:40pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: Isn't that so often the case w/ Artists? Something about them being gone & retrospective - the perspective is immediately different. See how we're decoupling him from the image of the active Pop producer & scratching our chins standing in the museum now ...I feel that too coelacanth - & he does after all have a large body of work w/ many phases. I think most people checked in & out.
	9:43pm melinda: I tend to check in and out like that with many of my favorite musicians.
	9:43pm Doug Schulkind: @coelacanth That has been my sensation all week, that I missed something. And that I am getting a second chance. And Blackstar has choreographed the unbinding (by exciting me and, in part, inspiring all these fucking amazing inspiring tributes and memorials). It's all so consistent with Bowie's now eternal humanity.
	9:43pm coelacanth: trust me i'll check ALL of it out! (at least once) and i know i missed something in "the next day" and "outside"...and the tin machine albums. i'll check out Scary Monsters again, even though i greatly dislike "ashes to ashes".
	🥁 9:44pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: ...trying to sum up my personal remembrance - how I related & what he meant to me - one thing I recalled clearly is how much it was imperative to Pay Attention when Bowie came out w/ new things for a long time - he was on that short list...
	🥁 9:47pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: W/ Bowie's passing - I feel a combination of surprisingly (!) strong & enduring sadness - & - satisfaction @ how successful & productive he was - this is not tragic, this is affirmative ...& this also holds up an example of a purposeful, smart, creative life that is a distinct challenge, just as it is affirmative...
	9:49pm Doug Schulkind: Yes, RevRab.
	9:50pm Flash Strap: @C: well, Ashes to Ashes is one of my favorites, so your mileage may vary. I love that track, I love the savagery of its epitaph
	9:50pm coelacanth: his earlier stuff always meant a Great deal to me- since i was about 9...but "blackstar"..........✭!!!!!!!!!!!!!!..... nothing that Brilliant can emerge now without proving that amazing things were bubbling all along.
	9:51pm Flash Strap: I really admire how long he waits before the vocal on this track
	9:51pm melinda: I have that feeling of having missed out on a lot, too, which is funny because the music is still there. Still catching up on Lou Reed, too. ALways catching up and that's ok.
	9:51pm Flash Strap: alright fellow travelers, good night
	9:51pm coelacanth: Thank you Evan. glad you're back.
	9:52pm melinda: Great song to end with. Thanks for the tribute!
	🥁 9:52pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: Thx You - very impressive insight!
	9:52pm hyde: thanks!
	9:52pm Flash Strap: thanks for going down that road with me my dear friends
	9:53pm coelacanth: yes. sound and vision.
	🥁 7:54pm jaywbabcock: Hi Evan — Really enjoying this! BUT... the archived recording of the show ENDS prematurely, during the Flo & Eddie conversation. Any chance of re-upping?
	8:30pm Flash Strap: oh man, I thought I got that fixed a while ago! yeah, will do as soon as I get a chance. will take until the weekend, probably
	🥁 9:23pm jaywbabcock: Thank you so much Evan. This is a very special show. So enlightening
	3:30pm Flash Strap: Whole thing is up now, Jay! Thanks for bringing that to my attention... that whole Flo&Eddie bit is too lovely to cut off

Explorers Room with Flash Strap: Playlist from January 14, 2016

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