David Bowie is dead. Why didn’t the world stand still?
In 1976, I bought a Bowie album called Station to Station. It doesn’t matter what kind of music Bowie made on Station to Station or how it fits into his life’s work or that it marked the end of this phase and the beginning of that phase. It doesn’t matter if you, Dear Reader, played it once and ran away. It doesn’t even matter if you’ve never heard of it.
What does matter is that I found this record and that as soon as the needle hit the wax it jumped into my soul. It tilted my brain. It stares unblinking from my eyes. As Bowie sang on another record, “Never no turning back.” I like to think that we all have a song or a book or a movie or a painting or a sculpture or a play that did that to us…if we were lucky.
In all the years I’ve been playing Station to Station, never have I thought, “Not this again.”
I never met the man, saw him in concert, or had any contact with him outside of his music. I have no cool stories to share. But today at work I played 35 of his songs and from time to time I looked out the window as the clouds closed in and broke up and closed in and wondered what kind of person am I in the alternative universe where there was no Bowie.
I’m glad I live over here.
Goodbye, David Bowie. Put on your red shoes and dance the blues!
Run-DMSteve 