Poop Shute

Bowie Appreciation Day

The most recent issue of Rolling Stone Magazine featured a cover story: The Immortals: The Fifty Greatest Rock Artists of all time. The cover featured many of the most obvious (and most deserving) faces. You've got Elvis and The Beatles, and Bob Dylan, and Jimi Hendrix, etc.

Many media sources have jumped on this band-wagon of late. Every magazine and pop culture TV channel feels the need to come up with long lists rating who were THE this or that. It's all subjective anyway, so I say piss off to all these people.

BUT this list actually caught and kept my attention. It was done in a different way. First of all they weren't ranked in any kind of order, really. Secondly, they had each entry accompanied by a short essay by some other artist that they may have influenced in some profound way. Example: Jerry Lee Lewis's entry was written by Moby.

Some of these were very cool.

The one that caught my attention the most, was the entry about David Bowie.

Lou Reed wrote the piece, and he said something that backed up what I've been saying for years about Mr Bowie.

"He's always changing, so you never get tired of what he's doing. And I mean all the way up to now."

I am a huge David Bowie fan. My love for Bowie started with my first exposure to him as a young lad of six. Labyrinth was, and still is, one of my all time favorite movies. Allthough, I think he was in desperate need of some testicular support in that costume.

Shudder.

Anyway, when I hear people say things like "I don't like Classical music." it seems like a silly thing to say. To this person I would say you haven't found the composer or the era for you yet. There is so much diversity within classical music that precious few people could make a qualified statement about ALL of it... if anybody, for that matter.

To me, saying "I don't like David Bowie's music" is just as silly. His career spans about forty years and twenty-eight albums. No artist could survive as long as he did without growing and changing.

I would challenge any fan of any western music style to listen to his entire catalogue and tell me there was not one song they enjoyed. I mean he has moved through every major era of rock and he took what he liked from each and moved on without ever looking back. You could never accuse him of repeating himself, or selling out. He was always doing new work, and always doing it his way.

Are you a Beatles fan? Listen to The Deram Anthology.

You into the seventies guitar-heavy early glam-rock hair band sound? Check out the Ziggy Stardust stuff.

Do you like the industrial sounds of Orgy, Rammstein, Nine Inch Nails, Gravity Kills etc? Try listening to Earthling.

In fact, anyone reading this who still thinks they don't like Bowie, click here. If you don't mind RealAudio format you can download just about anythng and everything the man ever recorded for free. Go there, listen to everything and if you come out the other end STILL not liking ANY of it... well, then at least you have an educated opinion. I can't fault you for that.

If you are unwilling or unable to take this step that's fine and good too, but I ask that you change you're phrasing and instead of saying "I don't like Bowie" say "I'm not that familiar with Bowie."

Please. Think of the children.