Through the Cracks in the Past

And I'm gone

Now I'm older than movies

And I know who's there

When silhouettes fall

And I'm gone

Like I'm dancing on angels

And I'm gone

Through the cracks in the past

Like a dead man walking

-David Bowie, Dead Man Walking

I was surprised by the depth of loss I felt when I learned David Bowie died, and it has taken me some time to unpack why.

What is it that we mourn when a pop culture icon dies?

There's the loss of the art they would have made had they gone on living. There's sympathy for the family they left behind, especially if there were young children. There's the manner of the death itself: accident, suicide, cancer. Any combination of these factors is reason enough to mourn, but none quite explain why we feel deep sadness in losing someone we didn't know. I believe that the degree of our mourning is in direct relation to how many fond memories we have of that icon's work. That's why it feels personal.

I also tend to more fully appreciate something when it's clearly over. And lest that statement seem like a rewording of "you don't know what you got 'til it's gone," let me clarify: I can appreciate a story while it's ongoing, but that appreciation is deepened by knowing the end. Much in the way a book or movie can only truly be judged on the second time through when you know where it's all leading. You can place everything in context and appreciate the way it all fits together.

Bowie's death was an especially poignant example of this, given that he passed only two days after releasing a new album on his 69th birthday, after battling cancer for over a year. The fact that he knew Blackstar could be his last album and was able to use the songs (and the videos for the title track and Lazarus) to comment upon his impending mortal leave, well that's just a fantastic ending to a creative life.

But as to the personal connection, I suppose my surprise comes in that I'd never before reflected upon how deeply Bowie and his music had infiltrated my pop culture experiences. I came to Bowie fandom late; I have no childhood memories of him I can call upon. I didn't even see Labyrinth when it came out, which is exceedingly strange considering its combination of music, Muppets, and fantasy was exactly in my 10-year-old wheelhouse. It wasn't until college, during my self-guided tour through pop music history, that I started listening to his music.

I've written before about the sequence of events that led me to my first Bowie album, 1987's Never Let Me Down. I loved that record, and so from there bought the Singles 1969-1993 collection on CD at the local Disc-Go-Round. I listened almost exclusively to the second disc, which starts with "Heroes" and runs through his poppy '80s work. At first the older stuff seemed creaky and odd to me, but then I got my hands on 1972's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars and my mind was blown. It's a fantastic record, and the "To be read at maximum volume" instruction at the top of this blog is a homage to it (the back cover reads "To be played at maximum volume").

In the lead up to 1997's Earthling, Bowie appeared on Saturday Night Live. That night I had dinner with my dad, step-mom, and a couple of their friends, Ron and Tom. Ron brought up Bowie's SNL appearance, and I said that I'd read the new album was all electronic and a big change in direction. Ron said, "I'll listen to him no matter what he does." That comment stuck with me probably because it was the first time I saw an adult display obsessive fandom. I bought Earthling partially on the strength of that endorsement, and played it quite a bit. In fact, the live acoustic version of that album's Dead Man Walking is one of my all-time favorite songs.


I bought every new Bowie album from then on and enjoyed them to varying degrees, but when The Next Day arrived in 2013, nothing from it caught my ear immediately. So I was on the fence about Blackstar until I saw the video for the title track. I knew immediately that this was something special; the mysterious, creepy visuals accompanying a mysterious song with wild musical mood swings; this was something I could get into. Musically it seemed almost like a revue of some of Bowie's most memorable styles: the electronic, the balladry, the soul, all wrapped up in a new avant-garde jazz setting.

Of course, now the style shifts and lyrics makes sense; it was Bowie's way of looking back while still moving forward. I really think the shock I felt at his death was at least halfway indebted to my strong reaction to hearing that song and seeing that video just a few days before.

The fact that this final revelation came in the form of film should be no surprise. Bowie was one of the first pop stars to recognize the importance of visual presentation (which is why his song Sound and Vision is the most perfect summation of him as an artist). And as such I find that the strongest Bowie memories and associations I have are related to movies or videos.

One rainy Saturday in 2002 I went record shopping in Uptown and purchased the DVD compilation that accompanied the Best of Bowie album that had just been released. I settled in and watched it all the way through that gloomy afternoon and, for whatever reason, that experience stays in my mind as a perfect moment in time. To try explain why that is would be to ruin it, but it's probably safe to say the music was a big part of it. And then of course there's Labryinth, and its unforgettable soundtrack, and there's the Changes quote at the beginning of The Breakfast Club, and there's Seu Jorge's renditions of Bowie songs that populate Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic (as well as the iconic final scene scored by Queen Bitch). There're nonmusical ones that stick with me too, mainly Bowie's brief cameo as an FBI agent in Fire Walk With Me (the Twin Peaks movie) and his turn as Nikola Tesla in The Prestige.

And that's the bright spot in dealing with the death of an artist you admired but didn't know. Their work and the connections you've made to it are always accessible. Bowie, because of the pervasiveness and range and sheer quality of his creative output, has left us countless cracks in the past through which we can revisit him.

Bowie lives.

Every Sha-la-la, Every Woah-woah-oh

The other day, PBS aired a remastered version of the documentary Close to You: Remembering the Carpenters, which originally debuted on public television in 1997. I was excited to rewatch it, for multiple reasons.

I will forever have an appreciation for the Carpenters because they were part of the soundtrack of my childhood. My mom was a devotee of the well-constructed pop of the '70s, and so Richard and Karen played often alongside Elton John, Billy Joel, James Taylor, and Neil Diamond. And I vividly remember watching the 1989 TV movie The Karen Carpenter Story. It was my first exposure to the idea of anorexia, and my 12-year-old mind was blown by the idea of someone looking in the mirror and not seeing reality.

I bought Close to You on VHS at a thrift store or garage sale at some point in the early 2000s. One Sunday afternoon my friends Tiger and Christa came over after we'd gone out to lunch. Tiger spotted the tape on the shelf and said, "Let's watch that." I put it in, believing we'd last about 15 minutes before moving on to something else or they both decided to go home. Instead, we all became engrossed and watched it to the end.

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. It's a compelling story well-told. On the surface the Carpenters and their music are easy to dismiss because they are aggressively not cool. But the documentary reveals the musical sophistication behind the group's easy-to-digest pop songs. And of course Karen's profound unhappiness and tragic fate add an undercurrent of darkness and poignancy to so many of her performances. That, along with lots of archival footage and plenty of screen time for an oddly magnetic Richard Carpenter, make for a remarkable watching experience.

Rock Solid: Rush

"If you only own one album by Rush it's gotta be ____________________."

Welcome to Rock Solid, where we fill in the blank. Our goal is to pseudo-scientifically determine the best, the beloved, the most classic album in an artist's catalog.

Here's how it works: I've consulted two main sources. The AllMusic Guide provides the professional critical point-of-view and Amazon.com offers the fan perspective (because most people who choose to review albums on Amazon are adoring fans of the artist in question). The album with the highest combined rating from both sources is the one I'll consider the best.

An artist's entire body of work is eligible, with two exceptions: No compilations (i.e. greatest hits) or live albums. In each case, I'll also share my personal favorite album by the artist in question, as if you care.

* * *

The wonderful and terrible thing about this Rock Solid method is way it subverts expectations.

If you had asked me before I looked at the numbers, I would have predicted the battle for Rush's best album would be between 1976's 2112 and 1981's Moving Pictures. I was close; those two were in the top three. I didn't predict the dark horse from 1980, Permanent Waves. It actually tied Moving Pictures for the highest combined rating and then won the tiebreaker, garnering a higher percentage of 5 star ratings from Amazon.com reviewers.

Since it was so close, this is a case where the reasoning takes on a special importance. Unfortunately Greg Prato's AllMusic review is more informational than evaluative. He says that Permanent Waves found Rush incorporating new wave elements while keeping their "hard rock roots intact," and points out that this got them their biggest hits to that point, Freewill and The Spirit of Radio. His only judgement comes in the final line: "Permanent Waves is an undisputed hard rock classic, but Rush would outdo themselves with their next release." Which, of course, was Moving Pictures.

So Prato makes no compelling case for Permanent Waves. In fact, he does the opposite. But what about the Amazon reviewers?

Indigo Larson feels that, in the unrealistic theoretical situation of a person being allowed to purchase only one album per artist, Permanent Waves should be your Rush selection. Samhot says it's a great introduction to the band: "This would be a perfect place to start for anyone interested in Rush. Features a nice balance of complex musicianship and accessibility that's hard to beat." Similarly, Bill R. Moore writes that Permanent Waves has "the best of both worlds" in terms of bridging early and later Rush.

This is a good start but then something starts to happen in the subsequent reviews, an avalanche of comparisons to Moving Pictures. You know the advertising adage that only the (perceived) inferior product has to mention its rival? Well that seems to be the case here. It would be okay if reviewers brought up the comparison to genuinely argue for Permanent Waves' superiority, but instead we get the following:

• musicfan585: "Although I still believe Moving Pictures is the band's greatest album (and the best album ever made), Permanent Waves comes awfully close." [Yes, but what do musicfans 1 through 584 think?]
• Huge Viking: "This is a great album for any Rush fan together with Moving Pictures I consider both as my personal favorites. These two albums alone could have easily been one album"
• Tom Benton: "With Permanent Waves , Rush burst into the experimental '80s, showcasing a new sound and attracting more attention than ever before. It seems impossible that the band would reach higher heights than this - yet on their subsequent release, Moving Pictures, Rush did just that."
• Andrew G. Fisher: "Permanent Waves is a preview to Moving Pictures."

Then we come to K. Parsons, who starts out definitively touting Permanent Waves as the best Rush album, and then

Natural Science is the second-to-last great Rush opus (along with The Camera Eye), and "Spirit of Radio" is just as wonderful a radio oriented song as Tom Sawyer....Oh, yeah, I nearly forgot - Rush doesn't get any more "Rush" than on Freewill - the fantastic solos, Randian lyrics, explosive drumming and again, Alex just soaring... reminds me of Red Barchetta a bit. Hmmm. Looks like I'll have to take TWO Rush CD's - this one and Moving Pictures after all. They really are quite inseparable."

If you lost the thread, Parsons compared a bunch of Permanent Waves songs to Moving Pictures songs and then realized how much he or she loves the latter record.

Obviously none of this convinced me that Permanent Waves deserves to be considered the best Rush release, though as always I bow to my methodology. And it is a great album, with the atheist mission statement of Freewill, the optimistic pessimism of The Spirit of Radio, the confessionally affecting Entre Nous, and the instrumental thrills of Natural Science. Wait, did I just talk myself into declaring it my favorite Rush record? No. Moving Pictures still gets the nod, with Roll the Bones (seriously) not far behind.