After a string of
fabulous studio albums
in the new century
which included a mighty
ten year gap between
Reality and his penultimate
studio album, The Next Day,
David Bowie announces
a new record called Blackstar.
I bought that record
on release day, a Friday,
listened to it straight
through three or four times
that weekend, and then
Monday morning the news
of his death was everywhere.
This is how I remember it,
anyway. I was grieved more-so for
Bowie’s death than for any
other rock star, and yet
having listened to that
album over and over that
weekend, I probably knew
it was coming, or should have.
More than anything,
Blackstar is a kind of deathbed
proclamation. He knew it
was imminent. Must have known
almost precisely how long
he would live. And it must
have been his dying wish or
goal to write and release
this new, dark, weird, beautiful
record on the day, or close
to the day, of his actual death.
I get the chills listening
to this record now, that opening,
nearly ten minute title track,
represented only by the symbol,
not the word, music for a funeral
mass, a requiem. Throughout,
I struggle to keep it together.
The music is intense, more
progressive; clearly, these are
jazz cats playing rock music.
Bowie’s singing all over
this record, haunted, strange,
exquisitely so. Surprisingly,
for a man who had to be at the
time of the recording very ill,
his voice is in top form all the way
through these epic songs seven.
“Look up here,” he sings, “I’m in Heaven.”
I’m convinced that if there was one,
he’d be there. What a send-off.
Bowie was a musician absolutely
committed to his art up to the very last.
Notes on the vinyl edition: Blackstar, ISO Records, 2015, original pressing on 180 gram black vinyl.
And: Here I am at the end of my Bowie collection on vinyl in this endeavor of listening to all of my records in alphabetical order and writing a poem-like-thing about each artist. So far, each artist has gotten ONE poem-like-thing while I wrote six for David Bowie. I expect that he will be the only artist for whom I commit that many words. If I had to make a guess who else might inspire more than one poem-like-thing, first because of their impact on me personally, second because of owning their entire catalogue on vinyl, it would be King Crimson and XTC. That is, if I can sustain this somewhat nutty endeavor that long. What, it took me two months to get through the B’s–and I’m not quite done!
michael jarmer 