Bowie fan art #6 at Brooklyn Museum

“The paintings are all your own”

You're most likely getting the hang of this by now, but to recap for those that haven't been following...

David Bowie collected all of the fan art he was sent over the years and now the Brooklyn Museum has fulfilled his desire that one day they should be exhibited.

We’re posting a piece online every Friday with the hashtag #DavidBowieArt. The aim is to eventually create an online gallery dedicated to Bowie inspired art.

Unfortunately, the creators of the majority of the works collected are unknown, but it would be a great help if anybody reading this has more information, be it the artists themselves or somebody who knows them.

You can enjoy all of the pieces on display at the exhibition until July 15th. Tickets and details of other Bowie-related events at the Brooklyn Museum here.

#DavidBowieIs  #DavidBowieIsBKM  #DavidBowieArt  #BowieFanFriday

Black Tie White Noise album is 25 today

“Putting on the black tie, cranking out the white noise”

David Bowie’s 22nd studio album, Black Tie White Noise (BTWN), was released this day in 1993 in the UK. (April 6th in the US)

The LP not only reunited Bowie with producer Nile Rodgers but also with the #1 album spot in the UK, which had evaded him for the release of a studio album since 1984’s Tonight. It was a feat not repeated till The Next Day (TND) in 2013, though the five studio albums in the intervening 20 years between BTWN and TND were all top 10, mostly top 5.

If you’ve not listened for a while, it really is worth revisiting the album. Aside from a clutch of great singles: Black Tie White Noise (Featuring Al B. Sure!), Jump They Say and Miracle Goodnight, the album also featured the Scott Walkeresque You’ve Been Around, Nite Flights (a Scott Walker original) and the charming Don’t Let Me Down & Down.

BTWN also reunited Bowie with Mick Ronson for a track they hadn’t played together for over 20 years, Cream’s I Feel Free. Sadly, Mick passed soon after the album’s release.

Bowie wrote The Wedding for his and Iman's 1992 wedding ceremony. He later added lyrics to this instrumental for The Wedding Song. These pieces were the trigger for making the album and they opened and closed it.

The version we’re pointing to on Spotify doesn’t include Lucy Can’t Dance, which some might consider a bonus. ;-)

#BowieBTWN

Duncan recommends Bowie Book Club book #4

“And I ain’t got no money”

Following last month’s recommendation (Spike Milligan’s Puckoon), Duncan Jones has posted his fourth selection for the Bowie Book Club on Twitter. It’s George Orwell’s 1933 memoir, Down and Out in Paris and London. After yesterday’s curve ball (it was April 1st), here’s what Duncan really tweeted a couple of days ago:

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Duncan Jones @ManMadeMoon March 31st

Its going to be a busy month in the Jones household what with the new baby incoming! Will be a shorter read, & NOT one from dads 100 list.

It will instead be one he had me read & Ive wanted to go back to for a while... George Orwell's - Down & Out in Paris & London.

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Here’s the synopsis:

'You have talked so often of going to the dogs - and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them.' George Orwell's vivid memoir of his time among the desperately poor and destitute in London and Paris is a moving tour of the underworld of society. Here he painstakingly documents a world of unrelenting drudgery and squalor - sleeping in bug-infested hostels and doss houses, working as a dishwasher in the vile 'Hotel X', living alongside tramps, surviving on scraps and cigarette butts - in an unforgettable account of what being down and out is really like.

As Duncan mentioned, Down and Out in Paris and London is NOT from DAVID BOWIE'S TOP 100 BOOKS list, though 1984 plus Inside The Whale And Other Essays, both by George Orwell, are in the list.

If you don’t do Twitter (where you can respond to Duncan directly), feel free to leave your thoughts about this book in the comments section.

#BowieBookClub  #ReadingIsBrainFood