Bowie Zowie

One day late, Happy Birthday to Bowie. Here’s 60 semi-interesting things about rockdom’s latest sexagenarian.

Better yet, a few videos. This clip of Queen Bitch begins with a removal of the makeup and the persona of a ‘bizarre, self-constructed freak’, revealing a pretty damned fine stripped-down live performance:

But Bowie wouldn’t have been Bowie without the sheer shaved eyebrow weirdness on display in Life on Mars:

But we can’t limit ourselves to the hot, we just gotta add the stinky — though Bowie comes across as the essence of cool compared to his dance partner…

One is tempted to call this track the death of rock — except that it comes more than a decade before the Satanic virgin birth of Nickleback.

Tags: david bowie, video

R.E.M., Van Halen Lead 2007 Rock Hall Class

Billboard magazine, and every other news site on the web, has announced this year’s inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:

R.E.M., Van Halen, Patti Smith, the Ronettes and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame March 12 during a ceremony at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. To be eligible for induction, this year’s class had to release their first single no later than 1981.

Congrats go out to Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, who must be one of the earliest selections to the hall from the world of hip hop. To celebrate, let’s enjoy the Grandmaster Flash classic White Lines:

The Velvet Underground Acetate — $25,000 or $0.00?

 

Some sucker paid $25,000 on eBay for that rare acetate of the Velvet Underground’s lost Scepter studio sessions (picked up on a New York Chelsea Street by Warren Hill for 75 cents). Now, by the miracle of internet piracy, you can download copies of the tracks for free, courtesy of WFMU’s Beware of the Blog:

Here are the Mp3s, in the running order of the acetate (which differs from the order of the actual VU and Nico release). You can hear the marked difference in tracks like “European Son”, and while some of these same takes wound up utilized for the Warhol LP, these are rougher mixes.

Originally posted on FM Shades, home to plenty more booty for you IP pirates with a taste for underground tunage.