Us Lads Insane

On David Bowie: a Big Bro to me and I'm sure to many!

Was my first exposure to him in the Penn. University
daily paper review of MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD?
I was a freshman or sophomore psychology major
and it opened: "Schizophrenia is 'in' this year..."
which piqued my interest especially, my brother
having been recently so-diagnosed as he nosedived
from exclusive law school 
[Scalia's alma mater + where Bill met Hillary] studies to mental wards and the company of ghosts and invisible ill-advisors...

So I think I bought that album then, but 'Hunky Dory's
appearance and sound had me getting hooked
and by 'Ziggy' was 1/2 ready to get some glitter,
platforms and tights and wave 'Bowie rules'
banners in the streets... thankfully my girlfriend
also could dig the musicality of the guy, was
majoring in Organ [not just mine]. By the time I 
was hunting down the only-one-in Denver
[I'd transferred to U of Colo.]
copy of 'All the young dudes' 45 and playing that upon
waking all week, she might have started wondering:
'Is this guy goin' fag on me??'

So the DB albums of that next era were: Aladdin Sane, Pinups,
Diamond Dogs, David Live, Young Americans [from memory]
-not a bad string; I had in this era begun seriously learning & performing originals & covers of out-there folk-rock songs accompanied on my trusty 0018 Martin. The Bowie song I did was "5 Years" --a campfire crowd-jerking tear-pleaser if we do recall myself... and also writing reviews of albums & concerts for a couple college papers and a Boulder Arts magazine. My biggest passions of this era was Bowie though along with Roxy-Eno and many of those Island artists so nutty-great...separating me taste-wise from most conservative Coloradans, and beckoning me back to NYC after a visit there when I met Talking Heads in '75 at CBGB...
[By the way the summer before leaving I had attended the 2nd Telluride film festival --I worked at the trendy Denver theater owned by the hosts of the Fest.-- where Buck Henry was in attendance, and who'd just shot the MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH flick starring now scary-skeletal Bowie, directed of course by my main man Nic Roeg... I asked Buck what the movie was like and he said "Weird!" I also met/lent a hand [later tattooed] to Kenneth Anger the undergound filmmaker-magician that weekend, and I tried to sell Jack Nicholson some dope and tried --you gotta, after all-- to offer Milos Forman's date Aurore Clement some of Gerald Ford's valium for her toothache... didn't we tell that tale before? -yes on old website]

So living on east 7th Street a few blocks from CB's and the Heads' loft just below Houston was grooviness and cheap then although I was holding a job at movie advertizing agency for a year or 2...during which I was able to attend the agency screening of MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH which was kind of a not-hot property, being so weird, but our client Cinema 5 eventually did release it. I'd say my mission-ready enthusiastic review after the screening to a couple account executives [most the audience was looking round, scratching their heads; here was this wild-eyed/-haired bohemian from the Traffic Dept. clapping, raving "Masterpiece!, Bowie's a-MAzing!"] had a certain % manifesting effect there in the scrolls of realities-possible... Plus the cover art for 2 of Bowie's greatest albums 'Low' & 'Station' were both done in our ad agency's Art Dept., by nameless dudes just doing their job whom I saw & joked with daily...

The next album to enter our lives then in '76/7 was LOW!!!   yeah baby---E-fuckin-NO! and Bowie together!! Forgive the shameless 'rainy day feelin again' rip, it was a gas
--that album was what our newformed band COME ON seemingly had on oftenest during rehearsal breaks at PW's loft. He & I were the only real musicians, the other 3 pretty amateurish in a new wave no wave way prevalent-possible-fashionable then...we were pals with & impressed by the example of the Heads.

Me & PW went to Mad Sq Garden for one of the soldout Bowie shows
--hey wait this story is told in full here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20071008200524/http://www.heliocd.com/nys06.html

Meanwhile on the first day COME ON had gelled into
a session recording songs w/ band --coincidentally,
my brother had died in a fall from a riverside
mental hospital high window or roof in Maryland,
perhaps tripping-trying to fly, perhaps a victim of foul play
[& not fowl-play haha], perhaps snuffing a demon that had
possessed him...
[from DB's bio:]
"Bowie's half-brother Terry Burns* was in the hospital called
Cane Hill near London. He attempted to kill himself by
jumping out of one of the hospital ward windows,
but he survived [Cane Hill had some wards that
were three stories high], some time after this failed
attempt he was successful in managing to escape
from the grounds of the hospital and arrive down at
South Coulsdon station, where he threw himself in
front of a train." http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=9385

-Weird! we both are nutty-brotherless... but as many
here gather I am to this day drawn to-intrigued by
the reaches and boundaries of madness & creativity.

...So Bowie famously befriended and featured Nomi and
mutual pal Joey Arias on his Saturday Night Live appearance [1979] http://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/tv/fred-armisen-pays-tribute-david-bowie-saturday-night-live-n498131
-fine with me because I was working
with Nomi as songwriter, and the connec. was
bigtime action likely to benefit all concerned!
Our drummer PW was also Nomi's manager a while
and accompanied the German to a rehearsal for SNL
---Bowie's drummer was sick/absent, so the thin
duke turned to PW and said: [having seen our band
at CB's] "YOU'RE a drummer, how about sitting in?"
which he did and has a cassette of the songs
from that day [TVC15, Boys Keep Swinging, etc]
to prove it...

Now the tragedy of Nomi's early death from the
AIDS is well known, and threw us all for a loop
and made DB seem prescient for [it seemed callously]
abandoning Nomi after their tv slot, never to
work with him again before his death. [rip]
The Nomi Show, friends and mimes however
evolved into a band called STRANGE PARTY,
with me as musical director and PW on vocals
now & percussion & art direction. After a gig or
2 we met Steve Elson, a California Funk master
sax and flute etc player who became a valuable
SParty member....until his being borrowed by...
you guessed it! -that
heft-challenged white count or baron or whatever he was!!
Yes, Bowie saw us [SP] at Danceteria and soon
had enlisted Steve as his horn man [+ bari sax
of the Borneo Horns w/ Lenny & Stan] on
Let's Dance and Serious Moonlight album-tour.
Steve and Dave became friends, housemating in Canada as I recall just the 2 hornmen together rehearsing-recording
in 'Serious' era... and he was featured many years
later on THE NEXT DAY on his great big cool bari sax.

I'll be writing him this week to see how
prepared he was re 'the sad news today oboy'...

So, David my [adoptive...musical] brother,
thanks for your example and inspiration and
good taste in whom you borrow from, creatively and forgivably,
having given so much... natch! 'nuff said

[[almost]]

my favest DB:
Ziggy
Hunky
Low
STATION
DDogs
Aladdin
Baal, Brecht songs!
.......discovered AD: the masterpiece 'Slip Away'

Least: 
[chalk up to the negative "side effects of the cocaine"?]
Lets Dance
Tonight
Scary
Lodger--Can a whole album be spoiled by 1 touch? 
--'the hinterland the hinterland...', anyone?
the later ones
but NEXT DAY = pretty good

....
PS:
Almost forgot this funny east village tidbit:
must have been '84 or '85--
I lived in a building where on the first floor
was a long minimal bar [REDBAR] that
became pretty trendy-successful as an
art space/architectural
statement as much as tavern, designed by
the bassist of Come On's German friend, and
i ended up opening and stocking it from 4-6 daily.
One Sun. night I let the next tender a
young German woman take over; I go up
to the top floor where I lived and twiddle my thumbs while down in the bar
at 615 she looks up to see a famous customer enter 
the empty room---
that Duke, neither fat nor black! He'd heard of the place all the
way back in Berlin where he'd been hanging
that decade...but chose to pop in minutes
after my shift where i'd have gladly supplied
him a Becks --sur la maison-- and said,
'remember COME ON, young fella?, do you KNOW ME?
Seen Steve lately?' or played it low-key-cool more likely.


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*  coincidentally my [only] bro-in-law's name is ....Burns