A Christmas Gift from Muddles to You #dailymuddles
David
It’s 1995. I’m 6 years old and I’ve recently learned how to work the cd player. I’d spend whole days putting on cd’s I liked and just staring at the machine as it played. Early favourites were Guns ‘N Roses’ Use Your Illusion 1, and the B-52’s single for the Flinstones movie.
Yeah.
But then I got to Dad’s copy of David Bowie’s Greatest Hits. And I’m amazed. Who on earth was this gangly weirdo with those eyes? I was in rural Northern Ireland, 6 miles from the nearest town, but not when I listened to him. I was transported. Putting Heroes on on a loop until it drove everyone else crazy was what made me a music obsessant. It gave me goosebumos then, and it still does now.
10 years later and I’m a goth weirdo with terrible hair. Marilyn Manson, Nine Inch Nails and the Smashing Pumpkins were my new church. I’d have a portable CD player in my blazer pocket and my school bag contained at least 10 albums at any time. And it turns out they all love him. All those other goth weirdos I listened to all day owed it all to him. He’s still there, quietly influencing everything I loved.
Jump forward eight years and I’m getting up late after a long night working in a bar. I check my phone and he’s back. Without any fanfare, he’s released a new single, with an album arriving shortly after. My girlfriend at the time is late for class as we had to watch the video 3 times.
A few days later I write my first ever comic script. And Where Are We Now is playing on a loop.
A few months later we break up and I’m gutted I lose my copy of Heroes on vinyl when we divide our stuff.
3 years later and I’m sending my obligatory picture of me with the Aladdin Sane bolt to my friend Robin. For a few years we’d been celebrating Bowie’s birthday as ‘Bowiemas’. The day after his birthday is a particularly horrible anniversary, so celebrating someone so life affirming before takes the sting out a little. We make loose plans to get a tattoo on his 70th.
3 days later and I wake up late from a long night working in a bar. I check my phone and he’s gone. I have texts, whatsapps, Facebook messages asking if I’d heard the news, and if I was okay. I refuse to believe it. I check the news. Still can’t work it out. I turn on 6 Music and start making some coffee. Lauren Laverne plays Letter for Hermione and before I know it I can’t stop crying.
I play Bowie all night in work and customers sing along and talk about how he affected their lives. One lady hugs me so hard I worry my head might come off.
In the taxi home from work, my taxi driver Tahir admits that when his wife and kids left the house this morning, he cried his eyes out. we hug and go our separate ways.
Thank you David. For bringing us all together. For getting us through the bad times. For making it okay to be a goth weirdo and a thousand other things. Thank you for Heroes. Thank you for being so powerful you turned death into art. Thank you for everything.
‘To Pimp a Butterfly Medley’ by Kendrick Lamar
Little bit obsessed with this performance. Incredibly precise
‘Brought to the Water’ by Deafheaven
Sunbather is one of my favourite metal albums of the last decade, and they seem to be evolving into something special.
(And that Sixpence None the Richer-style guitar line towards the end is just wonderful)
@Radkey put on one of the best sets I saw all weekend. Which is really saying something
I had unreasonably high expectations for what Refused would be like live. But my god they were perfect.
‘Darkest Ocean’ by All Tvvins
Doing a lot of dancing to this at the moment
Was lucky enough to get to see the Dali exhibition in Montmartre. Unbelievably good