Drunk Bowie Sings Heroes
Surely I shouldn’t be watching this right now, since David Bowie is a PRS registered UK artist and YouTube and PRS are in dispute and all the music is blocked. Not this though, thanks to @lagowski for the steer. Mind you, Bowie has advocated and pioneered the use of music on the internet, and like Prince, and a select band of enlightened “old style” artists has seen the value of digital music sharing: an essential route to new fans, along with radio, tv and playing live. If they have never heard you, they can’t like you. For artists with something to say, it’s also a direct channel to the people they love the most – their fans. Do not underestimate the power of disintermediated uncensored mass communication.
This is a pretty rousing live version of the classic Bowie song, his rock anthem par excellence, but you can hear the march of a thousand gigs in the performance. Bowie uses his mature voice in a unique way though, what energy. I’m a big fan of Bowie’s “trilogy” songwriting period: Low, Heroes, and Lodger.
The first single I ever bought (aged ten) was Space Oddity.
/end fandom.
