Head Space Daily Words...

My working week was a full on frenzy which ended abruptly on Friday at 5.45PM, at which point I moved into a different mode of existence. On Saturday morning I was in football manager mode, coaching my U11s team at the local park. In the afternoon I was on dad mode, taking my eldest son and a group of his friends to a 5 a side football pitch in Crossharbour, to celebrate his fourteenth birthday. Whilst they played I went to the pub to plot my line up for Sundays game. After pizza and cake back home and following a rousing rendition of happy birthday, I moved into music lover mode for Saturday evening. I was going to the Roundhouse in Camden to see Matthew E White officially end his Fresh Blood tour. It really was a fantastic gig, with guest appearances aplenty. Natalie Prass duetted on Why Don't You Believe In Me, Rebecca Taylor from Slow Club put in an appearance and Deep Throat Choir accompanied White on three tracks. It was uplifting stuff. At the end of the gig I bought a vinyl copy of Fresh Blood (having only had it on MP3 previously) and entered starstruck fan boy mode as Matthew E White signed my album. This morning was an early start with a 40 minute car journey for a 10.30 kick off in Dartford. I was back in manager mode and when our opponents arrived with too few players to be able to play the game, meaning our journey had been wasted, I could easily have gone into angry man mode. It's nothing a listen to the Fresh Blood album won't sort out and I will reset the dial back to working mode on Monday morning...

Head Space Daily Image...

This is a shot from the Matthew E White gig. The guy nearest to us was using sign language to sign every song for any deaf people in the audience. I have never seen this at a gig before and it is a fantastic idea. Why shouldn't deaf people be able to enjoy music?

Head Space Daily Tune...

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Head Space Daily Words...

It is almost two weeks since the passing of David Bowie and on my journeys to and from work I have been pouring Bowie’s music into my ears and absorbing it like never before. The albums I own are Hunky Dory, The Rise And Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, Diamond Dogs and Young Americans as well as a Singles Collection. During the week of his death, 6Music became a Bowie shrine – and rightly so. When a person so musically and culturally significant is gone, they have to be celebrated and remembered.

When Space Oddity was released in 1969, I was not on this planet. Hunky Dory was two years old and Ziggy Stardust had been released then superseded by Aladdin Sane in 1973, the year I was born. I can’t claim to have been there at the time, moved by what I heard or awestruck by the persona presented. Instead, Bowie has been a presence that I have always been aware of from a young age. He must have seemed quite a strange, and almost dangerous character when I was too young to appreciate who he was.  Familiar with images of Bowie and his bright orange hair, tight fitting patterned outfits and lightning bolt makeup, being referred to as Ziggy Stardust and the Thin White Duke, it must have all been very confusing.

In 1983, one of my clearest memories was when he was momentarily 'Motown cover Bowie', dancing in a long raincoat with Mick Jagger in the Dancing In The Street video. The only Bowie record I bought as a kid was the 7” of Lets Dance, which was released in 1983 and ten years later, when I was exclusively into dance music I bought the 12” of Jump They Say, for the Leftfield remix.

Bowie was a presence. You knew his music and could sing along to the choruses of all the hits. It permeated your psyche without you even knowing it. The albums I mentioned at the start of these words are fantastic pieces of work and along with the Berlin three of Low, Heroes and Lodger, were all released in the 1970s. They were all there to be discovered and devoured. In the 1980s and 1990s, I was following my own musical trajectory and discovering my own sound, largely dance and soul based music, which is why the first Bowie album to catch my interest was Young Americans when he was in his coked out soul boy phase. Ziggy Stardust and Hunky Dory soon followed and both are stone cold classics. The albums all stand alone but are united by containing incredibly memorable songs which are simultaneously musically brilliant and sing along pop/rock anthems. Bowie’s image changed more than the music across these albums, although there was obvious musical development and progression. The point of Bowie was always to change and morph and re-present himself as something else.

I saw the David Bowie…Is exhibition at the V&A a couple of years ago and it was a vast collection of who he had been and what he had become. The items were more than mere memorabilia but were artefacts presenting a life developed through music, art and culture.

Without an artist like Bowie putting our feelings into words, telling his stories and developing his artistic personality in front of our very eyes, modern music art and culture cannot move forward, or does so at a far slower and less flamboyant pace. A force like his is needed to give people the confidence and belief to positively express themselves, whoever they are, wherever they may be and whatever their background. Which begs the question, where is the next Bowie? Such artists will be harder to come by on the commercial conveyor belt as not much is allowed to be spontaneous anymore. Talent is bred in the petri dish of the Brit School, stage school and TV talent shows. Nothing grows naturally.

When someone passes, you feel a sense of guilt and my only wish is that I had listened to David Bowie’s music more often and had a wider knowledge of his work. Judging by the fact that he is number one in the current album chart, with nine of his other albums in the Top 40, many other people have had the same thought. Once the vinyl copies of Black Star have been replenished in London’s record shops, I shall become a proud owner. 2016 will be the year of David Bowie...

Head Space Daily Tune...

David Bowie - Fill Your Heart

Starting out all Motownesque, this is one of my favourite and perhaps lesser known tracks from Hunky Dory, which becomes a joyful romp of Bowie happiness...  

David Bowie - Soul Love

Another lesser played track, this time off the Ziggy Stardust album. The strange vulnerability and sadness of Bowie's voice really comes through...

David Bowie - Right

Bowie is at his most slick and soulful on Right which has great vocal and musical arrangement. Superb...

Head Space Daily Image...

The shop window of Sister Ray Records on Berwick Street...

A photo I took at the David Bowie...Is exhibition at the V&A in June 2013...