DAVID BOWIE by Phil Seahorn philseahorn@gmail.com
January 13, 2016 I DISTINCTLY REMEMBER THE DAY I FIRST LEARNED WHO THE FUCK DAVID BOWIE WAS. THE POP STATIONS IN ST. LOUIS, BACK IN APARTHEID AMERICA, WERE PLAYING THIS SONG THAT WAS REALLY FUNKY BY THIS ENGLISH DUDE. TURNS OUT IT WOULD BE THE SAME CAT THAT WAS GOING TO BE ON "SOUL TRAIN." OKAY, NOW ON THIS DAY, IN THE PEABODY PROJECTS, I ALSO DISTINCTLY RECALL ME NOT BEING
THE ONLY PERSON WATCHING THIS PARTICULAR EPISODE OF “SOUL TRAIN." BECAUSE OF EXTREME LACK OF AFRICAN AMERICAN SHOWS ON TELEVISION DURING AMERICAN APARTHEID (YEARS IN AMERICA BEFORE 1980) , AND ANYWHERE ELSE FOR THAT ATTERNM BACK IN THE DAY, "SOUL TRAIN" COULD EASILY BOAST A GOOD 60-80% BLACK VIEWERSHIP. A LOT OF FOLKS IN THE PROJECTS HAD THIS CAT'S MUSIC IN A TIME IN APARTHEID AMERICA WHERE MUSIC WAS SO STRATISFIED BY RACE THAT , IN TODAY’S MUSIC CLIMATE IN 2016, WOULD SEM PEOPLE BACK IN APATHEIRD AMERICA WERE FUCKING CRAZY.
BUT IT'S WHEN I LEARNED TO PLAY AND SING "SPACE ODDITY" ON GUITAR, MY WHOLE FUCKING SOCIAL CIRCLE INSTANTLY CHANGED. There was this core group of brothers and sisters back in the day who really liked rock. Not Parliament, but Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd (the parties in the hood that my “Old G” and heroin addict stepdad and his friends would get high and listen to had "Comfortably Numb" playing so loud that people would scream, “Turn that hippie shit down!"). Gained big respect in the hood for the “Old G” rocking out like that, though. Whenever I would go to Chicago for the summer to the south Side and Cabrini Greens Projects (hated my step dad so much that I would want to spend the ENTIRE summer in, if not THE most dangerous projects, then in the top three in the country during Apartheid America, just to get away from his black ass), and at parties in the Projects up there, break out the guitar and play Bowie for my dope dealer uncles and cousins. I firmly believe that I survived those summers in Chicago in Cabrini Greens in the mid-seventies because they thought I was too entertaining to whack Then, I get into college at Meramec Community College in Kirkwood, Missouri, right at the end of Apartheid America, and do
"Bowie" at parties. THAT got me offerings to join punk bands, which I did. And out of all that, even got to date a gal from England, living in Manchester, Missouri (back then, Manchester made Clayton, Missouri seem like Afton, Missouri), so I got to hang out in gated communities. Not bad for a kid from the Projects in St. Louis. Even up to a few years ago, I would run into folks back in St, Louis who would bring up questions of me still playing the guitar. So yeah, I convinced myself that I would not be pandering if I wrote something on David
Bowie.
Bowie’s music has GREATLY impacted my life. Not just listening, but has ACTUALLY IMPACTED my life. So, I write this in tribute of Bowie and his music. So into to the man’s music, that by reading all the recent posts, I had to be REMINDED that Iman was his wife! David Bowie was a true artist. He would literally personify each change in music, and not in a way that was clichéd. He would go from "Ziggy Stardust' to suave “Plastic
Soul" to mid-eighties retro swing new jack, and his music would still be relevant. Okay, he has gotten a little weird toward the end there musically, but after 40 years, you just run out of ideas. There were very few white musicians back in Apartheid America that would even play funk and soul, let alone go commercial and
perform live sets. Back before there was an "Eminem", white American bands like THE
AVERAGE WHITE BAND and KC AND THE SUNSHINE BAND tackled what was ,unfortunately, then known as "nigger music" (soul and disco), and doing it in a way in which these cats made music that was, well, FUNKY. I tell people about how the music climate in America was growing up in Apartheid America. The most common response: “Were people THAT fucked up?” My reply: "Yeah." These cats, these white American musicians during Apartheid America would play all black venues. AND TEAR THE MOTHERFUCKING WALLS DOWN. Everybody knew what the “real deal” was when these white musicians showed up: “COME
WITH IT”.
I saw The Average White Band at the Kiel (my Croatian best friend, Mark Magas, his dad was part of the Kiel Auditorium crew, got to see a lot of bands back in the day) got us in to see these cats FROM BACK STAGE. One of these cats, the drummer, turned around, winked, and then proceeded for two hours to literally have about twelve or thirteen thousand people dancing. HARD.
I mean, shaking
the motherfucking floors.
It’s not that I had seen a white band get down like that in front of a bunch of black folks during Apartheid America. It’s how that I had not seen ANY band take all those motherfucking people in the palm of their hands, bend them around (well, DANCE them around for two plus hours. NOBODY REMAINED IN THEIR SEATS. It was right then and there, seeing that fucking shit with my own eyes and hearing the shit (THESE WHITE BOYS WERE MOTHERFUCKING PHENOMENAL!!!) that the truth about the power of music hit me:
Saw that shit with my own motherfucking eyes. And I'll NEVER forget how the drummer kept looking back at me all during the set with this look like: “WE BAD OR WHAT?" Had the EXACT same experience a few years ago when I went to see Billy Peek performing live during the Fourth of July in downtown St. Louis. I was the ONLY brother at the fucking show of about two thousand people. I was in the front row right there looking up at Peek.
And guess who him and the band seemed to direct the entire fucking set too? No joke. Every time Peek did a number, he’d walk over to me (and of course, the fucking spotlight followed) and there I was, looking like a fucking deer in the headlights, COMPLETELY blown away by this white man playing the Blues. After he finished the last song of the set "CAN
A WHITE
BOY PLAY THE BLUES?” (Billy came up in Apartheid America , under the tutelage of Chuck Berry. Peek, from St. Louis, Missouri during the early 1980’s, gained worldwide fame playing with the Rod Stewart band. Peek’s licks are heard on the Stewart hit “Hot
Legs”.
But Chuck Berry was beside himself with professional jealousy, and there was even a much publicized Rolling Stone article on that. Because of the article, Berry and Peek fell out. After Peek’s set, he walked over to me, I shook his hand, and when I told Mr. Peek that was one of the best performances of blues I had ever fucking scene (exact words), the look on his face was, well, “priceless.” Other white musicians, especially the ones making and producing music during American Apartheid, have now "given back" to artist of color. But it seems the British white artist are, and have always, been open about profiting on, well, "nigger
music."
But tit has been cats like Bowie who have not only “walked the
walk”, Bowie also “talked the talk" as well, embracing soul and funk. Bowie has made the "plastic soul" trademark of his interpretation of American funk and soul music LEGENDARY in creating music and dance phenomena, with songs such as "Fame"
"Let's Dance." OTHER white folks in the Peek audience where even making comments on me being at the set, especially when he went into "Can A White Boy Play the Blues". Such was the time in pre Apartheid America and the early eighties that would create a situation where Peek wanted, out of all those people at that set in downtown St. Louis over the Fourth of July weekend; Peek would seek out and want the validation from the one and ONLY black person attending one of his live sets. During Apartheid America, when I was growing up, the stratification of music was so insanely race based. In Apartheid America, when black folks policed even what type of music you has to listen to t keep you "blackness" cred, put on Bowie, even shit like “Ziggy
Stardust” and the “Spiders From
Mars”, and black folks would be like, "Yeah, the white dude on “Soul Train". Bowie broke barriers. His interracial marriage to Iman has been so downplayed in the media that, as I posted earlier, I had to be reminded that, yeah, Bowie WAS married to this outrageously gorgeous supermodel of color (which is a big thing with me). That’s how much this man’s art impacted me.
This was said in a comment by Bowie about a Nirvana concert that Bowie had attended. Nirvana was touring with a cover of Bowie’s “The
Man Who
Ruled the World”. A guy walked up to Bowie after one of Bowie’s concerts and said, ”It’s cool that you did a “Nirvana” song,”. Bowie's reply?” Fuck you, you little tosser. I’m the one that WROTE the fucking song!" Gotta love a cat like that. To : David Jones AKA David Bowie: R.I.P.
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