[michaelhigh]

I was sitting in my truck eating a monster biscuit from Hardee's when on CBS News came the announcement of The Thin White Duke's passing.

I stopped eating and cried as they began speaking of him in the past tense.

I saw him in 1993 at the Fox Theater in St. Louis. He had just had a liver transplant months before that, and, personally, I couldn't believe that he'd bounced back so strongly. Healthy and performing again, it was a great relief that he'd cleared that high hurdle. Not so much now.

He will forever remain the enigma that he'd always been to me, despite my straight sexuality. Society pidgeonholed him as this space oddity, and I believe that, even despite his amazing, brilliant body of work, that even in this day of permissive genderbending, he will be still further and forever tied to some of the artistic choices he made in the day.

I guess it took radical actions to get noticed in entertainment back then, and today is no different, for that matter. I may have never grown to respect him as a true innovator if he'd tried the vanilla way to success.

What's it going to take to get our attention in the future? Murder onstage? The thought shreds my sensibilities.

I just hope that his passing only amplifies his impact on the world he fell to.

[daves]

https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fm.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DKaOC9danxNo&h=FAQHsb_2Z

[thunderbrick]

http://newsthump.com/2016/01/11/music-fans-in-mourning-as-justin-bieber-tragically-confirmed-alive-and-well/

[Kenneth Patchen]

Too true and too depressing, Thuderbrick : "It's as if God doesn't want us to have good music anymore".

This, I think, is lovely and a more fitting tribute for Bowie:

Check out this video on YouTube:

http://youtu.be/yi7vRiiz9iU

[michaelhigh]

I was sitting in my truck eating a monster biscuit from Hardee's when on CBS News came the announcement of The Thin White Duke's passing.

I stopped eating and cried as they began speaking of him in the past tense.

I saw him in 1993 at the Fox Theater in St. Louis. He had just had a liver transplant months before that, and, personally, I couldn't believe that he'd bounced back so strongly. Healthy and performing again, it was a great relief that he'd cleared that high hurdle. Not so much now.

He will forever remain the enigma that he'd always been to me, despite my straight sexuality. Society pidgeonholed him as this space oddity, and I believe that, even despite his amazing, brilliant body of work, that even in this day of permissive genderbending, he will be still further and forever tied to some of the artistic choices he made in the day.

I guess it took radical actions to get noticed in entertainment back then, and today is no different, for that matter. I may have never grown to respect him as a true innovator if he'd tried the vanilla way to success.

What's it going to take to get our attention in the future? Murder onstage? The thought shreds my sensibilities.

I just hope that his passing only amplifies his impact on the world he fell to.

So, one more time: What's it going to take to get our attention in the future? Are we too jaded to buy (accept, condone, endorse, advocate for, rally behind) the latest pop confection without a ton of sensationalism attached (Justin Beaver included)?

An aside: Blackstar is mindnumbingly amazing (hackneyed term for definitive, superlative) with or without Bowie's untimely liftoff.

It's literally frying the fricking brain between my buccaneers. I'm generally too burnt out to gain much from what gets released today (sonic treats discounted). Much is waaaay too pedestrian (read boring, staid, milktoast, whitewash, dumbed-down, lowest-common-denominator, insert pertinent adjective) for this old rock critic.