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David Bowie talks about Technology and Music 146

Posted by Hemos from the good-inteviews dept.
nanuuq writes "Shift.com has got an interview with David Bowie. " Bowie's a genius. Interesting perspectives on where art, music and technology collide with each other.
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David Bowie talks about Technology and Music More

David Bowie talks about Technology and Music

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  • ----
    Ashes to ashes, funk to funky
    we know Major Tom's a junkie
    Strung out on heaven's high
    Hitting an all time low....
    ---
    Cool site. Thanks muchly!

    And no! I made first post? Well, I never thought I'd see the day.
  • His music may not be mainstream (Backstreet Boys, etc...) but he definitely is a very talented musician. He relies on his musical talent and not his looks to attract an audience. It's refreshing to know that such a good artist is also a computer geek. I dunno about the ISP venture though. I wish he would concentrate on starting his own digital label to help the acceptance of mp3s. Or I wish he'd turn is efforts to the design of a new distribution system for digital music. He definitely has enough influence to convince other musicians to contribute and fund such a possibility. Now that would be a pinnacle accomplishment... Well, at least the music is great.
  • I'd have to agree with you. He's got nothing over the average SlashDot reader. How come we don't get articles about us featured? Well. I guess because we aren't world-famour musicians, but ANYWAY.

  • Bowie and Be (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    One of the cool things about Bowie is that he knows there's more out there than windows. He's been associated with BeOS [be.com] (everyone's favorite media OS) more than a few times. From a news item a while back:

    Keynote speaker Thomas "She Blinded Me with Science" Dolby took stage in a black beret to discuss the relationship between Be and his company, Beatnik. Beatnik was formerly known as HeadSpace, and provided the original software synthesizer in BeOS.

    Dolby also showed off a fully interactive Javascript/RMF mixer Beatnik had built for David Bowie's site, which lets users remix Bowie's hit "Fame" to their heart's content directly in browserspace. It was not entirely clear what the exact nature of Beatnik's relationship with Be is, but it's enough to know they're working together on making RMF a native component of BeOS. Hopefully we can get more details on this in a future report.

  • To find out that David Bowie is a geek. I was always under the impression that being a popular musician and geekhood were mutually exclusive. I guess that's what I get for thinking. Fortunately, there are people like David Bowie taking the stigma out of geekdom and blowing the pocket-protector stereotype to pieces.
  • I like David Bowie and (most) of his incarnations. But to say that he got by purely on talent and not his looks is to do him a disservice. Ziggy Stardust was as much about visual representation as it was the music and it influenced a whole generation. (Hence the poor copycat in Marilyn Manson) Bowie's look may have been non-traditional, but it certainly was attractive.

    I will agree with you, though, that his time would be better spent promoting digital music of his ISP.
  • Is it just me, or did anyone else get incredibly bored with the constant "I did that first, that was me, I was there before anyone else" line that just kept coming up during that interview?

    That whole article just felt so AlGore'ish to me. I mean, sure, yeah, the man did some interesting and new and innovative things, but come on... he had a Rio last year, and that makes him feel like he was in on the MP3 scene before anyone else?

    The man is clueless. Yay for his previous success, but just get over yourself, Bowie.

    Your Pop Industry Schmuck Game Is Over.

  • mp3? (Score:2)

    by dermond ( 33903 )
    hmmm strange change of mind.. the last albume he put on the web was not available as mp3 but only in the propritary m$ audio and SDMI shit... the last concert was only broadcasted with the realmedia shit.. not mp3 there... and now he talks like he invented mp3...strange...
  • i agree. and his music sucks too
  • The man is the original pop chameleon.

    Geek is cool, these days.

  • Read this excerpt from the interview, and you'll see one more reason why is an all-round cool guy:

    Has the so-called "MP3 revolution" had an impact on you?

    Not even remotely. Revolution? I don't see it like that. It has been coming for a long time. I had a Rio last year! They've been taking my music and bootlegging my shows for ages. I know all the sites that have my bootlegs and all my MP3s. Actually, I don't give a flying fuck. I like the internet and I like the community. I think, to understand your presence on the net, you have to be a part of it and work within it. I thought it just looked so reactionary, for instance, of someone like Prince to clamp down on everything in terms of the lawsuits. You can't stop the sea from coming forward.

    I think it's very cool that he is one (of the few) musicians who can embrace a technology, even though it has the potential to lower his profits (in this case, digital music formats like mp3) and use it to his advantage. I think Bowie is a smart guy, and he knows that one aspect of the music industry in the future is the internet. Instead of trying to delay the internet's role in music like other artists, he advances it's role, even going so far as to let his fans help him write a song. Now that is cool, and I hope that others (artists and labels alike) start to follow suit.

    --

  • Turn and face the strange . .

    David Bowie is a publicly traded company. That's right David Bowie had his own IPO and like the rest of the public companies, he's got internet fever.

    Why? Not because his 'digi-hip', not because he's ahead of his time, it's just the most cost efective way to reach the masses.

    And these children that you spit on as they try to change there world, are a imune to your consultations, they're quite aware what they're going through . .

    awwww wham bam thank you mame'

    ...and now he's a stock...changes indeed.

  • I didn't feel that he came off like that. Besides, although SDMI is a substandard format, and other formats would be a wiser choice, he is at least taking a step in the right direction. Also, I think he realizes that by the distibution of mp3's can do as much to help his career (by exposing his music to all kinds of people) as it can to hurt it (piracy). This is a good thing -as more artists realize that the internet is not hurting the industry as much as record execs want us to believe, then the internet will become a more popular means of distrubting music, legally and otherwise.

    --

  • Well, you're wrong. His music is good =)

  • Bowie fan? (Score:1)

    by pb ( 1020 )
    I've never been a big fan of David Bowie's music, but I've always been impressed by him. Labyrinth was a neat movie, (and the music there was very cool, too, IMO) he's managed to change with the times, he's rich, and he's got a pretty cool record label. (I've always liked Virgin, as big companies go. Virgin Radio is neat too, they broadcast on RealAudio...)

    So, let's compare. Most rock stars, whether or not you like their music, end up broke, fading into the past, and often screwed by their record labels. So Bowie's got something going for him.
    ---
    pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
  • He also loves to drop names. I saw him on Charlie Rose blathering on about Basquiat, Warhol and other nonsense. He had absolutely nothing to say.

    Look at his comment about Nietzsche, where he blames him for the atom bomb. Has he ever actually read Nietzsche? I bet not--he probably only knows that the man said "God is dead" and not the context in which it was said.

    If you want to check out a musician who really has interesting things to say about technology and dystopian futurism, check out some old Gary Numan. Yes, his work has been forgettable since Telekon (here come the flames) but Replicas, Pleasure Principle and Telekon are brilliant. These three are available now on CD, remastered lovingly with bonus tracks and extensive liner notes.

    Replicas is especially dense and meaningful to geeks. There is much in it that resonates with Burroughs and Philip K. Dick. The new songs on the remastered CD really add something to the mythology Numan crafted for this album. The liner notes on the rerelease are a must-read for fans.

    This [garynumanfan.nu] is a good example of why I like Numan. It's not a literal extrapolation of the future so much as a nightmarish whirl of poetic horror.

    Groucho
  • Yeah, sure. He's a bit arrogant. But if I where him, I'd be arrogant too. (Heck, I'm not him, and I'm still arrogant).
    Sadly, www.davidbowie.com is hardly what one would hope for. It should have been a lot lighter, or at least on a server that could take more. Half of the pages are always "Maximum users, try again later" or something like that (Not only now with the article, always). That's not very nice when every page has 20 frames.

    Still, the music remains great.
  • Most industry icons tend to favor the status quo. It's very difficult to find anyone in the music industry who openly says they don't give a fuck about people dishing out their MP3s. Just look at the way most music labels try to clamp down instead of trying to understand how the net works.

    In that light, what's surprising is how in-tune with the whole trading/dl'ing/mp3 culture bowie is, especially given the fact that he's from an older generation. I know *programmers* his age who have difficulty understanding the whole net culture and dismiss the internet as a fad.

    Also, you need to keep in mind that celebrities are not particularly intelligent, smart people. When asked what she wished her computer could do, Jennifer Anniston wanted it to do her workouts. Scary Spice is known to have pointed to a monitor and ask if that was the internet. So....it's all the more admirable that Bowie is in touch with the whole net culture and actually grasps it much more than the industry executives. Even the frigging teletubby people have unleashed lawyers prohibiting fan sites from showing an image of Tinky Winky. Oh well.

    w/m.
  • Not to be too offtopic, but I found this article at the end to be more interesting.

    http://www.shift.com/shiftstd/html/onlineTOC/199 9/7.1/html/jamaica.html

    Stuff about kids and the spread of internet in jamaica.

  • Leave it to an AC to find complaint-generator output
    amusing enough to barf it up on /.
  • Rush kind of strikes me as sort of geeky, not in the hardcore ubergeek sense, but still with a bit of that nerdy aura.

  • and why does he keep saying it?
  • How on earth can such a troll be marked as insightful?

    David Bowie is a very talented musician. I agree, he really is a genius.

    Tsk! Boring? He has tried more styles than any musician. He has done many things. And he has surely written GREAT music.

    I can't understand how can someone find him boring. Granted, the interview was rather lame, but please, David Bowie is one of the greatest musicians ever.

    Anyway, you are free to prefer Ricky Martin and the Backstreet Boys.

    Alejo.
  • His music is AWESOME!

    Alejo.
  • He's not a computer geek!

    He's a really great musician. A real genius... but he's not a computer geek!

    Did you read what has changed in composing music these days? He doesn't know about the software and he doesn't have the time to learn it. That's okay. But when Reeves stays up being a real computer geek, what does Bowie say?

    Heh. :)

    Alejo.
  • I'll trade in my Martha Stewarts for some David Bowies!!!

    Just kidding, I don't (and won't) own either ;)

    Steven Rostedt
  • RTLinux and eCos can both do it as standard, IMHO.
  • I totally disagree with this post. But disagreeing is NOT a reason to mark down. This person obviously has some emotionaly feelings against Mr. Bowie, but It was interesting to read.

    Like I stated earlier, I completely disagree with this poster, but it was interesting (and quite amusing) to read. So I say moderate it up to 2, as interesting, if nothing else.

    Remember, moderation is not about agreeing with someones statement. But to show interesting, funny, insightful, statements.

    Steven Rostedt
  • P.S. And what's with those lame-ass non-conformance HTML character entities for em dashes in the interview? Geesh. (You Windows weenies won't see the problem because your OS is subverting the standard and insidiously hiding the problem from you.)
    Guess what. I'm stuck at work right now and had to read the article using Win98/IE4 and... I also got plagues with the "mdash" stuff.

    There is a meta tag at the top of the pages that suggests that the pages were created with "GoLive CyberStudio 3". I would venture to guess that that software is the true culprit for the "mdash" entities.

    K.
  • Actually, there are genres that are completely full of computer geeks. Mainly industrial and electronica.

    Sure, they're not mainstream (as much as the record labels recently tried to push electronica as The Next Big Thing - they're still trying to find the next grunge), but they are a fairly significant music market, and are way over-represented online largely because they're created by geeks.

    I dare anyone to say that Kraftwerk aren't perceived as computer geeks. ;-)

    [TMB]
  • I'm not trying to flame you or anything, but I think you missed the whole point of the post.

    If you did actually bother to read the article, and not just the subject line, he never really comments on Bowie's music, just the interview (and that is kinda the point of the article).

    Second of all, the man has his right to an opinion (as do you). Music taste is based on personal choice, and just because someone happens not to like Bowie or his music, it doesn't mean that he is a troll. I know I would have moderated the article up because he makes some good, controversial statements about Bowie without coming off as an attempt to piss people off. I don't think you need to resort to personal attacks and criticize his own taste (by making assumptions) because his opinions differ from yours.

    Now, if you want to earnestly protest, be more informative here. If he is a genius, why is he one? If he's done many things, what are they? If he has written great music, what makes it great? Some verifiable supports would have provided a good argument on Bowie's behalf.

    I myself dislike Bowie's music, and I find him to be a little too preachy and full of himself, but I'm not going to jump on your case for liking his music, since it is your choice. But if you feel compelled to comment adversely on a post, please go beyond calling people trolls for voicing their thoughts. No offense, but I think your post seems more like flamebait than his.

  • blah (Score:1)

    by jetpack ( 22743 )
    As much as I have respect for Bowie as an artist, this sounds like a Jon Katz article. At least Katz doesn't usually screw up his html (yes, I realize Bowie isn't likely to be responsible for the html)
  • I find Bowie rather refreshing. He's always pushed the envelope.

    Speaking of Reeves Gabrels, I've burned up 2 or 3 copies of the first Tin Machine album he and DB did with the Sales brothers (those are Soupy's boys, for you 60s/70s TV rerun fans). He plays guitar like a freakin' chainsaw. Thoroughly awesome.

    Zontar The Mindless,

  • I would say that the public's perception of geek is cool these days. But consider that your average American considers someone who uses NetBus a hacker. Simply put, the public doesn't know what really being a geek is about.

    And from what Bowie said I don't think he is a real geek, not saying that he considers himself one either. There is certainly a gray area. For example someone who can use their computer and for the most part understands it but doesn't care about programming, hardware, etc isn't really a geek. Nothing wrong with that, they're just not a geek. Myself, I play the bass, I enjoy it but I'm not that good and I don't think I'm a musician.

  • Not too many people run RTLinux on the desktop.
  • He also loves to drop names. I saw him on Charlie Rose blathering on about Basquiat, Warhol and other nonsense. He had absolutely nothing to say.

    Look at his comment about Nietzsche, where he blames him for the atom bomb. Has he ever actually read Nietzsche? I bet not--he probably only knows that the man said "God is dead" and not the context in which it was said.

    I agree with you there. It's like he's just got a bunch of buzzwords (buznames also?) to throw down. Just because you know what mp3s are doesn't impress me. Or that you know who Nietzsche is. It's like those people know who memorize a few buzzwords like "Chaos Theory" and want to sell me on "The New Science."

    Also I agree with the atom bomb bull. He makes wide sweeping remarks that make bonvine America say "Oooooh, he's smart," I'm not saying for sure he isn't, I mean I've never had a conversation with the guy, but I just got a bad impression from the interview.

  • The funny part is, if you look at the HTML source, it is trying to be the HTML character entity reference —, but the ampersand is itself entered as an entity reference (&). That is the technique to use when you want to display HTML character references without interpretation, exactly as I have done here.

    Meanwhile, if they has gotten it right and coded the sequence correctly, Netscape 4.x will ignore the sequence and display the HTML code, which is how Netscape handles character references it does not recognize. The result is the same either way!

    LOL. I really can't wait for Mozilla to finish up. It is looking good. Still quite a way to go before a production release, but I can see an early beta within the next three to six months. Oh, for a stable browser under Linux... :-)
  • You remind me of the babe....

  • First of all,..Just so we're clear here.. No, my parents didn't name me after David Bowie. They actually picked my name out of a baby book. Lucky me, a transvestite pop star makes it big a few months after I was born in '74.

    Secondly, i'm not a fan of David Bowie's music. I just felt the need to point out that he's basically full of shit. Bands that got their start in the early 70's like Neu, Kraftwerk, Cluster, Devo (and individuals *prior* to 1970 such as Oskar Sala, Raymond Scott, Bob Moog) were already heavilly involved in using elements of electronic music in their work upwards of 10-20 years before David Bowie and Brian Eno even began toying with the idea. The assertion that David Bowie is some sort of legendary pioneer of electronic music is absolutely laughable.

    The whole concept of producing electronic music with machines stems back as far as the late 1890's, believe it or not. Go to Yahoo and look up "Telharmonium" if you dont believe me.

    To make a very long and complicated story short, the first real application of electronic music popped up around the mid 1920's, with the introduction of instruments such as the Theremin, and the Clavavox (among others) ..the oldest recording of electronic music in my own collection is from 1927. By the mid 1950's it was well on its way to establishing its musical niche..The first ambient electronic music appeared in the early 60's thanks to Raymond Scott (not Brian Eno), and programmable, sequencer-driven electronic music appeared shortly thereafter..mid-late 60's, I believe. Raymond Scott's name is on the patent, even.

    David Bowie's "contribution" to the popularization of electronic music stems from seeing bands like Kraftwerk and Devo in 1977-79 and doing his best to reinvent himself and base his gimmick around the same idea. Neither band owes their existance to him in any way.. In Kraftwerk's case, they'de been doing it since 1969. in Devo's case, 1972.


    Read books. Everything else is a sales pitch.

    Bowie J. Poag
  • Relies on talent and not looks?

    Bowie was one of the first to jump onto the shock rock bandwaggon which the likes of iggy pop and the sex pistols initiated. Bowie was dressing in womans clothes with the rest of the rockers of their time (even the stones! oof, big mistake Mick!)

    Like all "pop artists" they'll jump on any edge they can find and the internet is just the newest edge for Bowie.

    None of this is to say Bowie is not good music.. I love the crap! :)

  • This guy's not a troll, read the article, the guy's head's so fucking big i'm suprised he continues to live.
  • I refuse to visit any site whose content was produced by MS' proprietary software which uses special characters which don't adhere to standard character sets.

    Actually, if you look at the source, the mdash crap is HTML compliant. For whatever reason, they coded the ampersand (&) character to appear in the displayed text, rather then using it to code HTML. Real brain-dead on their part.

    My post here (#64) has more info. [slashdot.org]
  • This is the same guy that when asked about how lengthy his Hours download was he replied something like, "But it only takes a few minutes at my house." Bowie's perspective is always going to be a rich man looking in regardless of how hard he tries to get in touch with the common bloke.

    Now Bowie has reinvented himself as something like a modern philospher. Heh, its kinda cute, he talks about the inevitable tide of change while making pro-god and pro-religious appeals in the same breath.

    The only really interesting and thought provoking part of his career was his SF themed songs from the last 60's. Which were quickly replace with his free sex/dj culture songs of the 70's, which of course were replaced by his yuppie culure songs of the 80's, *deep breath* which were replace by his techo stuff of late. Now he's going back and talking about his SF stuff in a Townshendesque 'I was geek before geek was hip.' Who would have thought the internet would bring dinosaurs back to life...

    The entire Bowie mystique was partially SF based and partially occult based. For a little while in the 60's, psychedelic rock and SF had a fling going which a lot of musicians participated in. So I don't buy this 'I was the first guy to see the Mothership' mentality. Everyone was doing it, SF was ALL Jimi Hendrix read.

    Now that he's older and his PR is wiser I'm sure he'll continue to pull an Al Gore, while showing us that, yes, he's a good vocalist/writer but a flake and opportunist.

    But to me he'll always be the only walking corporation in the world!


  • Someone was clever and realized that the character needed to be HTML-encoded, but didn't realize that GoLive does it for you. So he typed in the encoded character, and GoLive dutifully encoded his ampersand.
  • Oops. My bad. Thanks for the info. I guess I'll have to find another reason to hate MS now.
  • Marking that post as a troll is really BS. Not approving of a /. stamped 'cool guy' is called the opposing opinion not a troll. Hopefully a cluefull moderator will fix this mistake.

    Meta-moderators should be forced to read some guidelines before allowed access.

  • Trent Reznor, for one, is undeniably popular (The Fragile was #1 for a week), and is known to be a computer geek and a Doom & Quake addict. He also has lots of ties to David Bowie..So this isn't entirely off-topic!!
  • P.S. And what's with those lame-ass non-conformance HTML character entities for em dashes in the interview?

    The 4.0 DTD includes an `mdash' entity, defined in the file "HTMLspecial.ent"--see http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/*.dtd and *.ent.

    The problem is that, as we all should know by now, Netscape is not capable of understanding HTML 4.0. Mozilla M10 seems to understand things better than Netscape 4.7. It would be nice to see fleshy support for the standards before seeing `extension', wouldn't it?
  • Bowie has staying power. He has been a star for as long as I can remember and it continuosly re-inventing himself and his music. Great entertainer.
  • So im curious, what happens if you buy 25%+ of David Bowie. Can you legally require him to ship you his left arm or something? The latest craze on the playground, not kids tradeing Magic cards, but celebrity arms and legs. Trys explaining that to a psychiatrist (sp?)
  • He says Bowie is clueless and tells him to get over himself. He doesn't just comment on the interview. I consider calling Bowie a troll.

    Of course he has a right to an opinion.

    What personal attacks did I make? Stating his rights to like other music?

    I agree with you that music choices are very subjective. But I also think that there is an objective part. If I grab a drum and beat it randomly, can I really call that music? It is in this sense that I find Bowie's music great. But I won't go and tell you why, I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader (ah, let's just say I'm tired and don't think you want to read it anyway).

    And, by the way, I find the whole BowieNet thing rather lame (but, again, I don't have time/energy to tell you why). I think Bowie should not try to make us think he's a geek, he should just continue to write great music.

    Yawn. :)

    Alejo.
  • ..."Shift.com has got an interview with David Bowie. " Bowie's a genius. Interesting perspectives on where art, music and technology collide with each other.

    He's a talented musician, and a thoughtful guy, but you are totally devaluing the word "genius". Words should mean something. We shouldn't need to be impressed with breathless exaggeration.

  • "Andy Walking! Andy tired.
    Andy take a little snooze-
    Tie him up when he's fast asleep
    Send him on a pleasant cruise.
    When he wake up on the sea
    He's sure to think of me and you
    And to think about paint, and to think about glue
    And a jolly boring thing to do."

    *grin* if you hear it, you hear the contempt in it. Andy Warhol, what a plastic fellow. :)
  • Actually, he'd been reading Nietzsche as early as the 60s. He wrote a song about the Superman (NOT the DC comics character). I personally think the song sucked compared to his other songs, but he _did_ write it :)
  • eeeek....please dont use the media-coined term "electronica".
  • Remember those people in the 60's and 70's who collected plaster casts of...um...certain delicate portions of stars' anatomies? Why settle for a plaster cast when you can now have the real thing!

  • Not really to defend Bowie (and not to slam Nietzsche -- I like 'em!), but you could make a case for Nietzsche being resposible for the A-Bomb in a round-about way. One of those chains of history kind of things.

    The argument could go something like this: Nietzsche wrote his stuff. Pretty cool, shook up the world a bit. His female relations totally owned him (My philosophy teacher in high school liked to say that Nietzsche was the complete opposite of his idea Superman -- a total wuss) and infulenced him into putting a bunch of racist crap in his work. Or maybe he really was a complete racist. It doesn't mater. Then, in the 20th century, the Nazis pick up some misinterpretations of Nietzsche and place it in their own mythos. Nietzsche was essentially the official philosopher of the Third Riech, you know. Anyway, by some more twists of history, the Nazis took power, went to war, and the rest is history. The US built a nuclear bomb so Germany wouldn't get to it first.

    Nietzsche -> Nazis -> WWII -> A-Bomb

    It can be done, see? As to whether you can really blame Nietzsche for it (I wouldn't), that's another story.
  • Well, I gotta say, I'm both a Bowie and and Numan fan.
    I've seen them both live in the last couple of years, and they both rocked!.

    Numan's original Beggar's Banquet is an impressive body of work, not just up to Telekon. "We Take Mysteries To Bed" anyone?
    Replicasand Pleasure Principle are the two to get, if anyone's interested. The guy was making 2 albums a year, changing his sound and instrumentation with each one. Talk about progress.

    I honestly thought when I heard some tracks off 1989's New Anger that it was going to be his biggest breakthrough since "Cars."
    Alas, IRS did nothing to promote it. *sigh*

    PpoE

    PS. Why the heck would "We Have A Downstat" have transcription errors when the lyrics are printed in the double-CD reissues? Someone should update those pages! Thanks for the link!


    Pope

  • This is the same guy that when asked about how lengthy his Hours download was he replied something like, "But it only takes a few minutes at my house." Bowie's perspective is always going to be a rich man looking in regardless of how hard he tries to get in touch with the common bloke.

    It's also pretty laughable to see that he (as do many of our 'caring' politicians) thinks the disparity in technology access is of utmost concern for the 'have-nots' of this world.

    Of course the have's and have-nots where technology is concerned is also very worrying. A third of the world will have access to knowledge while the rest of the world will languish in ignorance and that is a very dangerous situation.

    No David, a dangerous situation is where the wealthiest country in the world can't afford to give health insurance to 40 million of it's citizens. A dangerous situation is where millions of people worry about food and clean water each day. Your techno-prophecizing means nothing to the majority of the people on this planet. Go back to your mansion and appreciate your fast download times; you're obviously completely out-of-touch with real people.

  • This is freaky.

    I just got done throwing in "Children of the Night", a Nine Inch Nails bootleg that was recorded at a NIN/David Bowie concert. (It's got Trent Reznor and David Bowie doing duets of Reptile, Scary Monsters, and Hurt .. truly an awesome disc.)

    So then I bring up Slashdot, and who's at the top of the list? David Bowie. Freaky. :-)

    Actually, it was pretty refreshing to see Bowie say that he doesn't give a "flying fuck" about the bootleggers. Bootleg CDs are a great way for fans of a particular artist or group to expand their collection. And if you think about it, concert bootleggers don't really take anything away from the artist. Who is hurt by somebody who's recording a concert, regardless of whether they're plugged into the soundboard or if they've just got some low-quality tape recorder near a loudspeaker? The artist(s) have already made their money off the concert; the bootleggers are simply providing a "permanent record" of the concert, so to speak. Seems like Bowie knows this, and is okay with it.

    Interesting stuff.
  • Noooooooooo! Leave my Slashdot alone!

    If you ever read an emulation group on Usenet, you'll know about this site. It has brought an unending flow of spam to the groups. Just today, I read their spam, disguised as a check-this-out-I-just-found-a-great-site post, in alt.binaries.emulators.gameboy...

    ::sigh::

    --

  • Ok, you got me ;)

    But it still was interesting. That's a pretty good script. I could use that to send about some of my upper management ;)

    It's late, my project just crashed, I don't know what I'm saying, so please moderate me down...


    Steven Rostedt
  • "Director's chair." Psh. I'll direct you right over to little squares of spinach. Try and be more origional than ripping stuff from the old Illuminati game. Sew it back together.

  • Welcome to the real world. Innovators are rarely popularizers. Bowie is no pioneer, I agree 100%. But there's more to him than that.

    There is an interesting quote by the 20th Century "classical" composer, Igor Stravinsky:

    The merely good composer borrows; the great composer steals.
    (Don't shoot me if I'm not word-for-word accurate--the above is at least the general idea.) Bowie is pretty up-front about the fact that he borrows/steals from numerious influences. The question is, does he merely mimic his sources ("borrow") or does he make them his own ("steal"), improving them and weaving them into his music such that they are a seamless part of it?

    I think he's done both. Some of his stuff is merely derivative, posed in a sort of trendier-than-thou way. Yet he has the knack of taking genres that have become moribund (e.g., the Psychedelica that underpinned the Ziggy Stardust era) and injecting life into them by combining them with other genres in creative ways.

    Your summary of electronic music history understates just how old electronic music technology is by about 20 years. Here is an excellent timeline [obsolete.com] with a lot of background info (though be warned that inventors are rarely the best practitioners in this realm-- Raymond Scott was a bit of an exception).

    But I don't think the fact that Bowie was born long after electronic music was first created is particularly relevant. The point is what what kind of music did he make with it. I frankly prefer his music to much of Kraftwerk's, even though Kraftwerk undeniably preceded him by many years. And that's the bottom line: not how the music is made or even what the musician says--most musicians would be better off if they just shut up, Bowie included. The music itself is what truely matters. -Ed
  • Ensuring a third of the world has access to knowledge is a pretty good ratio - in the past very few people (less than 1% at times) had access to books and knowledge.

    However, disparity of technology access is of concern - how are developing nations goig to progress without access to technology and knowledge ?


  • If you're an America, then Bowie is scared of you as well...

    [...]
    I'm afraid of Americans
    I'm afraid of the world
    I'm afraid I can't help it
    I'm afraid I can't
    [...]
    Johnny wants a brain
    Johnny wants to suck on a Coke
    Johnny wants a woman
    Johnny wants to think of a joke
    [...]
    Johnny's in America
    Johnny looks up at the stars
    Johnny combs his hair
    And Johnny wants pussy in cars
    [...]
    I'm afraid of Americans

    God is an American
    God is an American

    Yeah, I'm afraid of Americans
    I'm afraid of the words
    I'm afraid I can't help it
    I'm afraid I can't
    [...]



  • Well since this has probably been said many many times before but here goes..

    People Slashdot motto is simple "news for nerds, stuff that matters"
    What matters to one person may be totally uninteresting to the next, thats the beauty of the way /. is set up ! With help to a little thing called posts, if you see this post about david bowie and you dont like it, dont post a waste of space comment like many have in this article and many others

    well thats my 2cents anyway


  • What? He stole a quotation about stealing?

    Holy Cow! It's a recursive aphorism!

    -Ed
  • If I had moderator status you would be moderated as either troll, flamebait, or offtopic. Your post is unnecessary, and has absolutely nothing to do with the conversation. "Oh! SOMEONE SAID SOMETHING ABOUT SOMETHING OTHER THAT LINUX@!$! LET'S FLAME IT!#!". You are only showing poor advocacy.
    Now look what you've done, you've gotten me to post offtopic as well. At least I have the dignity to attach a name to my post, even if I expect it to get moderated down.
  • "David Bowie's "contribution" to the opularization of electronic music stems from seeing bands like Kraftftwerk and Devo in 1977-79 and doing his best to reinvent himself and base his gimmick around the same idea. Neither band owes their existance to him in any way.. In Kraftwerk's case, they'de been doing it since 1969. in Devo's case, 1972. "

    Where did he claim that those bands would owe their existance to him? Naw, he just said *he* was incfluenced by Kraftwerk. (And I guess Kraftwerk was backinspired by Bowie - see "Transeuropa-Express").
    Okay, Bowie was later with elecronic music, I guess the best and first album really was "Low" from early 1977. But "The Man Who Sold The World" was already hinting in that direction, (Bowie mentioned "Saviour Machine" from that album), and it was released 1970. And fifteen years later or so, Nirvana gets to cover the title song from that album - you cannot deny many bands are still influenced by the early Bowie stuff...

  • Oh, that's 25 years later, not 15 years... :-)
  • At least he made interesting music at some point in his life, which is far more than you could ever claim to have done. With your attitude, I'll bet that nobody has ever given a shit about anything you have ever said in your entire life. Of course, being such an expert on crap, you probably already know that.
  • Chris Randall of SMG is a geek if I've ever seen one - in the best sense, of course. He's got a thing going on with the BeOS and can discuss Moore's Law with the best of 'em.

    http://www.smg.org

    He's also, oddly enough, quite anti-Mac (odd for an industrial/electronica musician). I don't agree with him in that respect, but I've found that most non-geeks give a damn either way.

    Makes damn good music though.

    Also, Trent Reznor has a history with electronics. I believe he majored in EE in college (?). Either way, he's definately more pro-Mac than Chris is. :>

    - Darchmare
    - Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
  • First of all, I don't care about being moderated down to "Troll", even though I was *not* trolling.

    The fact that I was moderated *up* to +4 shortly after posting this article, and then subsequently back down to 1 (Troll) is just evidence that some moderator likes Bowie's music, and got offended that I might counter the party view that this Bowie interview is anything other than utterly boring. Big deal, the moderator system is what it is.

    But the fact remains, this interview was utterly boring, and I fail to see the significance to the average Slashdot reader.

    Is it not clearly obvious that Bowie is just Al-Gore'ing MP3, that he's Al-Gore'ing "geekiness", that he's just jumping on the bandwagon and getting some nice press to scare up a few more subscriptions to his IPO'd ISP?

    To me, he's coming off as a tired old musician, who is attempting to cash in a few of his pop-culture chips. Sure, I appreciate his music (his earlier stuff, certainly), but I'm tired of hearing how he's responsible for all this wonderful new social change, when in fact he's had nothing to do with it.

    This interview had *very little* to do with Bowie's artwork, his music. It had everything to do with Bowie getting up there on a bandwagon and Al-Gore'ing everyone about how wonderfully technologically inclined he is, how he predicted the future in the 60's, and how he was tragically 'with it' enough to have been part of the MP3 scene.

    This whole interview gave me flashbacks to when Billy Idol was trying to come off as The Original Cyberpunk in the early 90's. How utterly droll.

    Since Slashdot is often a host platform for incisive social discussion, I fail to see how this Bowie article was anything other than an opportunity for a few Slashdotters to get out there and get some warm fuzzies about their favourite musician - that's fine, but I find it humorous to say the least that there are a few moderators who can't recognize Bowie's grandstanding for what it is, and chose to Troll me down just because I don't buy Bowie's party line.

    Bowie Al-Gore'd me to death. Bowie is boring.

    Is this really a Troll?
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Sorry to have hurt your feelings with my unneeded posting then. I am too much of a Bowie-Fan to resist to posting lyrics. :-)

    Time and again I tell myself
    I'll stay clean tonight
    But the little green wheels are following me
    Oh no, not again
  • The guy made an _ISP_, and not particulary noticeable one except that it's completely Microsoft-based. Who cares?
  • read the interview as more of bowie's positioning himself as the prime mover in tech-music. you'll see self promotion in every word he speaks. it's good to know bowie couldn't care less about mp3 while he is concerned about how prince's reaction to mp3 "looked so reactionary" bowie's good at what he does, but he came off in this interview as sort of slimy&mdashlike a politician trying to get elected. the lyrics to "savior machine" aren't remotely like the scenario he was describing. i went for a walk today and it was ok
  • don't be so quick to put yourself in the seat of deciding who is and who is not a musician. lots of Real Musicians screech and irritate and are even more ridiculous than andy warhol. laurie anderson is a pioneer, without whom the world would be a slightly duller place ;j
  • A subject on slashdot that I know a little about.
    First of all I would like to give out thanks to some people:

    Thank you Elisha Gray for early work if not the first electronic ocillator, you started it all!

    Thank you Lev Sergievitch Termen for inventing the theremen. Waveing hands of physics!

    Thank you Wendy Carlos. He (now SHE) did the work on clockwork orange. Now remeber the Beethoven music done on synths? Well that was done on MONOPHONIC synths (one note at a time) and a LOT of recording, re-takes, and tape splicing. This hard working individual said that more than background toons could be hacked out of these spacy, modular beasts.

    Thank you Rober Moog. Inventer of a lot of good sounds, inspiration of a lot of good bands, a smart man, a good teacher. What is MOOG you ask? oh pleeeeze. heh (by the way bob, if you read slashdot, email me.. been forever). Moogs will never go out of fasion.

    Thank you Devo, Kraftwork, and Brian Eno. Household names for the electronic muscian, and all around cutting edge people. Half the stuff that came from Devo is STILL taboo in some states (heh).

    Thank you roland for mass production of some decent gear (no thanks to the people who ruined the sound of the 303).

    Now there are a lot of other people who deserve credit. A lot of work was put into early disco, early techno, and even rock and roll (hammond co and Rhodes too). One final note.

    Thank you David Bowie for nothing. You made some good tunes, but over all, thank you for jack shit. Thank you for another useless bland ISP with a theme, and riding on the coat-tails of great men.

    Tis all i have to say.
    Bortbox
  • He floated a bond on his future earnings, not an IPO. You can't exactly buy anything to control him, but you can buy an interest bearing note hoping he will make enough money to pay it back....


    Jordan
  • Just a week ago i came accross "omikron: the nomad soul"; a 3d adventure game. I'm not a adventure expert, but this game is cool! I walked into a gun shop and saw a flyer about a concert in the area. After looking around I found the cafe where it was held: I came in and the music began to play, I lost control over my keyboard and the experience took over, music began to play.. and there a familiar face appeared.


    I knew that some of the music in the game was bowies but that it was integrated in this way, and that bowie was also playing a character I didn't knew. It reminded me of the Labyrinth film I watched in the eighties. There was definately a theme: another world, and a nomad soul.
    People can say what they want, but I think this integration of 'art' and computers is the heart of the matter. Why is the internet so popular? Because people are 'breathing' themselves and meaning into cold and lifeless matter. Creation.


    Well it's starting now, the technology is arriving, "The Wheel of Time" [wheeloftime.com]: a computer game based on the fantasy world of Robert Jordan, "The Real Neverending Story" [discreetmonsters.com] ...all 3D games with art and narrative.
    Although Bowie borrows/steals other material: it's is the way he combines it into something new that indicates the quality of his work (and not all his work i find of quality, and others may disagree). If this philosopher Rorty says that integrity doesn't fit in our culture, I disagree: integrity is not something that points to one point of view and sticking with it. It is more a sincerity in what you do, and doing it in a right way. Empty spaces, surfaces filled with sincerity, art and meaning.


    Another interesting story I found the experiences of the Omikron developers with Bowie. The story of Bowie's involvement with the game can be found here [quanticdream.com].

  • Being an American I should say that he better be afraid of us...we'll kick his ass.
  • I agree very much with this....although I think that in my experience the artists are very much in support of the whole internet thing - what they want above all else is to get their music heard. Where it all stops is the labels - they want profit and can't figure out a good way of getting that from mp3.

    Anyway, I promised a plug so here it is....I run a fan site for a british band called Sunscreem, you may (or may not) have heard of them. They've had a fair few hits in the UK, Europe and the US over the last 10 years, and until recently were signed to $ony. Like a certain famous George they have not parted company with them and are now signed to a variety of specalist labels around the world. The point is, they are running a project called "Music for the Screemillenium" which is providing a different mp3 file each week from my site, until Jan 2000. These are rare mixes, classic tracks and album tracks, all professionally produced (most have been released in the past on CD) and are all posted 100% legally. Check it out if you are interested at this site [screeming.com]. Their official page is here [sunscreem.co.uk] and my fan site is here [screeming.com].

    A second "interactive" part of the project is about to go online...they will be posting a midi file and a collection of samples (vocals, bass, percussion etc) from one of their unreleased tracks and inviting everyone to do their own remixes! The best may be released commercially, and some pretty cool prizes are up for grabs.
  • you might be giving DB more credit for realising things than he deserves. it's telling that while he says there wasn't even a remote possibility of mp3 affecting him, he concedes that there is no turning back the tide. i agree with the folks who feel bowie's just jumping on the "geeks are cool today" style trend. and DB has been a fashion victim for too long for me not to read between his lines.
  • <namedrop>
    And I'm thrilled that I got to meet both
    </namedrop>

    Seriously, most of LA's works are soothing or hypnotic, as opposed to irritating and screeching, and IMO she is quite geeky. Contriving a violin with a playback head on the bridge and tape on the bow was not your average stuff back then. She plays around with stuff, taking items and using them for unintended purposes or combining them to create something new, or taking them apart, etc...sounds kinda geeky to me. Elements she put into music wound up in more mainstream music later. (Same with Ono, BTW...listen to B52's and hear her influence). I do think her vocal delivery lends itself to parody, but so what? And just cuz you don't like it doesn't mean it's crap.

  • There are two other cool stories on Shift:

    Fourteen-year-old Makonnen Hannah is wiring his nation and leading it into the twenty-first century.

    http://www.shift.com/shiftstd/SiteMap/frames/mag 7.1.asp?searchfor=7.1hannah

    Remember the folks who replaced Barbie's chirp with GI Joe's macho grunt? If you don't, It's because no one ever learned their true identity.
    Now ®(TM)ark's back with a new strike against the corporate empire.

    http://www.shift.com/shiftstd/SiteMap/frames/fea tures.asp?searchfor=artmark
  • i thought it was Wooster, in ohio. just 2nd hand info, though
  • David Bowie also has his own private label web bank at http://www.bowiebanc.com

    go figure :-)
  • My favorite rock star geek has always been Todd Rundgren.

    He has been a known computer hacker since the 70's, fiddling with all manner of kit computers and so forth, especially those that had some musical or "media" orented accessories.

    He was one of the very first beta testers of the "Newtek Video Toaster" (the coolest Amiga accessory card ever, IMHO), as well as numerous other computer based media orented products.

    As for David Bowie, the interview certianly seems to indicate that he is more technologically hip than the average pop music star. Good for him!
  • You could be right, but BeOS looks like they're taking over the audio computing world entirely. le Buzz [lebuzz.com] lists the major companies porting their audio software (50 or so total) and pretty much every major software product is being ported with an improved BeOS version. MacOS simply doesn't handle audio as well.

    Linux might handle audio well also, I don't really know. But hey that's why they have boot managers, and Linux is free so why not use it along with BeOS.

  • I agree very much. It's like when someone asks, "are you sure?" Each time a person asks that, your answer is only half as meaningfull as it was the previous time...

    ever think about that?

  • Odd that this comes up just as I've been going on a Bowie jag! I brought "Earthling" a few weeks ago, and picked up "Hours. . ." and "Scary Monsters" just last week. Fascinating interview as well, btw; and his web site looks fab. That's all I wanted to say. Ta!
  • Yes, Yes....I agree...Sadly, most "artist" sites just jump on the technology bandwagon, merely to look "cool"...rather than actually having anything to do with the cause

    And what is it with the relatively "famous" brits and the Macintoshes? David Bowie, Stephen Fry, Rowan Atkinson Hugh Laurie...the list goes on.........
  • Yeah, He's a genius alright... sheesh

    You know he sold ''Bowie Bonds'' a couple of years ago and raised some dozens of millions of pounds from investors willing to pay him now for the rights to the income from his back catalog sales in the future. If you think about that it doesn't exactly show great faith on his part in the longevity of his music.

    No wonder he doesn't give a flying fuck, the lost money is not coming out of his pocket.

    Personally I think he's just a prancing mong, and you (the poster of the parent article) ought to get more cynical before you get eaten alive.

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