Monday, June 2, 2014

It Seemed The Taste Was Not So Sweet: Ch-Ch-Ch-

As are many people, I am fascinated with David Bowie.

Something that fascinates me about him is his aura of untouchable cool (which nobody can deny). It's interesting to consider rationally, particularly when you factor in all the many insane (and theatrical) things he's tried over the years. Many risks. Which seem to have a higher-than-normal rate of payoff. I would bet it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I'm just throwing that out there.

*

I'm interested in the places where David Bowie, bastion of untouchable cool, shades into the un-cool. I already kind of went there once with "Young Americans", Bowie's self-admitted attempt at "plastic soul".

Even though I've apparently made part of my life's work into an informal course of study in soft-rock apologism, I'm certainly not immune to the threat of "uncool". When I remembered this song and felt that I should post it here, my first self-reflexive thought was something like, "oh not THAT Bowie song. . ."

Because why? Because I worry about not showing the serious thought behind the soft-rock apologism, and also about showing it too much. Because I don't want to come across as a dilettante who only knows the greatest hits.

This worry has been slightly at the back of my mind for around ten years now, since I was buying "skuf" CDs at Everyday Music on Burnside Rd in Portland Oregon and first faced the ineffable fear of . . . something . . . when I brought my music choices to the counter clerk. (Music choices often being along the line of old Squeeze albums and ABBA Gold.)

Let's not pretend it doesn't exist, that fear.

I used to think that fear and worry were an essential part of the Amy Wilson engine, and even wrote about something to that effect. I chalk this up to a basic confusion in my soul between the feeling of running away from something and the feeling of running toward something.

I am going to tell you I like this song, and you're free to think I'm a dilettante who only knows the greatest hits. I don't like that thought, but I don't like this thought any better: that I could tell you my favorite Bowie song is the bizarre disco epic "Station to Station", or that I know exactly where to put the "wham bam thank you ma'am" in "Suffragette City", or I could just say something about Low, and you might think I DO know anything about anything.

What I know and what you know and what you know I know -- actually I feel none of that matters. It might be nihilism, or maybe it's pop.


The song: David Bowie, "Changes"; 1971

Yrs,
AW

inbedwithamywilson@gmail.com