David Bowie
Sarah Kent
Yihao is a disaffected 20 year old living in Chengdu, capital of Sichaun Province. A thriving centre for business and commerce, Chengdu looks like any other modern city. You could mistake it for downtown Chicago except that, apart from the Walmart logo, the signage is in Chinese.Yihao isn’t interested in making money, though. Having dropped out of school, he performs as a drag queen at Funky Town, a gay bar that welcomes young people who feel alienated from society. But the venue is earmarked for demolition to make way for a new subway station and Ben Mullinkosson’s documentary is a loving Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In October 1977 Glasgow punk band Johnny & the Self Abusers decided to change their name. This was a problem for Chiswick Records, who were about to release their debut single. The records were pressed, the sleeves printed and the press release issued. There was no time to recall any of it and alter the band’s name. The single was credited to Johnny & the Self Abusers.The new name the band went for was taken from the “so simple-minded” lyrics of David Bowie’s “The Jean Genie.” After reconfiguring their line-up, Simple Minds began regularly playing under the new Bowie-derived name from Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
I’m struck by how many of my 2022 picks deal with relationships in extremis: a love story disguised as a Hitchcockian murder mystery, a long friendship gone suddenly surreally awry, an unlikely romance that unfolds on a sub-zero train journey, a married couple whose shared obsession with mortality is piqued by a toxic dust cloud, a father-daughter bond that’s finally understood through the prism of bitter-sweet memory.It’s as if all the conflict and uncertainty in the world is being reflected in these personal stories; there even seems a correspondence between a costume drama about a Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Watching Bowie for the only time in what turned out to be his last tour in 2003, I wanted glamour and mystique, Ziggy preserved. Instead here was ordinary bloke Dave, badly dressed in faded jeans and a mismatched top. The beautifully sung, committed performance largely passed me by, as I ached to love the absent, alien Bowie.Brett Morgan’s estate-sanctioned, IMAX-ready, sense-splattering film simulates the fiery trail of Bowie’s earlier, comet impact. Just as his official Stones doc Crossfire Hurricane extracted Jagger’s most revealing band narrative over a torrent of era-defining footage, so Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Back in the mid-Eighties, BBC television started broadcasting The Rock'n' Roll Years, one of the first rock music retrospectives. Each half-hour episode focused on a year, with news reports and music intermixed to give a revealing look at the development of rock culture against the context of current affairs.That is more or less the basic template employed by the makers of Apple TV+’s new eight-parter, 1971 - The Year that Music Changed Everything, ballooning that half-hour to around about six hours of great music, incredible footage, and more great music. It’s loosely based on David Read more ...
Tom Baily
Half a billion dollars is what the top five most lucrative estates of deceased musicians earned last year. The figure represents the cunning work of a few people to turn “legacy” into its own immortal industry. To watch a program on this theme is to peek through the keyhole of a locked cabinet. How does the “RIP business” work? How much – so goes another question – are we really allowed to see?Host Ana Matronic guides us through five case studies in posthumous wealth management. Some are success stories, others cautionary tales. Elvis was the King. The fan stardom that has accumulated since Read more ...
howard.male
Even the most ardent Bowie fan might dismissively sum up their idol's pre-fame years with just these three words: The Laughing Gnome. And so it's hardly surprising that the director of Bowie: Finding Fame, Francis Whately (who also made David Bowie: Five Years and David Bowie: The Last Five Years), found himself wondering if there was enough meat on this particular bone for another 90 minutes' worth of enlightening information and entertainment.But he needn't have worried. The Bowie he uncovered turned out to be just as compulsive in his greed for creating identities, just as keen to move on Read more ...
graham.rickson
Adapted by Raymond Briggs from his best-selling graphic novel, When the Wind Blows was released in 1986 and stands up so well that you’re inclined to forgive its flaws: namely David Bowie’s leaden theme song and an abundance of fairly flat black humour. Though, in hindsight, Jimmy T Murakami’s deadpan, quasi-realist look at nuclear Armageddon as it befalls an elderly working class British couple shouldn’t be amusing.As with all the best animated features, the storytelling grips to the extent that you forget that you’re not watching a flesh-and-blood cast. Not that there’s much story, other Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
If there were an arts award for loyalty, the Barbican Theatre would surely win it for having kept faith with Michael Clark. It’s no secret that the bad-boy image that has clung to Clark since his punk extravaganzas in the 1980s had consequences in his personal and creative life, forcing frequent "early retirements". But the Barbican, along with the Dance Umbrella festival that helped produce his work, kept on believing, and this time last year that belief was rewarded in a knockout triptych of new work sparked in part by the passing of David Bowie. “Fabulous, but too short!” was the general Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It’s a tricky business, approaching comedy on a day when a national tragedy has just occurred. Comedian and broadcaster Adam Buxton is aware of this. It was especially noticeable last night, with his show delayed as a direct result of the Brighton Dome’s extra door security, post-Manchester. As people slowly filed in to take their seats he patrolled the stage, acknowledging the events of the day before. His attempts to move into comedy were initially somewhat awkward, as if it wasn’t quite appropriate. It’s understandable. There’s a general sense of unsureness as to how to proceed. Are we Read more ...
peter.quinn
Hosted by Jazz FM presenter, Jez Nelson, an impressively varied mix of UK and international artists from the worlds of jazz, blues and soul were honoured at the fourth Jazz FM Awards on Tuesday night. Taking place in the stunning surroundings of the Assembly Hall – a grand, high-ceilinged room located on the first floor of Shoreditch Town Hall (a Grade II listed building) – the evening kicked off with a tribute to Ella Fitzgerald. Laura Mvula, having just received the Soul Artist of the Year Award, performed “The Man I Love” from Fitzgerald’s peerless Gershwin Songbook.The tribute was Read more ...
Jasper Rees
It’s been 12 months since the news guy wept and told us: David Bowie, ever out in front, became the first to depart in the year of musical mortality 2016. After the initial lamentations, the memorial tributes have been a mixed bag. Best was the life story stitched together for Radio 4 from a vast back catalogue of audio interviews. Less impactfully there was also the well-meaning misfire at the Proms, plus a messy Dadaist meta-biog rushed out by Paul Morley. Broadcast on what would have been Bowie’s 70th birthday, The Last Five Years is the best attempt yet to contextualise late Bowie in Read more ...