Something happened on the day he died
Spirit rose a metre then stepped aside
Somebody else took his place, and bravely cried
I’m a blackstar
How many times does an angel fall?
How many people lie instead of talking tall?
He trod on sacred ground, he cried loud into the
crowd
I’m a BlackStar…
- singer/songwriter: David Bowie
A BLACKSTAR is a star that has died. It is incapable of giving off light, yet it still has mass. It still has gravity.
David Bowie can no longer create new music for us; he can no longer give off light. Yet he can still pull us into his orbit. His gravity is still a force that cannot be ignored.
Another lazy afternoon in Starbucks chatting with the coffee shop habitués and the political pundits on the latest issues happening in “I Am Iloilo City” i.e. ABS-CBN, quo warranto and ube cheese pandesal…
The inevitable dreaded by Panay Electric Co. (PECO) has happened. MORE Electric and Power Corp. (MORE Power), via a Writ of Possession, has taken over their entire facilities save for the main administration building.
And all PECO can do is call for a prayer rally or something. Perhaps a pray-over by that running priest Fr. Robert Reyes might drive MORE Power away.
Boring stuff, really. Just to make it interesting, making small talk and flirting with the pretty baristas might bring out some inspiration and it actually did something about , “Why all the lady baristas in Starbucks are pretty?” But not today, some other time perhaps.
And we segue to revisit BlackStar, David Bowie’s last album on YouTube.
To say that Moi is “blown away” is an understatement and definitely it’s not the double espresso.
Here are excerpts from that free online encyclopedia a.k.a. the internet:
Blackstar is the 25th and final studio album by the English musician David Bowie. It was released worldwide through ISO, RCA, Columbia, and Sony on Jan. 8, 2016, coinciding with Bowie’s 69th birthday. The album was largely recorded in secret between The Magic Shop and Human Worldwide Studios in New York City with Bowie’s long-time co-producer Visconti and a group of local jazz musicians.
Two days after its release, Bowie died of liver cancer; his illness had not been revealed to the public until then. Co-producer Visconti described the album as Bowie’s intended swan song and a “parting gift” for his fans before his death.
Upon release, the album was met with critical acclaim and commercial success, topping charts in a number of countries in the wake of Bowie’s death, and becoming Bowie’s only album to top the Billboard 200 in the United States.
The album remained at the No. 1 position in the UK charts for three weeks. It was the fifth bestselling album of the entire year, worldwide. It was also the best selling album worldwide for two consecutive weeks, having sold more than 969,000 copies as of Jan. 31, 2016. It has sold more than 1,900,000 copies as of April 2017, and received Gold and Platinum certifications in the US and UK, respectively.
At the 59th Annual Grammy Awards, the album won awards for Best Alternative Music Album; Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical; Best Recording Package, and the title single won Best Rock Performance, and Best Rock Song.
The album was also awarded the British Album of the Year award at the 2017 Brit Awards, and Metacritic named it the most critically acclaimed album of the year by music publications.
From “Major Tom”, “Ziggy Stardust”, Aladdin Sane” to the “The Thin White Duke”, David Bowie the rock star who invented “Glam Rock” saved the best for last with “BlackStar”.
Billboard and CNN wrote that Bowie’s lyrics seem to address his impending death, with CNN noting that the album “reveals a man who appears to be grappling with his own mortality”. “Lazarus”, the third track on the album, was notable for the lines “Look up here, I’m in heaven / I’ve got scars that can’t be seen”; this specific part of the lyrics appeared in many publications following Bowie’s death on Jan. 10.
“Blackstar” is perhaps Bowie’s most experimental work since his album Low released in 1977. It contains several total shifts in instrumentation, but whilst images of death crop up repeatedly, the lyrics are abstruse and there are no obvious clues to any story unifying the fragments.
Other than “blown away” Moi is at a loss for words on how to describe David Bowie’s BlackStar Album, it is Jazz, Rock, R&B with elements of Hip Hop. Simply put, the epitome of fusion music.
It would be fitting that we end with these lines from David Bowie…
The truth is, of course, that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same time…
I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring. (brotherlouie16@gmail.com/PN)
