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Thank You David Bowie

What can I say, Dave is dead and still messing with us afterwards with his quiet private death and public bow-out with Blackstar

When I was thirteen I shaved my eyebrows off because of Dave, I remember pushing the needle on my record player so many times during the “wanking like a whore” section of Timeto stop my mum hearing the word, that it ended up with a perpetual skip at “falls wanking to the…falls wanking to the…”, I wore weird clothes and make-up, I eventually joined a punk band which I haven’t left…Dave always put Where Were You in his top twenty song lists and even though I wasn’t a Mekon back then, it was an exciting, vague connection to the man himself.

In 2014 Jon Langford and I performed in Chicago as part of the Bowie exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art.  Didn’t like the exhibition, heard he hadn’t either.  We created an irreverent but loving show in his honor; I always hoped he might have seen some crummy videotaped version of it and laughed (I think he had a good sense of humor about himself).

I hadn’t paid much attention to his later work. It didn’t really matter, his back catalog is part of my DNA.  On top of all that musical innovation he was a really phenomenal singer, listen to Wild is the Wind and tell me that I’m wrong…Goodbye David Bowie and thank you.