salone del mobile

Thanks to Fast Company, we learn that the late David Bowie was a grand patron of the Memphis-Milano movement having amassed a sizable collection with signature pieces from artists like Peter Shire and Ettore Sottsass.
The collection is so extensive and representative of the group’s work, Bowie’s furniture will be given its own auction and one can preview the lots at the link. Comprised chiefly Italian designers, they took the name Memphis, incidentally, after hearing the Bob Dylan song “Stuck inside of Mobile (furnishing as well as a city in Alabama) with the Memphis Blues Again.”

oration or the sound and vision

Thanks to a sharp eye perusing a 1984 edition of some teen Tiger Beat magazine, the response to an inquiring reader’s question about the rumoured role of the Great Emancipator to be portrayed by none other than David Bowie, we learn about an unperformed but still immense spectacle that was to be played at one of the Olympic venues of the Los Angeles games that summer.
Far outstripping those cross-over, special guest-star sitcom episodes that kept my rapt attention (like when Fred and Ethel Mertz appeared as Darinn Stevens’—the second Darrin—parents or when the Harlem Globe-Trotters were shipwrecked on Gilligan’s Island or the angry ghost of Valerie Bertinelli haunted the Love Boat), an experimental, day-long bit of musical theatre was being orchestrated, called CIVIL warS, it was to feature the musical stylings of Mister David Byrne with libretto that included Mister Bowie as Abraham Lincoln, delivering the Gettysburg Address in Japanese. Corporate sponsors were a little anxious, and with the boycott of the American games by the polarised Communist world, the project was shelved. Read more about this amazing opera that would have perhaps been too grand and overwhelming for this Universe at Dangerous Minds. The closing ceremonies did include a UFO landing to the fanfare of Thus Spake Zarathustra and a giant grey alien that saluted humanity’s peaceful coming together.

5x5

antique singer sewing machines: cosplay caliphate labs are desperate to obtain red mercury

genre: enterprise in Grenoble to furnish free short works of fiction so people waiting don’t feel compelled to stare at their phones

membership has its privileges: no longer a melting-pot for the ordinary and fabulous to endure together, Los Angeles is constructing an exclusive celebrity terminal

space oddity: theatrical preview of David Bowie’s upcoming Blackstar album

b.f. skinner: pigeons can be trained to spot anomalies on diagnostic screenings as good as human radiologists

curtain-call and cat-walk

Sometimes a reminder is far better than a discovery.

Dangerous Minds admonishes us how David Bowie, fresh from the release of his album “Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)” toured with the theatre company performing The Elephant Man, playing the principal role. Fellow-actors and the audience attested that he played the part perfectly, without make-up or prosthetics. Other artists, reportedly, only craved the Elephant Man’s bones. The mobarazzi by fans was really to much to bear at times, and David Bowie took measures to protect himself. During the production’s run on Broadway, several luminaries caught the show, including Yoko Ono and John Lennon—who was killed by a crazed fan shortly afterward. This tragic act must have surely turned Bowie away from the stage, given the grasping he’d already experienced despite his talent. Be sure to check out the link for more details and a performance.

ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

In honour of David Bowie’s birthday and recent release of a new album last week, Tumblratrix Helen Green created this lovely style retrospective spanning five decades. Time may change me but I can’t trace time.

arcade sounds

Via Laughing Squid comes a nifty series of the lyrics to David Bowie’s timeless ballad “Space Oddity” illustrated through panels, imagined album covers of vintage arcade and console video games. Though not quite lent the psychological heft of one’s own favourite songs or of Mozart to settle one’s mood, video game music (think Коробейники, the Tetris song) is composed specifically to remove distractions and helps to keep one focused.

märchenhaft or funk to funky

The splendid directory of keen stuff Super Punch brings us the latest project by artist and illustrator Andrew Kolb. Inspired by the mental images that each line evokes, Kolb created a children’s story from the lyrics of David Bowie’s Space Oddity. He shares the whole thing on his website, along with other pretty imaginative works. Modern ballads, it seems, after Bowie, the Beatles and the Stones, do not consistently tell a story, but there are exceptions. Maybe it's too difficult to separate the music video from the music, sometimes.  What songs fill your head with images and a happy end?