1987 Fagburn Awards: Albums Of The Year

1. Good Times - The Monkees

Shockingly good. And great to hear something so joyous in a world otherwise drowning in death (see below).

2. Black Star - David Bowie

3. Skeleton Tree - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

4. You Want It Darker -  Leonard Cohen

5. Let The Record Show - Dexys

Fagburn's most played artists this year were Syd Barrett, Big Audio Dynamite, Chas & Dave, Grace Jones and Sleaford Mods.

Alexis Arquette: 1969-2016

The Sun.

Think she might have been listening to Black Star.

Cause of death 'unknown'...

ie Aids.

Oliver James: Upping Your Ziggy

This book could be a life-saver.

I love Oliver James but he could just say David was fucked up about fucking his step-brother, Terry.

Michael Stipe: The Man Who Sold The World

Stipe's homage to The Dame for The Jimmy Fallon Show.

Not sure about the Kropotkin beard or the piercing, and - oddly - Lulu's version was peerless.

LGBT History Month: Oi!

It's LGBT History Month.

This is quite a good cover, isn't it?

Bowie: And His Relevance To The Church Of England Schism

Can you see what he did there?

PS Lost count of the shit 'tributes' to Bowie...

David Bowie: Goodbye

Wow.
x

David Bowie: 1947-2016

Wow.
x

Bowie: Sake

BBC Radio 1 Newsbeat.

PS More on this Art (Tenth Of A) Decade project from The Independent.

NB Academics are paid on a sliding scale according to how much they are cited, basically.

David Bowie & Mick Jagger: Song Of The Silent Age

Always thought this video of Mick and the Dame trying to out-camp each other was the best thing about Live Aid.
Now someone's turned down the sound, bunged it on YouTube and the silly old buggers have GONE VIRAL!
So you've probably seen it already, so why am I posting it?
WHAT IS POINT???!!

This hot dude's face has also GONE VIRAL!

As you can see the Mail Online are clearly appalled at this.

So appalled they keep reprinting the 'sexy criminal mugshot'.

Fagburn started a fing - Hotties In The News - but stopped cause I got complaints and soon realised most of the hotties in the news had committed terrible crimes.

Hey, don't hate on me for being an early adopter, bro's.

PS The Tumblr Hot And Busted has been doing this for yonks.

Time: Falls Wanking To The Floor

It's a David Bowie lyric, so don't write in.
x

PS If you put the word 'wanking' in a blogpost your hits go into interstellar overdrive.

Update: We're at a tipping point for transgender equality - Jane Fae, The Guardian Cif.

David Bowie: Top Of The Pops

"I was a gay 12 year-old just starting to take an interest in pop music and I was knocked out.
"I was watching with my mother who said, Oh he looks like Glenda Jackson playing Elizabeth I - which in retrospect was quite perceptive.
"And then came the famous moment on the show when David Bowie slung his arm around guitarist Mick Ronson - which was simultaneously blokey but also a bit gay. It may not sound like much now but in 1972 it was a revolution.
"A few months before the TOTP appearance, Bowie said on the record in the Melody Maker that he was gay - or at least bisexual. 
"Looking back now, the statement was ambiguous but at the time it was a brave thing to say - it was only five years since homosexual acts had been legalised in Britain.
"I didn't find David Bowie at all attractive in any physical way. But I loved what he stood for.
"He clearly knew his way around gay culture in terms of its writing and music and visual art. "More than anyone else, he blasted the closet-door off its hinges. So for that I'll always love him - but his position on the politics of sexuality is a conflicted one. If, like me, you're a big Bowie fan you just have to accept that.
"At the very least in the '70s he was a pioneer of sexual openness in Britain. It was a long time before anyone came along in music who was unambiguously gay. Arguably in Britain, that title goes to Jimmy Somerville but Bowie paved the way."

Rupert Smith quoted in a BBC News magazine feature David Bowie: Did He Change Attitudes To Sexuality?
I've compiled them together and left out all the other bits in the article using Bryon Gysin and William Burrough's cut-up technique - as a tribute to the enduring cultural legacy of David Bowie.
I don't care about you, but I'm a bit over-stuffed with reading everyone saying how wonderful Bowie is right now, but I liked this.

PS I also liked Tilda Swinton's tribute to the Dame at the opening of David Bowie Is.

David Bowie: "Golden Years"

A few years back I had an amusing email exchange with Angie Bowie when I was trying to fix up an interview.
She broke it off with the immortal line that she was bored with talking about David Bowie. 
Anyway, I'm happy to report that she's in-no-way bonkers, nor has she ever tried to trade on David's name nor cash in on his success.
She's also a reliable source of information on the Dame back in the early days, and - by golly - she's never told any of these stories in the Sun Sunday before has she?  
If you haven't OD-ed on DB coverage in the media recently, you might want to read this Guardian piece - When Bowie Met Burroughs - by Jon Savage instead.
A strange title, as it's actually an overview of his glittering career and - though it's been a cliche in all the recent safety blanket coverage - his terrific cultural impact.
Whatever it's a rare interesting and insightful piece amongst a tidal wave of tired old guff.  
Most papers seem to think they can get away with stars reminisces of the golden years, or by filling a few pages with some old photos and "insights" cribbed from the book accompanying the upcoming V&A exhibition David Bowie Is...
(It opens in a fortnight - interesting timing seeing as no-one knew about this comeback). 
The Sunday Times Magazine has lifted a whole article from the book, Oh! You Pretty Thing, by... Camille Paglia.
Can't believe anyone still takes this silly old fraud seriously anymore.
For once be grateful if you can't get behind the Murdoch paywall.    

Fagburn: Here Is The Gay Non-News

Dong! There's not much happening in Gayland to be honest. I won't keep you, so here's today's non-news in brief. 

Dong! Lots of people over 40 are getting overexcited about David Bowie releasing a surprise new single, Where Are We Now?, on his 66th birthday. It's not that good, really, but hurrah for nostalgia and that. Rumours of a surprise Gary Glitter comeback tomorrow unconfirmed.

Dong! Far more importantly it's Elvis's birthday today, which we always celebrate at Fagburn Mansions. Here's a Spotify playlist of some of my favourite Elvis songs I made a while ago. It's rimming ace.

Dong! Coalition 4 Marriage have released another ComRes poll on gay marriage. Telegraph dutifully salivates. Here's why, once again, it's really dodgy and goes against all the other research on this. And here's why ComRes/C4M polls can't be trusted. Not sure if this predictable anti-gay tripe even warrants comment anymore, but y'know...

Dong! Things are so desperate that another minor US celebrity no-one in the UK has heard of has come out is "newsworthy". Gay Idiot News dutifully salivates. More from Gay Star News: "Another Christian homophobe has said something stupid and homophobic today, almost certainly. GSN are so politically braindead, things like this are all that we get angry about. Plus more of the usual advertorial, press releases, days-old "news", general cringe-making naffness, and power-serving, Orientalist, hegemonic badly-written junk. Yay!"

Dong!: Even Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail couldn't raise my righteous ire today. "After getting their cassocks in a twist over female bishops, the Church of England has given the thumbs up to gay bishops — but only if they agree to remain celibate. I don’t want to sound difficult but, apart from God, how will anyone be able to check?" True, obviously. Note to the Church of England hierarchy, even Richard Littlejohn thinks all this is quite laughable.

Dong! A thick gay posh twat has been left - quite literally - stunned after finding out the BNP is full of bigots.  

Dong! Liked this piece, Columnism, by Ulrike Meinhof on how newspapers' "radical" columnists "function as a pressure release valve..." Much more to be said on the vanity and cliqueyness of "star columnists", and how this is antithetical to claims of being of the left, which I hope to wibble on about some day. (Thanks to Pierce Penniless x).

Dong! Why don't you just switch off your computer and go and do something less boring instead?

Radio Soulwax: Dave

Lovely.
Reminded me why I love Dame David.
And why I love Soulwax.

x

PS Positively gripping interview I did with the lovely David from Soulwax in 2005 posted below.
"This record makes Erasure seem like Oasis - it oozes gayness..."

David Bowie: There Is Nothing Like The Dame

All the broadsheets have gone batshit mental with excitement today about David Bowie - he even gets a leader in The Times - springboarding off the forthcoming David Bowie Is exhibition at the V&A.
Cause if it's in a museum that means it's your actual art, right?

Ziggy Stardust: Who She?

 
'On Thursday 6 July 1972, halfway through an edition of Top of the Pops, David Bowie performed his new single, Starman. Dressed in a multicoloured lycra jumpsuit, he put his arm languidly round his guitarist Mick Ronson and looked seductively into his eyes. Now, exactly 40 years later, Dylan Jones has written a 200-page book, When Ziggy Played Guitar, all about those three-and-a-half minutes of television. "It was thrilling, slightly dangerous, transformative," writes Jones, who was 12 at the time. "For me, and for those like me, it felt that the future had finally arrived."
'...But did this moment really "create havoc in millions of sitting rooms all over Britain", as Jones suggests? We do not know, because no fossil record of its contemporary effect on viewers remains. In 1972 there were no Twitter hashtags to collate an instant collective response, and it was only in the 1980s that newspapers, faced with declining readerships, really began to cling parasitically to the younger medium of television as a source of comment and gossip. So Bowie's performance inspired no press coverage or public reaction at the time, simply vanishing into the ether to make way for The Goodies at 8pm."

Joe Moran - one of Fagburn's most favourite writers by the Billy way - in The Guardian questions the hype, fetishism, overstatement and false memory syndrome about Ziggy Stardust.
A great piece as per.
I think it's safe to assume if this book he writes of is by Tory dickwad Dylan Jones it'll be as crap as a dog turd.
Joe, I've never figured if you're gay, but if you are, drop us an email and we can go for a date.
I have discount vouchers for Pizza Express.
Warning! I'm even more boring in real life.
Though that might be a come-on to you.

Ziggy Stardust: 40 Years On

On Thursday June 6th 1972, just after 7pm, David Bowie performed Starman on Top Of The Pops.
For many confused young viewers suddenly tomorrow looked wonderful.

Ziggy Changed My Life: Lipstick Traces

Okay, maybe this one doesn't look too good on paper.
A radio documentary about Ziggy Stardust written and presented by Gary Kemp of Spandau Ballet fame - but it was pretty good.
Kemp can be a thoughtful writer (I remember Julie Burchill once saying how shocked she was at how good he was) and forty years ago, he was there.
A working-class lad from north London who had his world turned upside down by Ziggy Stardust, Kemp was also a witness to Ziggy's legendary farewell performance at Hammersmith Odeon in 1973.
At times this seemed a bit York Notes; racing through a litany of the influences David Bowie fed off for his greatest creation; Little Richard, Vince Taylor, Lindsay Kemp, Andy Warhol blah blah blah.
Its strength lay in the interviews with a number of Bowie's friends and collaborators, most hilariously Spiders Woody and Trevor, two very straight blokes from Hull wondering how far into poovery they were being taken.
There are also some great little jolts about how threatening many found this at the time, like the TV producer who didn't want "those perverts" on his show.
Kemp is particularly good on how thrilling he found it all, it was, he has written, his "teenage crush".
John Lennon once quipped about Bowie's early 70s model/s; "It's great - but it's just Rock n Roll with lipstick on."
This programme shows why Ziggy Stardust meant so much more than just that.

PS If you're reading this in the not-too-distant future and the above i-Player link has expired, it's being repeated on BBC Radio 2 on June 6th - your actual 40th anniversary of the album's release.

Ziggy Stardust: Still

The plaque to Ziggy Stardust on London's Heddon Street is being unveiled today.
Staring at this record sleeve as a kid always gave me a thrilling sense of otherness, like there was another world out there, maybe waiting just around the corner.
A sea of im/possibilities.
Still does.
Never a big fan of the heritage rock industry, me, but something about this still moves me. 
Still.

Update: The unveiling leads to John Walsh remember being a teenage Ziggy fan in The Independent.
Gets kudos for not mentioning his first sighting of Ziggy on Old Grey Whistle Test/Top Of The Pops and wibbling on about how life was instantly transformed...