David Bowie's new album has been streaming for free at iTunes for the last week or so. With an ominous 10 years of silence and rumours of failing health behind him, Bowie mounted an impressive publicity coup when he very suddenly released the video for "Where Are We Now" on his 66th birthday in January.
The excitement was infectious. This was the first time in a very long time that David Bowie rose above the sea level of his own fame, where he's been stuck since the '80s. There was none of this buzz around Heathen, or Earthling, or anything going all the way back to Let's Dance.
And hey, this sudden paroxysm of Bowiemania is occurring when YouTube counters spin out of control over the nth generation pop of One Direction and the grating infantilism of PSY. It's a stirring last minute victory for the old Dame, who's still got it -- or enough of it, at least -- to re-emerge with something as thoroughly enjoyable if inessential as The Next Day, a set so gratuitously self-reflexive that Bowie even goofs himself on the album cover. Not that I'm complaining.
Meanwhile, the universe has hiccupped and left a big Iggy and the Stooges-shaped blob of yellow phlegm on our collective windshield again. The timing is delightful for those who remember the last time Bowie and the Stooges had any proximity in the public mind. They collaborated on 1973's Raw Power, with Bowie's mix passing into history (not entirely fairly) as a sort of grand blight on an otherwise epochal record.
Earlier in the week, Iggy and the Stooges -- reconfigured after the death of guitarist Ron Asheton to include Iggy's scary foil from the Raw Power era, James Williamson--previewed a track from their forthcoming album, Ready to Die. And as the British tabloids used to say: Phew, what a scorcher! Although I suspect it's much less deliberate than Bowie's game of spot-the-reference, "Burn" takes the guitar hook from "Gimme Danger," rearranges it ever so slightly, and then marches cock-out into the post-millennium loudness wars.
You can decide who among this cast of ancients is best acting their age.
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