Bowie, Klosterman, Pappademas

Det er tvilsomt om nettavisene til henholdsvis VG, Dagbladet og TV 2 hadde tatt seg bryet med å presentere «videopremiere» på den nye musikkvideoen til David Bowie om det ikke var for at en viss Iselin Steiro var involvert, men hvorom allting er: Bowie har momentum! Og bedre påskudd trenger ikke en Bowie-aficionado for å presentere en liten smørbrødliste.

LES: Epostvekslingen mellom Chuck Klosterman og Alex Pappademas idet de – feilaktig – har fått vite at Bowies død er nært forestående. En tour de force – typisk for nettsiden The Grantland – om rockepersona, kjendiskult, autensitet, iscenesettelse og skaperkraft – ispedd presise observasjoner om «twitter-sørging». Par eksempler:

«You know, everyone still uses the term "rock star" incessantly, even though rock stars no longer exist. The idea of the rock star is a constant in our mental culture, but not as an element of our hard reality. Calling someone a "rock star" is like calling someone a "door-to-door salesman" — we all know what it means and we all know what it signifies, but no one occupies its literal designation. Instead, we say things like, "Game designers are the new rock stars" or "Bike messengers are the new rock stars." However, there are no rock stars becoming the new rock stars. That's over. The term is just an abstraction that connotes a specific type of public perception. And it's astounding how much of that specific abstraction is still a straightforward portrait of what David Bowie built in 1972.

(…)

When Joni Mitchell dies I will think about the women I talked to about Joni Mitchell so that they'd think I was the kind of complicated cat who likes a little Hissing of Summer Lawns with his Sunday-morning coffee. (I really resent that scene in The Kids Are All Right when Annette Bening and Mark Ruffalo are at an incredibly awkward dinner together until they bond over their shared love of Blue, because now you can't have a conversation with anybody about Blue without it sounding like canned indie-movie dialogue, which is too bad because Blue is the shit, and a really good conversation starter.)»

PS. Jeg ELSKER Hissingof Summer Lawns på søndager. Har den på vinyl.

SE: Av alle Bowie-inkarnasjoner er ingen snålere enn The Thin White Duke. På en diett utelukkende bestående av «paprika, kokain og melk» oppsto en radmager aristokratskikkelse hvis grunnleggende … hulhet («ice masquerading as fire») bare ble matchet av Bowies etterhvert like innhule bryst og kinn. Karakteren oppsto selvfølgelig mens Bowie bodde i Los Angeles, hedonismens hovedstad. UANSETT, her kjøres han rundt i et eller annet ørkenlandskap mens han drikker melk og stilles teite spørsmål. Som her:

Intervjuer: Since you've been in America, you seem to have picked up on a lot of the themes and idioms of American music and culture. How has that happened?

Bowie: There's a fly, floatin' around in my milk!

LYTT: Det er jo den feteste Bowie-låta. Skikkelig Neilern-gitar mot slutten der.