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Bowiesongs (C. O'Leary)

@bowiesongs.bsky.social

3.7K followers 470 following 4.7K posts

Books (Rebel Rebel; Ashes to Ashes), blogs (64 Quartets; Pushing Ahead of the Dame; Locust St.)

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Bowiesongs (C. O'Leary) @bowiesongs.bsky.social · Jun 4

A brief note about the Rebel Rebel revision (on sale July 8, but you can order it now): bowiesongs.wordpress.com/2025/06/04/r...

Rebel Rebel: A New Version

Presenting: The second edition of Rebel Rebel: The Songs of David Bowie, 1963-1976, which will go on sale on Tuesday, 8 July 2025, and which can be pre-ordered right now. This site gives you some o…

bowiesongs.wordpress.com

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Bowiesongs (C. O'Leary) @bowiesongs.bsky.social · 5m

So true: kids then knew the band members by sight but may not have ever heard a Kiss song: they were on the same level as Lou Ferrigno's Hulk, Darth Vader or the Fonz. RIP Starchild

Ned Raggett @nedraggett.bsky.social · 32m

I can’t overly romanticize the band for any number of reasons but being born in 1971, by the dawn of the eighties they were this ambient force, like maybe them and the Beatles were the only two bands per se I knew of by name. He was part of it all. www.rollingstone.com/music/music-...

Kiss Guitarist Ace Frehley Dead at 74

Ace Frehley, the Spaceman of Kiss who played with the group from their formation in 1973 until 1983, and then again in the Nineties, has died at 74.

www.rollingstone.com

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John Leavitt @leavittalone.bsky.social · 3h

Happy birthday Oscar Wilde. - do yourself a favor and read his rambling essay on how a chief benefit of socialism is that we get art made by not rich people www.marxists.org/reference/ar...

Oscar Wilde. The Soul of Man under Socialism

The Soul of Man under Socialism by Oscar Wilde

www.marxists.org

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Ned Raggett @nedraggett.bsky.social · 3h

So being a happy and longtime subscriber to @bowiesongs.bsky.social's Patreon means getting to see his 64 Quartets work emerge in stages. He's currently in a fascinating dive into Wire and its contexts, and a mention of art school includes this photo and...Eno's look here.

Photo captioned "Brian Eno and Roy Ascott, Ipswich School of Art, ca. 1968." The backdrop is a combination of foil and white corrugated walls that looks very 'This is another alien ship on Doctor Who c. 1974' in ways. Ascott is on the right in a yellow turtleneck and jacket grabbing something on a table in front of him, while Eno is on the left and...it's like if baby Thom Yorke was some sort of posh goth gentleman aesthete who couldn't decide if it's 1890 or 1980.

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Bowiesongs (C. O'Leary) @bowiesongs.bsky.social · 4h

a real "hedging my bets for the '90s" vestibule look

David Bowie News @davidbowienews.bsky.social · 4h

David Bowie, 1989, by Herb Ritts.

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Bowiesongs (C. O'Leary) @bowiesongs.bsky.social · 4h

the Federline thing is depressing because a while back i thought "well, at least we have heard from that clown in over a decade; maybe he's gone for good" and now we're going to get a year of Discourse about his awful book

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Paul Duane 🥔 @paulduane.bsky.social · 5h

The Irish writer Lee Dunne, who died a couple of years ago, told me that he fought with his publishers for the right to have his books put out in paperback first, as he knew most of his readers couldn't afford hardbacks (he lost).

Jamie McKelvie @mckelvie.bsky.social · 5h

My strongest book-related belief is that the paperback should come first and then the hardback after for people who want a fancy edition.

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Bowiesongs (C. O'Leary) @bowiesongs.bsky.social · 5h

it's just very enjoyable rock music, already kind of a throwback in '92---full of hooks, great harmonies, some wonderful lines, etc

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Alfred Soto @sotoalfred.bsky.social · 6h

The Sugar news and Bob Mould's birthday made re-visiting COPPER BLUE a no-brainer. Sculpting distortion and multi-tracking like a dance deejay does throb, build, and release, Mould used his recombinant craftsmanship to a lifetime of anxieties. humanizingthevacuum.wordpress.com/2025/10/16/a...

A good idea: Sugar’s ‘Copper Blue’

Oh, look, it’s Granny Cool. When “Helpless” became a hit on my college station in the fall of 1992, I didn’t need to know a thing about its singer or his former band: he sou…

humanizingthevacuum.wordpress.com

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Bowiesongs (C. O'Leary) @bowiesongs.bsky.social · 6h

i love Taschen but they are the bane of my existence, storage wise--they often wind up jammed in a small row between the couch and shelf of records

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Bowiesongs (C. O'Leary) @bowiesongs.bsky.social · 7h

yeah Away with You is incredible. haven't dug into the new one that much yet, but liked what i heard

Bowiesongs (C. O'Leary) @bowiesongs.bsky.social · 8h

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Bowiesongs (C. O'Leary) @bowiesongs.bsky.social · 9h

here's to Mary Halvorson at 45. "Saturn Sings" was the first of her records that I heard (15 yrs ago now, yeeks) (& she's made a dozen just as good since!): maryhalvorson.bandcamp.com/track/leak-o...

Leak Over Six Five (No. 14), by Mary Halvorson

from the album Saturn Sings

maryhalvorson.bandcamp.com

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Charles Hughes @charleshughes2.bsky.social · 1d

New at No Fences Review: @cantkill.bsky.social and I gathered together some of our favorite D'Angelo tracks - both studio and live recordings - as well as some great writing about him. It's still hard to fathom that he's left us so soon. Please share and subscribe.

D'Angelo, 1974-2025

A tribute playlist to one of the greats

nofencesreview.substack.com

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Ned Raggett @nedraggett.bsky.social · 2d

A post on ILX a little earlier about D’Angelo and this strikes me as so very correct. - www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSe...

I played through the discography today and was struck by the way "Playa Playa" and "Ain't That Easy" open their respective albums — in both cases, rather than making some hurrah of reintroducing him, they kind of drop in media res into D'Angelo's workshop, like you can feel it all taking shape around you, and eventually the murk resolves into grooves, and he's just there, doing the thing. Almost like the albums conjure him, or his essence precedes his presence.

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Joey Politano🏳️‍🌈 @josephpolitano.bsky.social · 2d

Finished Battle Cry of Freedom—incredible book, surely the best single-volume account of the Civil War, it's more than earned canonization. So remarkable to make a 900pg book this detail-rich & yet still obviously a condensation of an even larger knowledge base
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Joey Politano's review of Battle Cry of Freedom

5/5: What praise can I give Battle Cry of Freedom that hasn't been lavished on it a hundred times before? An incredible book, surely the best single-volume account of the Civil War and one of the best...

www.goodreads.com

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Bowiesongs (C. O'Leary) @bowiesongs.bsky.social · 2d

the books outlast the tyrants, always will. Milton lives, the Stuarts are gone. Lorca lives, Franco is gone. Isaac Babel lives, Stalin is gone. Bolano lives, Pinochet is gone. & onward

John Wiswell @wiswell.bsky.social · 2d

Tell me your most life-affirming literary opinion.

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 2d

Nobody has, will, or can read even 1% of the greatest literature ever written. Every canon is incomplete, every library is only a fragment, even the most knowledgeable reader is a blind mouse in an open field. Every encounter is a miracle.

John Wiswell @wiswell.bsky.social · 2d

Tell me your most life-affirming literary opinion.

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Bowiesongs (C. O'Leary) @bowiesongs.bsky.social · 2d

when he gets to the bit about getting a 10-lb bag of cocaine, that is the sound of experience in his voice

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Bowiesongs (C. O'Leary) @bowiesongs.bsky.social · 2d

ha! yeah, perhaps a bad example

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Bowiesongs (C. O'Leary) @bowiesongs.bsky.social · 2d

i wonder who this alleged audience even is. are there people out there who want to see Fred Astaire fight Darth Vader? i mean, probably, but are there more than like 50-100 of them, and why do we have to cater to these people?

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Nate Patrin @natepatrin.bsky.social · 2d

Ann makes a real gut-kick observation here. So many artists I love who should've had a Scott Walker/Yoko Ono aged-experimenter coda

Ann Powers @annkpowers.bsky.social · 2d

D'Angelo was remarkable in so many ways. I'm saddest right now, as a fan, that we won't be getting an eccentric late period from him. His contributions remain inestimable but what he would have made in his 50s and onward, I just know it would have been amazing. RIP

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Bowiesongs (C. O'Leary) @bowiesongs.bsky.social · 2d

it really hit home watching that clip again---stuff like this really got under their skin back then

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Bowiesongs (C. O'Leary) @bowiesongs.bsky.social · 2d

seriously: it also feels like our current government is hell-bent on trying to erase/obscure the culture that could create something like it

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Bowiesongs (C. O'Leary) @bowiesongs.bsky.social · 2d

as per Donny McCaslin, Bowie was listening to "Black Messiah" during the making of Blackstar (it had come out a month or so before sessions began), and you really hear it in many corners of that record.

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Nate Patrin @natepatrin.bsky.social · 2d

damn, @see-saw.fun just reminded me of this and I am going to need a moment

D'Angelo ft. Princess Sometimes It Snows in April

YouTube video by samuel

www.youtube.com

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