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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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Ned Raggett @nedraggett.bsky.social · 15h

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 · 16h

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 · 16h

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 · 22h

Tell me your most life-affirming literary opinion.

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 16h

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 · 22h

Tell me your most life-affirming literary opinion.

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Bowiesongs (C. O'Leary) @bowiesongs.bsky.social · 17h

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 · 20h

ha! yeah, perhaps a bad example

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Bowiesongs (C. O'Leary) @bowiesongs.bsky.social · 20h

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 · 21h

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 · 21h

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 · 21h

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 · 21h

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 · 21h

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 · 21h

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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Sean T. Collins @seantcollins.com · 21h

Remember when he was "just" the best, sexiest neo-soul guy with the most fun songs of that nature? They're still the most fun songs of that nature! Goddammit!

D'Angelo - Brown Sugar

YouTube video by DAngeloVEVO

www.youtube.com

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Bowiesongs (C. O'Leary) @bowiesongs.bsky.social · 21h

RIP--ah, what a loss. www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRCL...

D'Angelo, The Vanguard - The Charade (Live on SNL)

YouTube video by DAngeloVEVO

www.youtube.com

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Mike Duquette @mikeduquette.bsky.social · 22h

Heartbroken that, per his social media accounts, Drew Struzan has left us. His poster and album art was quite simply shorthand for imagination for countless young people.

E.T. Adventure poster, 1990. I still have one of these hanging in my childhood bedroom.

Star Wars Special edition triptych, 1997. I remember seeing all of these in the paper as each film was re-released and just felt a burst of energy those mornings.

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Bowiesongs (C. O'Leary) @bowiesongs.bsky.social · 1d

Eno diary, 14 October 1995: "Seamus Heaney, asked how he’ll handle Nobel fame: ‘In Ireland everybody is famous from birth and they become skillful in handling these matters.’....My diary: a book?"*

*a turning point. for the rest of the year, E. becomes more self-consciously "on"; less freewheeling

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Bowiesongs (C. O'Leary) @bowiesongs.bsky.social · 1d

the charts just seem broken at this point: an influx of like every track from a hot new release, and then when that ebbs, you're left with like exhausted tracks from 2023 somehow still in the top 40

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Bowiesongs (C. O'Leary) @bowiesongs.bsky.social · 1d

i've long wondered if it was a secret Updike parody

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Caryn Rose @carynrose.bsky.social · 1d

i'm not sure spoilers apply to things that are over 40 years old but I wrote about Electric Nebraska for @theguardian.com : www.theguardian.com/music/2025/o... #springsteen

Bruce Springsteen: Nebraska ’82: Expanded Edition review – fabled album falls short of expectations

Rumours of the existence of E Street versions of Springsteen’s masterpiece have swirled for decades, but the reality doesn’t live up to the hype

www.theguardian.com

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Bowiesongs (C. O'Leary) @bowiesongs.bsky.social · 1d

nice! i have that Bergman set somewhere in the basement

Bowiesongs (C. O'Leary) @bowiesongs.bsky.social · 1d

yeah i was able to do this--very happy to not have get a new laptop at the moment

🎥 Kathy 📼 Fennessy 📽️ @kcfennessy.bsky.social · 1d

In case you're in the same Windows 10 vs 11 predicament.

Windows 10 support ends tomorrow, but here's how to get an extra year for free

Thanks to Extended Security Updates, you don't have to make the switch to Windows 11 just yet.

www.engadget.com

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Bowiesongs (C. O'Leary) @bowiesongs.bsky.social · 1d

it's like their last ditch of audiences are people suffering from a bad cold/flu and lying on the couch in a daze, watching endless crap reality shows on TV

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

talked w/ Howard Zinn a few times (he was an emeritus prof at BU, but kept office hours & would chat with anyone). he once got into how he'd planned that opening--the film-like 'reverse perspective' of the Arawaks seeing Columbus; a direct hit against the foundational grade-school US history fable

Denny Carter @dennycarter.bsky.social · May 19

After reading the first fifty pages of A People’s History of the United States my feelings on Christopher Columbus have gone from “we shouldn’t have a day commemorating him” to something … much, much darker.

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

yes! broccoli and brussels sprouts being cooked to a fine crispiness, not boiled to utter mush, was a revelation

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

but the main thing is (and i do quite understand why they didn't do it) the Bowie/NIN segue tracks really should've been included--it was key to those shows

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