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Bookwomble
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I'm up to David's 1973 album, Pin Ups, in which he glams up some of his favourite songs by bands from the '60s, some of which had played the same circuit of pubs and community centres he emerged from himself. There's a couple of bonus tracks on this disc, including Bruce Springsteen's Growing Up, which David had seen him play at Max's Kansas City a few months earlier. I love that David respects the songs while infusing them with his own energy ⚡

Bookwomble This is taking me a bit longer to read than I'd initially expected, but that's because I'm savoring it, not because it's difficult or boring 💛🧑🏼‍🎤🧡
#BooksAndBowie #BooksAndMusic
2w
The_Book_Ninja My mum loved David Bowie. I remember this LP sleeve was always out. I think that‘s Twiggy on the cover. She saw him live. She said his teeth were bad. That‘s my Bowie story 2w
Bookwomble @The_Book_Ninja It is Twiggy, as "Twig the Wonder-Kid" ? I have to say that I preferred David's British teeth to his American teeth, but then I didn't have to live with thousands of cameras pointing specifically at me. And, your mum had great taste in music ?❤️ 2w
BookNAround I went to college with David Bowie‘s son Duncan. He was a nice, down to earth guy. When his dad and stepmom came for his graduation, they arranged with the college to have a brief photo session for anyone to take pictures of them then so the family would be left in peace for the rest of the day since they were there to celebrate Duncan, not to be surreptitiously snapped by random strangers. I thought that was smart and realistic. 1w
Bookwomble @BookNAround The clips I've seen of Duncan, he does come across as a grounded person. Fantastic that he got to go to college with you 😊 1w
36 likes5 comments
review
Bookwomble
Tokyo Express | Seicho Matsumoto
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Pickpick

I enjoyed this chance find of a detective mystery involving government corruption, shady business dealings, cynical emotional manipulation and malignant jealousy. And who knew that train timetables could be so murderously interesting? (Ok, Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, etc, etc. ?)
I paired this with The Dave Brubeck Quartet's 1964 Jazz Impressions of Japan, as it has a track, "Toki's Theme", the book having a character of this name. ⬇️

Bookwomble ... Dave's liner notes include his worries about cultural appropriation and stereotyping, which he says were soothed when he heard westernised Japanese pop music playing in the cafés he visited. This is one of my favourite Brubeck albums 😊
#BooksAndMusic
3w
30 likes1 comment
review
Bookwomble
Vinyl Finders | Southport, Merseyside, United Kingdom (Bookstore)
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Pickpick

I know I'm at risk of making my Litsy feed a David Bowie channel, but I picked up a little bargain from Vinyl Finders yesterday: This box set has a 48-page booklet of rare photos and commentary on David's pivotal year of 1970, and two discs of rare recordings, some of which I don't already have. It's a great soundtrack to the Rainbowman book I'm reading about the recording of Bowie's albums 🤩 A snip for a tenner! 💸
#BooksAndMusic #BooksAndBowie

Ruthiella Great find! 👍 3w
The_Book_Ninja Digging in the crates, eh? 3w
psalva I‘d be good with an all-Bowie feed for a bit :) 3w
See All 8 Comments
Bookwomble @Ruthiella I thought so! 😃 3w
Bookwomble @The_Book_Ninja I clocked this the first visit, the second visit was a mission! 😄 3w
Bookwomble @psalva Extra bit of Bowie in my feed for you, then 😄🧑🏼‍🎤 3w
FlowerFairy I fully endorse you making this an all-Bowie all the time feed! 😍😍😍 2w
Bookwomble @FlowerFairy Ok, I'll see what I can do! 😜😆 2w
44 likes8 comments
review
Bookwomble
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Pickpick

As well as being a professional storyteller, Lisa Schneidau is an ecologist and environmental lobbyist, all three aspects of which she brings to these retellings of traditional stories dealing with forest lore. Each section is prefaced with a short commentary on what the tales can teach us about the ecosystem and climate change. My only reservation being her advocacy of culling wild deer to encourage forest regeneration - I'm not an ecologist, ⬇️

Bookwomble ... but I wonder if nonviolent methods of population control are available. Anyway, an enjoyable collection of some old favourites and some that were new to me.
Soundtrack, obviously 🎶Woodland Rock 🎶 by Marc Bolan and T.Rex 😊💚 #BooksAndMusic
https://youtu.be/_dac0o87jSI?si=1T51CaLPWSqwyez2
3w
37 likes1 stack add1 comment
review
Bookwomble
The Raven | Lou Reed, Lorenzo Mattotti
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Pickpick

In 2000, Lou presented a musical, POEtry, based on the works of EAP. In 2003 he released a concept album, The Raven, based on the musical, which I've finally got hold of. It's an amazing amalgam of musical styles: rock, electronic, avant-garde, contemporary classical, soul, with guest artists including David Bowie, Anohni and Laurie Anderson. There are extensive spoken word sections, voiced by Willem Dafoe, Steve Buscemi and Amanda Plummer.
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Bookwomble In 2011, Lou commissioned illustrator Mattotti to illustrate the book of lyrics, which I can now re-read along with the album: a multisensory experience! Lou's dramatic adaptation of The Fall of the House of Usher is amazing and worth the price of the album by itself. If you love Poe or Lou Reed, you should try to hear this 🖤 #BooksAndMusic 5mo
Suet624 💕💕💕 5mo
38 likes2 comments
quote
Bookwomble
My Gothic Heart | Charlie Castelletti
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"The earth is a tomb,
The gaudy sky a vault,
We but walking corpses"
- Mary Shelley, "On Ghosts"

If this section heading strikes a reverberating knell in your soul, then you'll probably appreciate this selection of gothic fragments. It's certainly apt for the season ???
Oh! No word of a lie: "Bela Lugosi's Dead" by Bauhaus just came up on my random playlist! Spooky! ?
#BooksAndMusic

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Bookwomble
The Jewish Problem | Louis Golding
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"Poor immigrants, be they eighteenth-century Huguenots or nineteenth-century Irish, are always accused of overcrowding, disease-breeding, and competing against the native-born workman in the labour-market; and, of course, this was the case at the time of the Jewish influx in the early years of the twentieth century."

And, in the early twenty-first century...

Bookwomble #BooksAndMusic "I Pity the Poor Immigrant" by Bob Dylan from his 1967 album, "John Wesley Harding" https://youtu.be/0RJ_HsMfBfE?si=7aPvTf-L1zqZopxe 5mo
24 likes1 comment
review
Bookwomble
Dead and the Dying | Ed Brubaker
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Pickpick

If I'd read John Singleton's introduction while picking up this book at the library, I'd have put it down again, as he makes it sound ickyly seedy & exploitative. As it was, I almost didn't bother reading it, but I'm glad I did in the end, as it was better than the sales pitch made it sound. Three interlinked noir chapters advance the violent story from three perspectives, using flashbacks and flashforwards. It's a pretty dark 3.5 ⭐
#BooksAndMusic

Bookwomble I also picked up a compilation of Lalo Schifrin's jazzy film themes today, including Mission Impossible, The Man From UNCLE, Bullitt and Dirty Harry, which was a pretty good soundtrack for the GN 🖤
#BooksAndMusic
8mo
32 likes1 comment
quote
Bookwomble
Copendium | Julian Cope
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"The recording of 'Droolian' in January 1990 acted as a grand Doorway that led me out of the first stage of my career and launched me through a new Portal into a world far more illuminated than anything I had previously experienced."
- Cope Notes #2: Droolian, by Julian Cope (not in Litsy database)

#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl
#BooksAndMusic

review
Bookwomble
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Pickpick

As I finished this book, The Specials' "Do Nothing" came up on my play list, its refrain of "Nothing ever change" feeling remarkably apposite to the theme of this book: The racist attitudes of late Victorian and Edwardian Western popular culture were fostered by political and economic interests to justify colonialism and exploitation, and this sadly still pertains.
It's an enlightening blend of history, biography and filmography; informative, ⬇️

Bookwomble ... detailed but never dry. The end did seem a little rushed though, which is a slight let down as Frayling is an otherwise assured guide. Still a strong 4⭐
As a counter to The Specials' resigned cynicism, I'm playing The Stranglers' bombastically defiant, "Something Better Change" ?✊?
9mo
thebackyardgnome Aounds great! 9mo
36 likes2 stack adds4 comments