Happy 66th Birthday to Mr. David Bowie!!!

I’ve listened to David Bowie’s “Where Are We

Now?” from his new album The Next Day on the computer today, what a way begin after ten years! A friend of mine on twitter told me something quite interesting how this song and another song from the movie The Ice Storm called “I Can’t Read” have a similar if not the same mellow tone as “Where Are We Now?”  There are some intriguing references and similarities that I also noticed. One being that the cover art of The Next Day was a subvert of Heroes which was back in 1977, not only that it looks similar to Pet Shop Boys Elysium cover art, the square in the middle of the portrait.  “I Can’t Read” the video was directed by Tim Pope and Soft Cell was one of the bands he directed and if I’m not mistaken Marc Almond liked the new single as well, but was sad he didn’t see it sooner or something.  Two is that “I Can’t Read” and “Where Are We Now?”, have Bowie’s face in an oval shaped facial expression like a mask. Another thing is that both videos have to do with surrealism and expressionism art and a vintage or desolate and abandon them. Which will bring to my next similarity I’ve noticed Bowie mentioned about “walking the dead” and how Pet Shop Boys “Leaving” is a theme about a subject about being “dead and fading away” and I’ve read Clare McCreesh’s blog about the similarities between Bowie’s new single and Pet Shop Boys’ Elysium about how the two videos had a black and white footage of Berlin. And it could be a high possibility that Bowie referenced The Pet Shop Boys, in fact if that’s the case, that would be really cool and astounding because they did collaborated with them for “Hallo Spaceboy” and he is one of their inspirations. Not only that but if it was like "Leaving" and the "Where Are We Now?" on the same album, then it would be like a continuation on a journey of some sort. There’s also a photo of David Bowie on the official Pet Shop Boys site, it reminded me of the Pandemonium where Neil and Chris with the cubes for heads. I find this quite amazing!  I’m glad David Bowie is back with music, also really cool to start the New Year and his birthday! I think there's a tiny reference of "I'm With Stupid" on "Where Are We Now?" because of the heads being on some dummies body. 

Tim Pope (And Friends) - I Want To Be A Tree review

While having some Pet Shop Boys related drafts underway, I thought I discuss about this video. This was one of the videos I saw when I became a Soft Cell fan. Quite interesting because this is Tim Pope and friends that made a video of his song called "I Want to Be a Tree". The song is quite funny and you get a whiff of different artists from well known bands that he directed videos from. The artists includes Style Council, Freur, Robert Smith, Lauren Tolhurst, Siouxsie Sioux, Budgie, Soft Cell, Paul Young, and Mark Hollis. The video is hilarious and silly, you get to see the artists' shy, crazy side in the video, like Soft Cell threw pies at Pope. I'm glad it's still on here because it captures such rare moments like this because artists often change, believe me, I know. This is a video of interest and the director too. He did a lot of videos with artists you are more likely familiar with.

Rare rough copy of the original video for director Tim Pope's song I Want To Be A Tree, shown on The Whistle Test in 1984. According to Pope: "my bloody office at cowboy films lost the original of the tree video", and this is all that survives. Kudos to anyone who can name each member of the all-star cast. << This is what YouTube or the person that uploaded the video said about it, well more like the information about it.