David Bowie: The Next Day

When I was 16 years old, I went to a record show* and ran into a guy who worked at the same grocery store as me. (*Hey, kids: long, long ago, in 1990, we didn't have download sites or, well, the internet, so we went to these old-fangled things called record shows where you could find bootlegs of concerts, memorabilia, and anything you wanted on your favourite musical acts. It was like ComicCon for music nerds.) We began talking, surprised to see each other there, and he discovered I was there hunting for obscure U2 bootlegs from the early '80s, while I found out he was looking for shows by The Smiths and David Bowie.

David Bowie? To me, he was that guy in the blue suit and yellow hair who'd done "Let's Dance" and "Modern Love." But this guy introduced me to the wonder that is Bowie, and I realized Bowie is unlike anyone else in music. He's a chameleon, always changing yet never playing by the rules, on the cusp of what's cool while always sticking around the edges of it himself. I fell in love... with Bowie, and this guy. So, I listened to everything Bowie did, and married the guy from the record show.

For that reason and many others, Bowie is very important to me. I saw him four times on the Reality tour when I was pregnant with my first child. Days after the first concert, I discovered I was pregnant. I felt her move during "Heroes" at the second show. She rocked out during "Heroes" at the third show. And on the fourth, a day I'll never forget, I drove to Buffalo racked with worry because I hadn't felt her move all day. I suffered through the car ride, dinner, and the first part of the show... and then Bowie broke into "Heroes"— and she walloped me with one hard kick. It was one of the most amazing moments of my life. As we drove home from the hospital with a day-old baby in the car, we listened to "Heroes" on the stereo, and we felt like a king and queen.

In January, almost exactly 23 years to the day when we started dating, we were vacationing in Orlando when my husband appeared in the bedroom doorway one morning, breathless, exclaiming that "Oh my god Bowie has a new single and a new album I cannot believe this" and I leapt out of bed, and we listened to him together. It was as if Lennon had risen from the dead and played for us.

Today is the day the album comes out, and we've already been listening to it for a week since it started streaming on iTunes. With a simple, almost mocking cover that looks like it was created in iPaint — with "Heroes" album cover being whitewashed over by a white box and the title of the album crossed out — you know from the outset this is Bowie returning to his roots, yet dashing them at the same time. Once again, The Thin White Duke has reinvented himself.

And today, I welcome my husband to the blog to offer a guest review of Bowie's new album. Please welcome Robert Thompson!

Author’s note: For much of the past decade I’ve written about sports, business, and yes, music. For what it is worth — and I won’t say all that much since I caught the magazine on its decline — I was also a contributing editor to the music magazine Billboard. Which just means, like a lot of people, I’m a Bowie fan, with a sterling promo vinyl copy of his first album on display in my music room, amid the bootlegs and books that celebrate his unparalleled career. That makes me a fan boy — I recognize that. I’m also Nikki Stafford’s husband and she has kindly granted me some space to write about his new album, which hits stores today, but has been streaming on iTunes for a week.

I, like many, thought Bowie was gone.  I saw him four times on the Reality tour around the time my daughter was born. After his heart attack, I assumed he would solider on. But when he didn’t — or when I read author Marc Spitz write that he assumed Bowie had retired to look after his daughter — I found some degree of relief. Unlike the ever greying Who and Stones, Bowie would go out in fine form. Reality was a solid outing — no it wasn’t Scary Monsters, but no one expected it to be. And the live shows were staggeringly good. It was a fine encore to a career that was derailed for a decade starting at Tonight. His reputation wouldn’t be tarnished in the way it might have been had he ended on say, Tin Machine.

With that in mind, I must admit I felt like an excited teen when, while on holiday with my wife and kids in St. Petersburg, of all places, I checked my computer one morning in early January to find Bowie had released a new song. A one-off surely? After all, he’d been gone so long. It was a mixture of trepidation and fascination that I immediately bought the song, “Where Are We Now?” on iTunes. What I received was a thoughtful ballad with a powerful ending, the sort of song that sneaks up on you, sticking in your head. Part “Wild Is the Wind,” the piano-driven track would have stood out on either of Bowie’s last two albums. It wasn’t a single — what is a single in the era following the passing of MTV and commercial radio? — but it was a plaintive ballad full of allusions to the period of Bowie’s Berlin recovery following the cocaine-addled Stationtostation tour.

“Where Are We Now?” with its “as long as there’s sun,” crescendo of drums on the outro was a hopeful start. It was enough for me to wishfully think that this would be the one. Lacking any commercial consideration, any expectation of any sort, maybe this would be the album where Bowie would have a complete creative rebound. It could be his surprising masterpiece no one saw coming.

Not surprisingly, The Next Day isn’t that. No one could really expect Bowie, now 66, to reach the extended peak he found 1970s’ The Man Who Sold the World and Scary Monsters. By my count he carded a dozen records in that decade, all remarkably good. In turn he set an impossible standard against which he can’t really succeed. There’s an argument to be made that no artist in the history of rock music has had such a sustained run of consistently great albums.

Considering that, it is fascinating to find the new album is solid, even spectacular in places. And though there’s nothing retro about the sound, there are plenty of allusions to the glory days when Bowie could do no wrong and really was without peer. From the top, “The Next Day,” with its angular slashing guitar and aggressive, reverb-heavy vocal, would fit nicely on “Heroes.” The same could be said for “How Does the Grass Grow,” with its vocal line that wouldn’t be out of place on the second side of Scary Monsters or the slightly off-kilter harmonies of the glammy stomp “(You will) Set the World on Fire,” which could find a spot early on Lodger. Yep, at least for some of the tracks on The Next Day, Bowie reaches an artistic level that many wouldn’t have considered possible for a man many dismissed as artistically irrelevant for the past 30 years. 

If there’s a criticism, it might be that the music on the album is too straightforward, with producer Tony Visconti taking a hands-off approach to experimentalism. In that context there’s been a lot made in early discussion of “You Feel So Lonely You Could Die,” one of two delicate and fascinating songs that end the album, and rightfully so. On “You Feel So Lonely…” Bowie effortlessly scales heights unseen since the brilliance of Ziggy. He’s tried this before — remember “I Know It’s Gonna Happen Someday” off the largely horrible Black Tie White Noise? For some reason that attempt didn’t resonate the way the new track does — and for those that might miss the subtle link to Bowie’s glam period, he exits the song with the intro to Ziggy’s “Five Years.”

Which leaves us with “Heat,” the song the pundits suggest is the Second Coming of Scott Walker. Bowie has mined this territory before — see almost all of the underrated Outside — and yes, its vocal apes some of Walker’s eccentric tendencies. But there’s nothing as elaborately weird on “Heat” that can be compared to the whimsical strangeness that abounds on Walker’s Bish Bosch. In other words, there’s no percussionist smacking a side of beef. Instead we’re given slight discordant strings and a brave vocal performance that emulates the most accessible elements of Walker’s unusual approach.

The brilliance in The Next Day is that Bowie seems to be once again writing songs with little consideration to fashion or stylistic currency. There’s no jungle here, like Earthling, or newfound folksiness, like Hours. But at the same time many of the new songs have the same flair, the same spark that made that earlier material — now more than three decades old — seem fresh when released and timeless now.

The problem with being a legend is you’re always judged by what made you legendary. Bowie’s standard at his creative height was so high as to be all but unreachable. His later material, much of which is very good, is always overshadowed by the brilliance of his seventies songs. He can’t be expected to remake Scary Monsters in the same way the Stones can’t remake Exile on Main St. I’ve read some of the gushing reviews for The Next Day and wonder if it is a case similar to John Lennon’s return on Double Fantasy. Critics want it to be great, and are hoping against hope that when a legend returns they’ll not do damage to their status. In those cases many pundits tend to go overboard — lauding an album in a way it doesn’t warrant.

I don’t think that’s the case here. What’s makes The Next Day so compelling is that there are instances where Bowie shows he can muster up the nerve and the artistic arrogance to do what he does best. That’s enough — and more than I expected.

The Walking Dead: "Clear"

All good shows know that, when the action is getting more hectic and the storyline is moving fast, and the characters are on a collision course to oblivion, it’s time to slow things down and reflect on where they all are. “Clear” is one such episode.

In Woodbury, the Governor is forming an army. At the prison, Rick and co. know they’re running low on guns, and if less than 10 people are going to face an onslaught of a few dozen, they’ll need weapons. And since they’re only a drive away from the police station where Rick was sheriff, he’s decided they need to take a trip there to get those guns. What he’s faced with, instead, is his past. The police station has been gutted. The streets are unrecognizable. His house has been burnt out. And Morgan, his savior from the pilot episode, has gone mad.

Oh Morgan. From the first episode onwards, every time we see a new figure looming in the distance I say to my husband, “Is it him? The guy on the walkie-talkie?” I keep hoping we’ll see him again, hoping we’ll find out what happened to that poor man who couldn’t kill his zombie wife, whose son was huddled next to him and who clung to the sound of Rick’s voice on the other end of that walkie-talkie. When we saw Rick turn it on in S1 and there was no longer a voice on the other end, you couldn’t help but think he was gone. Though most fans held out hope that he wasn’t. After all, on a show like this, they’re not dead until you SEE them dead.

And no, he’s not dead. And yes, he was able to find the strength to kill his wife.

But not before she killed their son.

Lennie James, who plays Morgan, turns in a tour de force performance that had me on the edge of my seat, lump in my throat, chest aching for this man who spends his days trapping and killing and burning zombies, and who turns down the offer to join a group of people. While this episode was laid out like a play — a minimal number of settings, long scenes of dialogue between two people, only four characters (five if you count our poor hitchhiker), almost no music — so much more happened in this hour than in any other hour this season. What a rich, wonderfully written, superbly acted hour of television.

Where would you like to start, Josh?

Joshua: This episode is one of several this season that has taken special care to walk the viewer back through the narrative history of the show in some way, examining the fallout of various events and highlighting the toll it takes on the survivors. First, when Carol was found alive by Daryl, we saw how quickly things can change as she learned about the birth of L'il Asskicker and the concurrent death of Lori, both after only the briefest absence. Then, with last week's episode, we were shown the group's transformation as a whole through Andrea's sheltered eyes, witnessing how much a difference is borne out by the passage of months instead of mere days, just as we had with Merle and Daryl the week prior as circumstances underscored for both the elder brother and for Daryl himself how fundamentally he had changed during their time apart. And this week, we're taken all the way back to the very first episode and reminded again and again that “everyone turns,” whether it's after death or through too much hard living, into someone they weren't before.

Taken as a whole, it's a fascinating examination of these new rules of evolution, and one that punches at all the softest parts of me with alarming precision. For every encouraging sign – be it Daryl's heroic awakening or Carol's subtle sharpening into focus or Michonne's gradual movement in the direction of something more closely resembling an actual human being as opposed to a glowering action figure – there is a direct and unquestionably ugly echo. Rick's stress-induced madness; Carl's disturbing yet largely necessary ongoing acclimatization; Glenn's rage and impetuosity; Morgan's ruin and resignation; each consequence would imply that light fosters darkness, and admonishes us to caution. Because whatever doesn't kill you might alter you in any number of ways, but the only thing it's guaranteed to make stronger is your stomach.

Let's start with Michonne, who has really begun to snap into focus these past few episodes. We've previously discussed how her character on the show has been very much in keeping with the Michonne from the comics, alluding primarily to her skill, her silent scowl and her largely impenetrable nature. Within the context of the show, however, it's worked for the most part to her detriment, making her seem obstinate and unsympathetic instead of mysterious and intense. The reveal of her personality has been almost unbearably slow, and the loosening of her mask (culminating in not one but two jokes cracked during the course of this episode) is a welcome change, to say the least. I hope Carl's estimate that “she might be one of us” proves true, because aside from the obvious boon she provides their fighting force, it'll be great to have a skillful smart-ass on board as well.

Nikki: In my opening I’d originally typed, “AND… this is the episode that finally made me really like Michonne.” But I figured we’d get to her later.

Quick: name the #1 fan meme that has arisen out of this show. I’ll give you a hint:

(That last one is mine; I just couldn't resist.) 

Lori’s tried it, Rick’s tried it, Hershel’s family tried it… no one could ever keep that damn kid in one place. But in this episode, in a scene that was clearly just for the fans, Michonne says to an agitated Carl, “YOU. WAIT. HERE.” And then she leans in and really glowers at him, and adds, “No more bullshit.”

And OMFG he actually stays put!!!

Amazing. In that one moment she’s achieved with Carl what no other person has been able to: in a sense, she made him stay in the fucking house.

But beyond comic relief, Michonne’s character served the purpose of showing Rick that despite their differences, they’re all human beings. At the end of the ep, Carl says to him that she’s the same people as they are. Rick actually looks taken aback, surprised at what his kid just told him. Rick’s been so busy separating everyone — Tyrese, you are NOT one of us, you can go; Andrea, you are NO LONGER one of us, you can go — that he’s failed to remember that in the beginning, human beings clung to one another to separate themselves from the walkers. The zombie threat, as horrific as it was/is, is what brought people together against one common enemy, an enemy that was not like them. But as they’ve gotten used to the walkers as their new normal, they’ve begun to split off from other human beings around them.

Morgan and Rick were survivors together, until Rick had to leave to find his wife and Morgan stayed behind because he couldn’t leave his. Over the past year, having lost Shane, his wife, and so many others, Rick has begun to think that maybe he’s better off alone. After all, the more people who surround you, the more potential threats you’ve just created. But now he’s seen what pure solitude does to a person. Morgan is hanging on to his sanity by a thread, and we’re reminded that having several people with you doesn’t just create a physical strength in numbers, but a community that keeps you mentally healthy and sane. And he begins to see Michonne in a new light.

The moral of this story is gorgeously, heartbreakingly bookended in the hitchhiker character. Somehow this one man has survived for a year on his own (perhaps he was with others and got separated or survived a slaughter of his people) and he’s walked alone for god knows how long. When he sees the car with Michonne, Rick, and Carl in it, he’s frantic, begging them to stop as Michonne and Rick drive right past him without even slowing down. He doesn’t give up, and runs after the car all the way down the highway to the part in the road where there’s a roadblock and where their car has gotten stuck. He almost catches up, but Rick’s determination to not talk to strangers leaves the man in the dust once again, and he falls to his knees in anguish. Rick goes to see Morgan, discovers something about himself, other people, and Michonne, and drives back. And I wondered, has he changed? Will he perhaps pick up the hitchhiker, realizing this man poses less of a threat to him than just about everyone else in the world? Or will he keep his guard up? Will he at least talk to him?

But as they drive back the way they came, it’s too late. What’s left of the hitchhiker lies in a pool of blood by the side of the road, his neatly tied backpack beside it. They drive past… and then back up the car to pick up the man’s backpack. In the end, despite what Rick may have learned with his encounter with Morgan, the man’s supplies are more important to him than the man.

Joshua: One of the ways in which I sometimes struggle as a viewer of this show, and likewise in these discussions, is with holding the proper perspective. It's far too easy to transpose civilized present-day values onto these characters and situations and thereby hold them to a standard made unreasonable by the nature of their circumstances. And I think the biggest reason why that continues to be an issue for me as an audience member is that it continues to be such an issue for the participants. The minds behind the scenes do a great job of maintaining its prominence as a point of contention, and shades of this ongoing conflict of conscience color almost everything else that happens. Which only makes sense: matters of principle are one of the most accurate yardsticks against which we can determine the measure of someone's character – the key to their humanity, really – and in the worst of all possible situations, when the blacks and whites have faded so close to uniform grey, there's no better way to pinpoint who's good, and who's growing, than the way they answer these questions.

My favorite parts of the debate between Rick and Morgan came as it neared its end. Morgan called attention to the weapons and ammunition Rick had gathered from his arsenal, asked a rhetorical why, and then answered his own question: “'Cause if you got somethin' good, that just means someone wants to take it. Right?” Rick can't deny it, and Morgan offers his definitive summation, the result of having endured unspeakable horrors and, for inexplicable reasons, somehow survived. At the heart of that warped ideology: resignation. Just give up. Stop hoping for more or better; there is only this. It's now or never, because both the past and the future are far too awful to contemplate.

“You will be torn apart by teeth or bullets,” he says plainly. “You and your boy. Your people. But not me. Because I am not gonna watch that happen again.”

Morgan in the first episode, unable to take the shot.

It's a cop-out, but it's an understandable one. Morgan has lost everything, and it's ruined him. The only way in which he's managed to keep his will to live at all (and even this is arguable, considering how convincingly he begged for death at Rick's hands) is by isolating himself, developing a routine, and staying on task. He exists, but only by becoming a ghost.

Rick sees too much of himself in his old friend not to be frightened. He knows the path by which he might reach a similar impasse is close at hand and easily taken. He knows he's been within a stone's throw from completely unhinged for days, weeks, months, starting back with Shane, in that field, in the dark, and only grown worse over time, fed by fresh tragedy and despair. He knows he's made costly mistakes, and he knows that there will be more. But unlike Morgan, he refuses to resign himself to failure. “This can't be it,” he argues, wanting it to be true in his own case even more than for poor Morgan. Because he still has a son, and people continue to look to him for leadership, for guidance. Because if he gives up, there is much more at stake than just the spirit and optimism of one broken man. The stress may be a major contributor to his hysteria, but the very responsibilities causing that stress are what guide him to look beyond himself, illuminate a broader scope, and in the end, help to save him from Morgan's lamentable fate.

There were two scenes in particular this week – one for each of his traveling companions – that called special attention to Rick's enduring leadership position, but both unraveled from the same thread. It began as Rick and Carl had their discussion about Michonne as they worked to free the mudstuck car. Carl asked why she was with them, obviously irritated, believing she was meant to be on her way by then. Rick defended her behavior during the raid on Woodbury, but only a little, mostly offering a very pragmatic, bureaucratic answer by explaining that he didn't want to leave her at the prison with Merle there, that they have common enemies, a common cause, et cetera. Michonne listened to this from inside the car, already well aware of her tenuous position within the group, and pondered the implications of her stubbornly reticent attitude. Well, I assume she did, anyway, from the context and the look on her face.

I didn't have to assume long, however. When the three of them reach Cynthiana [An aside here: do they ever call the town by name in the series, or is that strictly in the comics? I can't recall.] and find the police station's gun locker empty, there is a brief debate about what to do next. Rick quickly asserts his dominance, and for the first time I can remember, Michonne backs down, immediately and definitively, adopting a tone of deference so opposite what we've come to expect from her that even Rick is stopped in his tracks by it. I think it took Michonne a while to even decide she wanted to be a part of their group at all, but it's clear now that she's made up her mind to stay, if they'll let her, and she knows the only way to make that happen is through Rick.

Later, after Carl tries to ditch Michonne on the crib run, she asks him why. In response, Carl parrots back the gist of Rick's dispassionate answer from the car, almost word for word. It wasn't the only time during this episode that we saw him studiously following cues from his father, but it was the most obvious. And I wish that Rick himself had heard it, too. But I believe he's as aware now as he has ever been of his standing amongst these survivors, of the significance of his conduct, and that any further time spent entertaining phantoms is a luxury he cannot afford. I think, as you said, that this run-in with Morgan has gone a long way toward facilitating his recovery and clarifying his vision.

Nikki: So well put, Josh! And you took the words right out of my, er, fingers. There was a discussion that popped up last week in the comments section about communication on the show, and you mentioned how it’s so frustrating that characters don’t communicate with one another at all, because if they did there wouldn’t be much of a plot left. But because they don’t communicate, Andrea makes a ham-fisted attempt to chat with the prison folk that goes nowhere, all because if they actually sat down, chatted, and made progress and a specific plan, we would lose the tension for the rest of the season.

I made similar remarks in the first season of Lost, that it was a little frustrating that everyone was so insular, but if they’d all sat down and Locke had said, “Well, see, my dad threw me out of a window and I was in an wheelchair but LOOK AT ME NOW!” or Hurley had told them about his lottery win, or Jack had explained the difficulties of his life, or Claire had confessed the real reason she’d been travelling… then what would have been left for flashbacks? Clearly it made for a much better series NOT to have them discuss things by the campfire. But on The Walking Dead, it feels more frustrating, like they’re setting up the means to communicate and then it falls through, making Andrea look like more of a dumbass than people already think she is, making Rick look like just an ass, and making the rest of them look like lemmings.

So this week’s episode changed that. Michonne overhearing Rick talking to Carl, as you say, was key, because her Sergeant Badass routine has worked well so far, as long as it was just her or her and Andrea, but now that she’s part of a group, it’s working to her disadvantage. Only by overhearing the conversation that Rick and Carl had — in a sense, letting them communicate something to her without making the characters actually communicate — does she realize this, and understand that she needs to adjust the attitude REALLY quickly in order to make this new situation work. Perhaps, like Andrea, she’s realized she’d rather be part of a community than be out on her own. (Unlike Andrea, her community doesn’t involve tanks of heads floating in liquid…)

And Rick needed that kick in the head to wake up and realize that he’s only a few breaths away from being this guy. As I said earlier, they were once very similar, coming from the same town, same situation, both married with wives. But through circumstance, Morgan has become, as you so eloquently put it, a ghost, and Rick is in danger of becoming one. But he still has a son and a new daughter. He, unlike Morgan, has something to live for.

Interestingly, with no one to talk to, and yet from what seems like some unconscious desire to leave a legacy, Morgan has begun to communicate solely through writing. His signs are everywhere, from the arrows drawn on the ground to direct the zombies to his booby-trapped street; to the signs for other humans (because one assumes zombies can’t read) with warnings like AWAY WITH YOU; NO GUILT — YOU KNOW THAT; TURN AROUND AND LIVE; JUST LEAVE; and the increasingly unintelligible scrawls on the walls that both reflect the unsettled mind of a madman, and bluntly record events such as DUANE TURNED (written in blood red).

Just as Michonne makes the conscious decision to change her attitude so she can become a part of this new family, so does Rick get a rude awakening about where exactly his behavior is headed, and you can feel a return to the old Rick as he and Carl banter by the trunk of the car. With the haunting strains of Jamie N Commons’ “Lead Me Home” playing in the background, Rick, Michonne, and Carl… go home.

 Joshua: And, now that the three of them have taken stock of just exactly what — and how much — 'home' means to them, and in particular Rick and Michonne are rededicated to presenting themselves in a way that shows their commitment to the preservation of this scruffy family, the question now becomes what exactly it will take to keep it. This week's visit with Morgan was dark and sad and quietly brilliant, but with only four more episodes left this season, things are bound to get noisy again very soon.

One more quick thing before we go: I referred earlier to Michonne's wisecracks but wanted to mention again how nicely this episode balanced the humor with the heartbreak on the whole. Though her joke about the rainbow striped cat sculpture was probably my favorite, Rick's quip after their hallucination heart-to-heart at the end, asking if she could drive because “I see things,” was great, too. But regardless what else it might contain, any episode that features rats on skateboards is an instant classic, right? (Bonus points to anyone else for whom the rats on skateboards reminded them of the U.S. reality show Real People from the early '80s. Because we're old, and that alone deserves bonus points.)

See y'all next week.

Game of Thrones Contest!

Do you remember this time last year when all of your friends were posting Twitter and Facebook pics of themselves sitting on the Iron Throne? Perhaps you wished you had a pic, too. Or maybe you DID have one, but you stood in line for an eternity to get it.

Would you like another chance?

From March 9-15, 2013, the Design Exchange in Toronto will once again be hosting the Game of Thrones exhibit, where you can see the costumes and props from the first two seasons, and yes, sit on that Iron Throne. The demand for tickets has been extraordinary, and it's next to impossible to get any at this point. (This is the tour's only stop in Canada.)

However, on Friday, March 8, at 5:30pm, Astral Media is hosting a special red carpet grand opening of the exhibit, complete with a ribbon-cutting ceremony attended by Rose Leslie (Ygritte on Game of Thrones, Gwen on Downton Abbey), followed by a first walkthrough of the exhibit with a small group of people.

How would you like to be one of those people?

I have 10 pairs of tickets to give away. Please send me an email here, with "Game of Thrones" in the subject line, and in your email name me one of the seven kingdoms of Westeros. You must get your entry in by 11:59pm on Wednesday, March 6. (Do not leave your answer in the comments below; I'll only be accepting entries sent privately.)

I will choose, at random, 10 people, and will contact you to let you know if you've won. Then your name will be put on the guest list at the door.

This contest is open to anyone who could actually be in Toronto this Friday at 5:30pm.

Just a note: Astral told me they're looking for Superfans. If you are willing to dress up in medieval dress or come with any sort of Game of Thrones paraphernalia to set yourself apart from the other patrons, even better. This will be filmed and shown on TV, so the more enthusiastic audience, the better!

Good luck, and I hope to see some of you there!

And be sure to tune in here the week following the premiere, as I once again join with Christopher Lockett to give you our weekly analyses of season 3!