Show Notes: Texting, Episode 9
"The Gift of Sound and Vision" - David Bowie's "Berlin Trilogy"
Here, at long last, are the show notes (with timestamps) to episode 9 of Texting! Link to the original podcast audio on Substack or YouTube as you take a deeper dive into David Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy!
00:00 - opening theme
00:34 - intro / greetings
00:45 - Tomek still in Montenegro
1:15 - “gauche”
1:45 - “wing” or “leg”?
2:06 - next stop on Tomek’s itinerary = Rome
2:18 - visa issues
2:48 - shout-out to Robert
3:33 - editing Earnest Games
4:15 - writing Pilgrimizing
4:35 - Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad
5:03 - “I consider myself a descendant of the Phoenicians, at least spiritually”
5:46 - “Like the artist we’re featuring today, David Bowie, I have many personae”
6:00 - Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy = Low, “Heroes,” and Lodger
6:39 - “the significance of the trilogy”: Greek tragedy, triptychs, films by Lars von Trier, Beckett’s trilogy of novellas, Burroughs’ novel trilogies . . .
7:50 - “an ulterior motive” = [ai]’s Far East Trilogy - an ongoing project which has yielded such fruits as the Bowiesque “Dystopian Theme Song”:
8:38 - trinity
9:00 - “three’s a crowd . . . and Three’s Company”
10:00 - “a typical plot mountain . . . exposition . . . climax . . . descending action”
10:15 - three-act play
10:48 - The Godfather trilogy
11:35 - The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars
12:15 - The Godfather Part III “like a made-for-TV movie”
13:30 - “the original vision is pretty important if we’re weighing the value of the art”
13:56 - “completionist”
15:05 - trilogy as a marketing strategy employed by Bowie rather than a pre-conceived plan?
16:00 - preview of The Grand Tour
16:20 - David Bowie walking tour in Berlin
16:33 - Hansa Studio
17:03 - “another ulterior motive”: Station 2 Station
17:50 - seeing Bowie live in Houston on April 29, 2004 - “the second best concert I’ve ever seen”
19:30 - Bowie’s opening act in 2004 was The Polyphonic Spree:
20:45 - “the best cover of a song I’ve ever seen [live]” = Bowie’s version of VU’s “White Light/White Heat”
22:00 - “I’m Afraid of Americans” - see the video with Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor:
22:33 - “he didn’t play ‘Changes,’ even though I was shouting as loud as I could for him to play it”
22:44 - “‘Suffragette City’ . . . was incredible . . . I slapped the chair in front of me so hard I almost broke my hand . . . and the chair”
23:05 - Part 1 of the Trilogy: Low
24:10 - Beck’s Mutations: I recommended the following track from that underrated album:
26:11 - Low = “a coke album”
27:37 - “you can hear the transition from the 70s to the 80s”
28:15 - Eno’s description: “a really good funk band with electronica and ambient accompaniment”
29:42 - “the actual producer was Tony Visconti”
30:52 - side 2 of Low
31:10 - Eno’s Music for Airports
32:18 - “dark and mysterious and sublime at times”
33:05 - side 1 of Low “like amphetamines”
33:20 - “the concept of sound and vision”
34:49 - “Always Crashing in the Same Car”
35:29 - “repetition variation”
35:44 - The Andy Warhol Diaries (Netflix series)
37:22 - “it’s not either/or but both/and”
37:30 - “a chameleon”
38:37 - “plastic soul”
39:05 - “not authentic”
40:08 - “Bowie wrote an Andy Warhol song, which Warhol didn’t like”:
40:17 - Lou Reed
40:55 - “musical vampirism”
43:43 - “it’s all artifice”
44:08 - “bury the music of the late 60s”
45:40 - Little Richard
46:05 - Jagger and glam rock
46:16 - Nicholas Roeg directs Jagger in Performance (1970), then Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)
46:50 - Bowie and Elton John?
47:12 - Chateau D’Herouville = “Honky Chateau”
47:53 - Nick Lowe’s Bowi
48:29 - “low profile”
49:17 - Berlin in the 70s = “the smack capital of the world”
50:22 - Tony Visconti’s wife, Welsh singer Mary Hopkin, who sings background vocals on Sound and Vision, had a hit in 1969 with “Those Were the Days” (produced by Paul McCartney)
51:21 - Bowie’s vocal tracking
52:41 - “the instrumental tracks came first”
53:32 - Carlos Alomar
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