Bowie

Growing up a middle-class, white kid in the suburbs of Buffalo, New York with parents 40 years older than me and siblings nearly half that much, the majority of the music in our house flowed from the ‘40s and ‘50s. One of the first songs I remember hearing that woke me up was Revolution. I was too young to understand why that song impacted me so very much when it first came out, but it created a hunger in me for new music. As I stumbled into my teens, I bathed myself in the rivers of songs that flowed out of the ‘60s and ‘70s: Beatles, Yardbirds, Clapton, Zeppelin, Jimi, and so many others.

MTV was launched while I was in college and artists became more than static images in liner notes and on album covers. David Bowie was glorious in videos. My small suburban mind was blown to see his androgyny and theatrics. His sound and visuals were complex and slightly disturbing. I watched DJ and Space Oddity a hundred times (early MTV had a limited playlist) and studied every movement and note. I loved every video he ever made no matter how different it was from the previous one. Bowie defined change for me.

Reinvent. Resist convention. Don’t settle for normal, normal is boring. Shock, challenge, make them think.

I’m sad to see this great artist die, but I’m thrilled to have used his music as a soundtrack for so much of my life. If you see me with a headset on in the next few weeks, just assume that I'm listening to David Bowie.