Tuesday, January 19, 2016

David Bowie’s Son

Although David Bowie was a great influence for the Greek pop/rock scene (from Kostas Tournas to South of No North to His Majesty’s the King of Spain and many others), not much of his songs have found their way to discography (as opposed to live performances).

Throughout the Greek discography there is one song that stands out because a) it’s a good song and b) it describes an imaginary (personal) relationship with David Bowie:

it’s David Bowie’s Son by His Majesty the King of Spain (Hyena - Inner Ear, 2012).



As mentioned many artists were influenced by his music and transformations.
Kostas Tournas was among the first to introduce a similar approach to music (music + mythology + pop art innovation) in his Aperanta Horafia (1972) and mostly Astronira (1973).



More recently 2 of the few Bowie covers found their way to an album: both are covers to Gene Genie! The first one dates back to 1986 from a Dimitris Poulikakos live recording which was published in 2004.



The second one (Gene Genie again) comes from a live (again) of Stavros Logaridis (2004) release on a double cd shared with Poulikakos in 2009.



Apart from his connection to Cyprus (through his wife Angie) and to the island of Patmos where he was a regular visitor, it is worth mentioning his one and only live appearance in Greece back in 1996. It was the next year of his great come-back album Outside and Bowie was performing after Elvis Costello and Lou Reed!
The sound, band and orchestration were great and matched the Outside sound, making his older songs sound contemporary (Scary Monsters).

Here’s a David Bowie portrait made of test tubes installed in the front lobby of the hotel King George in Athens. A nice pick!



Here’s Duran Duran playing Starman 40 years after its release in front of Greek audience.



And here’s Dimitri Vassilakis, the sax player, performing The Man Who Sold The World live in a Greek club (2014). The band covers several Bowie songs that night. Unfortunately the sound is …very bad.



And finally here's a mashup I did combining How easy is to fly by Mikael Delta and Let's Dance by David Bowie.

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