Bowie Blog

David Bowie may finally meet the Spiders from Mars

In the 1980s my brother and I went into button production, making rock star images into badges we could wear on our jean jackets, or in my case, a canvas messenger bag from the Army Surplus Store that I dyed purple. Although my messenger bag displayed four tiny store-bought John, Paul, Ringo and George pins, it held a place of reverence for my homemade David Bowie pin. Bowie’s image wrapped around sheet metal cut to size and laminated. All through high school and CEGEP in Quebec I was obsessed with Bowie. I had all his albums on vinyl of course. I wish I still had them today.

Living in residence in Quebec, I remember having to get written permission from my parents in St. John’s to go see David Bowie in concert at the Quebec Coliseum.

 I watched all his weird movies. I remember taking the bus in Quebec City on a frigid Sunday afternoon in winter to go to the library to watch the 1983 British-Japanese prisoner of war film, “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence”. With bulky vinyl headphones in position, the world around me disappeared. It was just me and Mr. Lawrence with his head disappearing into the desert sand.

Speaking of Christmas, my favourite Christmas recording is David Bowie and Bing Crosby’s “Little Drummer Boy”. This past December someone young enough to have not lived through Ziggy Stardust was amazed at what a good job was done in studio to combine those two singers’ voices as if they had been in the same room singing!

"We passed upon the stair, we spoke of was and when / Although I wasn't there, he said I was his friend, which came as some surprise / I spoke into his eyes / I thought you died alone, a long long time ago." (From 1070’s “The Man who Sold the World”)