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David Robert Jones, the man who dematerialized

"" G round control to Major Tom, Ground control to Major Tom ...", singing David Robert Jones in 1969, the year man walked on the moon ... At first sight, "Space Oddity" evoked in his psychedelic illuminations an astronaut who gradually lost contact with its mother planet. In reality, the story of an addict away of life for each injection - "Lift Off" - declared a decade later in the words of "Ashes to Ashes" ( "You know Major Tom Was A Junkie" ) ... A half-flash prescient in the way of "When I'm Sixty Four" the Beatle McCartney. For four decades later, man was called David Bowie unresponsive. Stored substances - powder to the nose - which almost drove him crazy paranoid during his Berlin trilogy, as he dematerialized .

It was as removed from our screens

Nearly two years that the star with many avatars has totally disappeared from the media surface Earth. In 2004, just after his latest album ("Reality"), there was this first warning : angioplasty to unclog his arteries clogged eternal young man caught up by the passing of time. Bowie had then calmed the game, occurring on stage more than the rarest opportunities to resume fabulous "Five Years" with Arcade Fire or "Heroes" TV on the Radio . The Thin White Duke was imperceptibly removed from our screens, radio waves, to disappear completely: in 2008, Sky News announced the sick with liver cancer, rumor never wavered.
It said death transfused in Switzerland, before you see walking the streets of Manhattan with his wife Iman and their daughter, shot by a paparazzo. but Bowie never really come back here , preferring to treat logically, enjoy the simple joys of family life that of the aging rock star to "Rock'n Roll Suicide" pathetic "Time to take a cigarette, put it in your mouth ..." . Remember?

Does it really exist?

Did he in fact actually existed as Bowie in its multiple identities? Ziggy Stardust (1972) in clown white "Scary Monster" (1980) through "Aladdin Sane" (A Lad Insane 1973), the "Halloween Jack" Diamond Dogs "(1974) Thin White Duke and the aforementioned "Station to Station" (1978)? That is the question. Man Who Fell to ("The Man Who Fell to Earth", a film by Nicholas Roeg in which he played an alien lost on Earth) is may again become one of our brothers, a human Like other tired of haranguing crowds at shows increasingly delusional ( "On the tour I saw Ziggy Stardust as the Messiah. I think I would make a perfect Hitler , he told" Rolling Stone "in 1975).

"The Rise and The Fall Of A Rock'n Roll Star," Craked Actor "it was Especially when you get there ... was an eternal Dorian Gray, Beautiful as Bowie Yes, fascinating generations of teenagers. No way for Bowie to play mummies greedy, linking to the material of the Stones and other reformed reformed lucrative tour in a parody murky past glory. Rather mediatically suicide, disappear without warning.

As the music itself

So David Bowie has simply dematerialized.

Strangely just as the music itself is also dematerializing. She who had done the King Glam Rock, Soul Man and White "Young Americans", Novo prophet and precursor of electronic music - as Krafwerk - in his Berlin trilogy ("Low," Heroes, "" Station to Station "), then God's in his eighties Stadiums bad time buildée body ... and then much more artistically errant group" Tin Machine "albums in the form of failed attempts to return to rare exceptions ("Earthling" fed rate jungles in 1997, the beautiful "Heaven" narrating the chaos in post-11 September 2002).

Yes Bowie has been dematerialized. precisely when the CD, which was right good old Vinyl , also disintegrated in the great digital mixer .

It is everywhere in the network

Beats and bytes, mp3, Peer to Peer, iPod and iTunes Store ... Ex-Fan of the seventies where are music and artists of our Roaring Twenties? But everywhere in the network of course! On all the screens of our lives, fragmented, digested, remixed, evaporated in the large stock of the neo-digital popular culture. Simply. Bowie has not disappeared. It is everywhere . And as yesterday (Joy Division, Bauhaus, the Smiths, Kurt Cobain ...) His work influenced all the important artists of the moment: Radiohead, LCD Soundsystem, Arcade Fire, TV on the Radio, Of Montreal ... you name it and the best ... All of these groups confirmed and inspired young people have rediscovered the immense contribution of the great David googled, drawing avidly in his discography available two clicks via the great library of Alexandria Digital.

Bowie has become one of the Deus ex Machina of our planetary soundtrack, a DJ ethereal and divine. He had expected. singing "I'm a DJ, I'm what i play" in the known "Lodger" (video below).

David Bowie "DJ" 1978:

And So these days apparent that the album "Station to Station" , plus a fantastic live then mixed recently under the control of Bowie, it must listen. To understand her ahead of our time, its pervasive influence on all musical styles that matter today: post-rock, electro, new new wave, neo-glam New York goes on there as the best . ..
I can not resist the pleasure of this excerpt from the Thin White Duke Tour:

David Bowie, Station to Station Tour 1978

Bowie disappeared but it is everywhere. And he even announces his retirement curtain on its website BowieNet , the output of an autobiography lavishly illustrated which, hopefully, will have nothing of a memorial pre-mortem. Designed by Barnbrook, this book " Bowie: Object" is advertised as a true immersion into the world of the artist has made available hundreds of photos from his personal archives and has also contributed to the project by writing a text that we are promised "insightful, witty and personnel" to trace his 40 year career .

Aka Bowie David Robert Jones was 63 years old now and his last incarnation is invisible ... It is a human choice and artistic the exact opposite of the "transhuman" I was talking in my previous post.

"Can you hear me Major Tom? Can you hear me Major Tom?" , worried about the control tower 40 years ago. Rest assured, we can be heard. In 2010, he is everywhere in the fluid of digitized music that feeds the network with each pulse of our hearts on the planet Earth. And Ziggy is eternal.

Jean-Christophe Féraud

PS: you do not believe? Compare these bonus videos:

David Bowie, 1972, Spiders from Mars tour