January

January used to be my absolute favourite month of the year. It kinda still is, but it's just not as exciting as it once was. 

My birthday is in January, but it's right at the end of the school holidays. It was weird to look forward to it, knowing that the impending doom of another school year was close behind. Now that I have kids of my own, that same mixture of anticipation and dread remains. We just love the lazy days, late nights and sleep-ins. No school, no work for Rhona, no therapy or medical appointments; it's a great time for Team Bolgies to relax and recharge. 

One of the reasons I used to love January so much was that it was right in the middle of the awards season. For years I was a massive Oscars buff, and would try to catch all the films up for Best Picture before the ceremony. You'd also get results of the Golden Globes and BAFTAs too, which gave you a good idea of what would likely win at the Academy Awards. In the last coupla years I've totally lost interest. I don't know if it's because I'm not a fan of newer movies or if some of the awards went to the wrong winner, in my mind, in the past. It's like a switch went off in my head. Actually, I think it might have been when the Best Picture nominations increased from five to a maximum of ten. Maybe the increased viewing log has put me off or something. So, for whatever reason, my love of all things Oscar-related has gone.

I used to look forward to the Triple J Hot 100 every Jan 26th too. When Big Jet Plane topped the list, that was me done. I have every 2CD compilation from every year up until that point. I rarely listen to modern music now too, so I have no idea what 98% of the songs in the poll are. So, I don't vote in it, or listen to the countdown anymore.

I'm not a summer person at all, and that's another reason that January and I have a love/hate relationship. Although this Perth summer has been a little milder than usual, particularly the cooler evenings, I'm in fear of a hiding come February and March. Possibly April as well. 

One thing I am digging about January is the Bowieversaries! I didn't coin that term (thank you, Justin), but I'm using it now. Not only do the excellent Station To Station and Low albums celebrate the anniversary of their releases in January, but it's also Bowie's birthday on the 8th too! A good reason to delve into some quality Bowie, as I have already demonstrated on this blog.

I remember in 2013, Bowie released the video of Where Are We Now? on his birthday; his first original release in a decade. It was touted by many as a Bowie birthday miracle, and rightly so. With this astonishing clip came the news of an upcoming full album, The Next Day, which would come out in March. Yeah, that was a good January day.

I probably have more musings on January, but I might save them for Ron. 

15.1.15

Today is the anniversary of my mother's death. This is something I've been meaning to blog about for a while now. Although I don't think I'm ready to delve into the deepest depths of my being, I would like to share a few things with anybody who cares to read this.

My mother committed suicide when I was 15, just a couple of weeks away from my 16th birthday. She had been battling severe depression for about three years. A year before her death, my sister and I were brought up to speed with the extent of mum's history of depression.

We had known what she had been dealing with, but we didn't know that she had tried to kill herself before we were even born. Old injuries that she had previously blamed on sport were actually caused by this suicide attempt. I don't know the full story of this time, but I was lead to believe that falling pregnant with me helped her recover. Mum was advised by medical professionals that she wasn't in the right state of mind to have a child at that time. 

Again, I wasn't there, so I don't know what actually transpired, but I've been told that mum decided that she was going to have me, and that was that. She found an inner strength and determination to push through her mental health issues by becoming my mother. Whether or not it's true, I like to think that it is. It's a nice thought. Imagine helping someone out of depression before you were even born. I hope I was a good baby.

Anyway, my sister came along a couple of years after that and our little family enjoyed a wonderful life until I was almost a teenager; the year I turned 13 and started high school. We were living in Albany and had just moved from our GEHA home to a house my mum and dad had bought. To do so they had to sell our place in Morley, which is where I started my life's journey. For one reason or another, this is one of the factors that sent mum back into depression. She rang my grandparents in Perth (my dad's parents) and said she was unable to look after my sister and I, and they lived with us for most of that year.

From that point until the day she took her life, mum had quite a few ups and downs. At her lowest, she would attempt suicide and struggle to find a sense of self-worth. At her best, she was able to enjoy the love and affection we gave her and was even able to have fun on some occasions. 

When she died, I was hit with an amazing cocktail of emotions. Relief, in that she was not in pain anymore. Guilt, because I thought I could have done more to save her. Anger; why did she leave us all behind? Sorrow swam in and out of it all too. Being a teenager, I struggled to deal with her death. In my determination to not let her death affect me, I stunted my own emotional growth.

I didn't want to be the kind of person that blamed their circumstances on the death of a parent. I didn't want it to be an excuse for not achieving something or behaving a certain way. For want of a better word, I just wanted to be a "normal" teenager. My dad offered to get me some counselling, but I stubbornly refused. I won't go into the bumpy road I went through, and how my actions affected those closest to me. Let's just say that I'm much better now, on a emotional level. I got an extraordinary amount of support from my wife Rhona, who steered me through many a teary night.

Throughout the grieving process there were many lines of wisdom and advice given to my dad, my sister and I. One thing that I held on to was mum's suicide was an act of love, in that she probably thought we would be better off without her. Such a sad notion, but knowing how low she had felt at times, I could certainly believe it. The biggest one, of course, was that time would heal us. We would never really get over mum's death, but we would get better at dealing with it over time. Bizarrely enough, there is some truth in that. There are times when I find myself wishing she was still with us, particularly those big family moments like birthdays and weddings and what-have-you. Other times, I think that while she's gone, she's happy and she just might be watching over me, maybe. I'm not a religious person, but I like the idea of her spirit being around me and my family. Although she never got the chance to meet her grandchildren, the fact that she can be around them in some way is a comfort. 

My mother's death was life-changing in a lot of ways. If I pull on that thread, I can see all the choices that have been made since and how they've resulted in where I am now. I'm happy with where I am now. I love living in Perth with my wonderful wife and our gorgeous children. But I still find myself wishing she was here. Twenty three years later, the wounds are still there, but they seem a little easier to carry.

In a freakish coincidence, my daughter found this photo of me and my family yesterday. We were looking through the board games in her bedroom and it just flew out at her. I can't remember how it even got there. I think I am probably about four or five, which would make my sister two or three. We could even be younger. This was taken in the lounge room of my Nanna and Grandpa's house in Como, which is now covered in new townhouses. At my feet is Fred Bear (imaginative name, I know) who I still have. He was given to me when I was born. I forget what my sister's bear was called now. I like looking at mum in this photo. She looks happy.

I think my dad would be around the age I am now, possibly a little younger. I have my own little family now. There may even be a photo like this of the four of us in either my parents' or Rhona's parents' house. The cycle repeats itself, and somehow, mum lives on in us. 

While We're Blogging on Bowie...

After finishing up that last blog post I moved on to the "Heroes" album, which is the second of the Berlin trilogy. Despite its iconic black and white cover and an absolutely fantastic title track, I find it lacking compared to Low. Sure, the same Eno influences are there, and if anything, the crazy keyboard stuff is even amped up a notch. 

Rather than opening with an instrumental, we are given a fairly frenetic track in Beauty And The Beast, which isn't a bad song; it's just not as immediate as some of his other work. Similarly, Joe The Lion is energetic but a little aimless. When the third song in, "Heroes", starts up all is temporarily forgiven when Robert Fripp's guitar riff sweeps through your speakers or headphones. It is arguably Bowie's best song, if not one of. I love the album version too, because it runs over the six minute mark.

Sons Of The Silent Age is probably the second best track with vocals on the album. No idea what the song is about, but the mood, production and melody are great. Once we get into the flipside, and the instrumentals, things dip a bit. I quite dig V-2 Schneider, but the other three are all about ambiance and the hooks just aren't there. 

I'm sure that "Heroes" has been just as influential and successful as Low, but it just pales in comparison to me. I also find Lodger a little hit and miss, and I'm interested what I'll think of that when I give it another re-listen. I think that "Heroes" is the weakest of the Berlin Trilogy, but hey, it's still Bowie. And that ain't bad. 

14th January 2015 or Feeling A Bit Low

Today is the anniversary of the release of David Bowie's 11th studio album Low. It came out on this day in 1977 and was something of a commercial failure at the time. A lot of copies were returned to record stores, who in turn returned them to RCA, Bowie's record label. They were quite concerned about the downturn in sales, but apparently Bowie was unperturbed.

I went through a pretty massive Bowie phase in the early 2000's. I had always been a casual fan, particularly of his hit singles in the eighties. I was given The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars for my birthday early on this century and it became something of a gateway album. When Bowie announced that he would tour Australia in early 2004, I set about getting all of his albums. Knowing he would be an artist who would play anything from his then thiry-five-year-plus career, I thought it best to bone up on his back catalog. I was lucky enough that EMI had just re-released all his albums before 1993, and had remastered them all. It was perfect timing to get into some serious Bowie. 

My first listen of Low underwhelmed me. It seemed like a lot of noise without purpose and some very disjointed songs. The only track I was familiar with at the time was Sound And Vision, which I kinda liked. With each subsequent listen, it grew on me. I had initially dismissed most of the album, but slowly I was being won over.

There's been a lot said about Brian Eno and his contributions to Low, and I always assumed he co-produced it. While he did play on a lot of it, Tony Visconti co-produced the album with Bowie, and Eno is only credited on one of the songs (Warszawa) as a co-writer. You can't deny Eno's influence on album though, particularly the sounds of the synthesisers and the ambient moods of some of the tracks. 

I imagine listening to it for the first time in 1977 would have been quite jarring. After the poppy, blue-eyed soul of Young Americans and Station To Station you are given an album that starts with an instrumental piece before assaulting you with six unpredictable tracks that feature squelching keyboards, nonsensical lyrics and odd rhythms. If that wasn't enough, the entire second side is totally instrumental. 

As I write this blog, I'm listening to Low on repeat. While it's my favourite of the so-called "Berlin trilogy", it's not my favourite Bowie album. I mean, it's up there, but the top spot has been reserved for Hunky Dory for some time now. However, I think each listen gives me a higher appreciation of it. Of the instrumentals, it was Warszawa that I became drawn to. It's so haunting, but somehow beautiful as well. It reminded me of Angelo Badalamenti's work, particularly on Twin Peaks. The instrumentals are all quite different from each other, and when they are put together they create something quite unique. For a musician like Bowie, releasing an album with over half of the music sans vocals must have been hugely brave. It's not something you could imagine Bruno Mars or Taylor Swift doing now.

When Rhona and I saw David Bowie live in 2004 we flew over to Melbourne. He hadn't announced a Perth show at that time, but we loved the city and were happy to return. One of my friends, Kieran, was just as big a Bowie as fan as me, possibly more so, and decided that he'd go to both the Melbourne AND Perth concerts. Being Bowie, all his Australian shows were slightly different and Kieran managed to score his cover of Neil Young's I've Been Waiting For You, which he recorded for the Heathen album. I was even more envious of the people who went to the second Melbourne show. Bowie pulled out four tracks from Low: Sound And Vision, Always Crashing In The Same Car, Breaking Glass and Be My Wife! On the night we saw him though, they attempted Quicksand from Hunky Dory which was awesome!

But I digress! We were talking about Low. The older I get, the more I am in awe of Bowie and the innovations he has made during his career, and continues to make. If you haven't listened to Low before, today is a good day to do it. Even after 38 years it is just as important and vital as it was on the day it was released. Actually, it's probably more important now. In an industry where artists find it hard to change musical direction, Bowie has shown that the only important thing is the belief in yourself and the music you choose to make.