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JUST_OVER_UNDERGROUND

                                                    January 13, 2016
                                               Rev: January 19, 2016
                                                 
  Bowie covered so much ground it complicates         
  talking about him: different people have            
  different Bowies in mind.  His hit singles --         People a little
  in the US, anyway -- were often minor pieces of       younger than me seem
  work, and someone who calls themselves a Bowie        to obsess about the
  Fan is almost invariably thinking about stuff         movie "Labyrinth",
  that got nowhere near the American Top-40.            though it's hard for
  _Ziggy Stardust_, certainly, but even more so         me to see why.
  _Hunky Dory_ and _The Man Who Sold the              
  World_... and _Low_ tends to loom a little          
  larger than even the heroic "Heroes".               
                                                      
             Something I didn't understand           
             for a long time:  his early
             records were well-known in the UK,
             it's only in the US that they
             seemed underground and undiscovered.
  
  
  I think it's interesting that as of the
  late-70s, if the Ziggy Stardust material
  had gotten any airplay, I hadn't heard     Back in the distinctly
  it, and yet "Suffragette City" was a       un-networked 70s, information was
  must-play for any dorm party out at        distrbuted in fairly uneven ways:
  Stony Brook.                               I remember the local Long Island
                                             teens being only dimly aware of
                                             Bowie's reputation as a bisexual
                                             wildman...
  
                                             Someone who read even just "The
                                             Village Voice" was living in a
                                             completely different universe.
                                                                           
                                                           Mar 30, 2023 
                                               (... from someone who 
                                               read "Melody Maker"?)      

  
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