well, well, well. this post very nearly, look you see, holds good on my commitment to not write of bowie at least once a month, in place ever since i finished my quasi magnum opus on his albums. this concerns something which proclaims itself to be of bowie but, as you may have worked out from the title, perhaps does not have him quite as much in focus as you may have thought.
just a word of if not warning, then caution or maybe general advice for any of you out there who are planning on making a documentary on david bowie. or anyone really. whereas i profess to be no expert, and certainly have not made any form of documentary myself, if when watching a provisional edit of your work you can't but help notice that it seems to provide more insight, comment and detail about the various services offered by bromley council than it does the ostensible primary subject, either rename it or consider another edit.
for the record, i shall try not to mention bromley council quite so many times as it features in the documentary what i watched. in theory this is easy, for if i avoid going north of one thousand mentions of bromley council (and their services), i will have achieved this.
the above (and indeed below) image is the cover of a dvd what is called David Bowie On The Rock Trail. although i have noted that it has been released in several variations, some featuring a basic what i believe is called "spoonerism" (or false palindrome) in the form of On The Rock Trial With David Bowie. i would imagine that variation is quite rare, for his lawyers would have stepped in to question the use of "with".
provenance of my copy? why, it was a most generous and kind Christmas gift from His Excellenct, the Most Honorable Viscount of Stockton, the Marquess of Tees Valley and several other titles. in his wisdom he believe that "basically anything with david bowie written on it" would be a gift that i would welcome. he was and indeed remains correct in this regard. i am not complex at all, i am very simplistic in this regard.
as you can see below, the claim is that this dvd is an "intimate and fun-filled trip", and so forth, i cannot be pestered typing the rest up, just rather read it. on the back, in slightly (as in very) smaller print is a note that it is not official, contains no involvement or endorsement by bowie (or anyone remotely connected to him) and absolutely none of his music.
dvds of this nature for well known musicians are quite common. there is presumably a market for them, and that market would be "ooooh, so and so likes that singer / band, look at that big picture of them on the cover, i shall buy it for them as a gift". which is how we have gotten her. let me be brave and assume that all of them, no matter which artist or band is covered, are as bad as you might expect; likely as awful as this one.
it was a gift, mind, and i tried to be fair in watching it. this fairness goes out of the window quite early on, and not just specifically for the numerous (and disproportionate) number of mentions bromley council gets in it. just south of an hour is a woefully short period to try and cover the works of someone like david bowie. indeed, there are some songs he has done which could barely be covered in a decent way in a ninety minute documentary. so, presumably you have to be quite careful and relatively precise with what you do with the time you have, especially when quite a bit of the documentary you have planned as a "locked in" amount of time set aside for a look at the services offered by bromley council, then.
with the above in mind, i was quite surprised to see how much time was given to a (generous) look at the album The Man Who Sold The World, which it would be fair to say did not find an audience at the time but very much has since. more surprising was that Hunky Dory was dismissed in less than one half of a sentence, with the implication being that it was a "nuisance" which somehow "got in the way" of The Man Who Sold The World and Ziggy Stardust. oh. that would be the Hunky Dory album which features Changes, a song one could argue as being one of his more iconic works, as well as Life On Mars?, which routinely tops "fan poll charts" as being his greatest ever (no, would not be my choice either, but there we go). also, it has Queen Bitch on it, which is excellent. pushing the boat out and giving the album a full sentence, at the least, would have been nice.
one of the biggest problems in making a documentary as cheap as this is the sheer lack of funds available to use actual, proper pictures of people. there are one or two "stock photo" images of bowie on display in the documentary, but also the above. from what i could gather, the above is supposed to be a "portrait" of david bowie and mick jagger. is this a better picture of them than, say, i could do? yes, absolutely. does this make it a decent image of them? no, absolutely f*****g not. unless you think it is. if so, well, there is a treat for you just now.
for the makers of this documentary it seems that the promises of this being both "intimate" and "fun-filled" were ticked off the list of "done" by considering what services offered by bromley council david bowie had reason to use. it has never been a matter that interested me, but i shall take the word of this documentary that david's marriage to angie and the birth of their son zowie bowie (joe jones then duncan jones) were both registered at bromley council services. this is underlined by two (at least) separate shots of the sign on the door outside of bromley council. no, not a sign saying bowie was there, just an actual sign letting you know that the building is where one indeed can access the many wonderful services offered by bromley council.
perhaps i should have had a closer look at the credits on this disc, instead of ripping it out of the player as soon as possible after it was finished. maybe the credits mention, in passing, that some (or all) of the documentary was funded by bromley council. it would make sense if so, and that is the only possible reason i can think of as to why the services offered by bromley council feature so heavily.
that said, maybe i am in the wrong here. perhaps this documentary was made by people with far greater insights than i could ever hope to see. maybe they identified that much, if not all, of bowie's success over the years stemmed from his wisdom in trusting bromley council services to register certain matters. i have no way to test this. you might, i suppose. if you happen to be a pop star but are presently not experiencing the success you had suspected, anticipated or hope for, then why not pop along to bromley council and register something with their services? should you start selling out stadium tours after that, i shall issue an apology to the makers of this documentary as soon as possible after i have verified your claim.
being fair is what i try to do, mind, and to his credit the person credited with this documentary, Liam Dale, has (somehow) made a living off of doing things like this for 40 years. if i could have gotten a job where all i had to do was say vaguely accurate and questionably relevant things about famous people, then i would have. sadly, i never got the big break he did, which appears to have been holding a ladder for someone who was doing something or other for the stage set design for liberace.
another class portrait from the dvd, as promised earlier? yes, why not. here you go, and for fun why not try and guess who this is supposed to be?
i am informed by the commentary on the dvd that this is indeed supposed to be freddie mercury, the much loved and much missed legendary singer off of queen, and in his own right a singer of a solo nature. no, when i think of freddie, this is not how i picture him. but, the artist did, so there you go.
would i, in any way, shape or form, endorse or recommend this documentary dvd to anyone? not really. i mean, if you knew someone who had no knowledge of bowie, had no interest in knowing anything about bowie but was for some reason prepared to give just south of an hour to watching a documentary which would kind of give some basics, then this is the disc for them. a very strange and specific demographic, but what an incredible world we live in where even such a minority gets their requirements taken care of.
something of a cherry on the cake here is the back of the dvd. let us, for the moment, leave aside the "rare ability" championed for Liam Dale. i draw your attention to the second paragraph. the one in which bromley is described as "unremarkable suburbia". that may well be true, but it does not stop the importance of bromley council services from being explored and celebrated here. along with, every now and then, david bowie.
perhaps (maybe) one day i shall go to this bromley place myself. in general terms i would say that it is fair comment to consider me unremarkable, so i could well find i like the place. mostly, though, i of course wish to see if i can access the drama, the thrill, the buzz and the excitement of making use of bromley council services. at this moment in time, i would say me visiting bromley and having reason to register something with bromley council services seems more likely than me watching this documentary ever again.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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