A few notes on Time by Bowie and Scentless Apprentice by Nirvana
• Time on Bowie’s 1973 album Aladdin Sane (which can be read “A lad insane”). Such production work, such cooperation between three amazing musicians and one poet (where Bowie plays two of the roles. Mike Garson’s piano which effortlessly moves between vaudeville, glam rock and jazz, Bowie’s desperate struggle with the most terrible oppressor of them all – Old Father Time, and then the timing of Mick Ronson’s guitar solo – one underlined phrase which sets the whole song on fire for a couple of bars.
• Scentless Apprentice reminds me that the greatest Kurt Cobain album was not Nevermind but the fragmented and chaotic last album, In Utero, which has DESPAIR written all over it. I was 30, expecting my second child and witnessed the greatest musical artist and rock poet of my generation destruct himself and choose a lonely death with a shotgun in his mouth, according to the pitiful marginalized-male cultural protocol he was taught during his mobile home upbringing. Whitetrash to Whitetrash, Guns to Guns.
And his eyes were just as blue as the eyes of my two year old son. Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!
