#David Bromley

[whateverbringsyouthroughthenight]

Charlotte with Flowers (Purple) David Bromley

[oldsardens]

David Bromley - Rebecca.2010

[sardens]

David Bromley - Charlotte with Flowers

[ulfgbohlin]

source: www.bromleyandco.com/art - Born in 1960 in Sheffield, England, David Bromley immigrated to Australia with his family in 1964 and emerged as a painter in the mid 1980s.

[wornoutspines]

Poor Things (Movie Review) | Yorgos Lanthimos' Cinematic Exploration of Alistair Gray

Got to see @PoorThingsFilm by Yorgos Lanthimos and it's daring, awkwardly gorgeous with a unique atmosphere. Emma Stone & Ramy Youssef's chemistry is great. #PoorThings #FilmReview #BookToFilm 🎬

This is my first Yorgos Lanthimos film, he’s known for his unique and often eccentric filmmaking style that I’ve just experienced with this daring and intriguing film. Here, he takes on the challenge of adapting Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things to the silver screen with Tony McNamara and has gathered quite the cast for it that includes Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef (Ramy), Mark Ruffalo,…

[blusebro]

Blu notes ...

[neweramuseum]

NEM Double Exposure 36 - Curated by Mehmet Omur

FEATURED WORKS BY: Joe Kandiko, Michael Bromley, Leah Chossid, Fabio Rossi, Cindy Karp, Mim Keo, David Babington, Reşan Kaya, Milena Vucetic.

[skull-designs]

“How many times does an angel fall?” David Bowie / Blackstar (5)

St Luke's Cemetery, Bromley, London Borough of Bromley.

[theunderestimator-2]

Simone Thomas, one the few black girls involved in the early London punk scene, as well as an early member of the Bromley Contingent, most notably known for appearing along with the rest of the Sex Pistols posse in the infamous Bill Grundy interview, here captured during a 1979 photo shoot by Martin Christopher-Martin.

Stunningly photogenic Simone was befriended by a Bromley Contingent founding member and a mate of Siouxsie, Bertie Marshall aka Berlin Bromley, some time ca. 1976 after he spotted her and followed her in a department store, having been struck by her looks. She was in her teens and supposedly Simon Barker was her boyfriend.

“...a black girl with platinum blonde hair, wearing a plastic mac and smoking multi coloured Russian cigarettes....She looked so original, all black and gold, a huge painted red smile that cracked her face...Simone and I had several things in common, love of David Bowie being one of them and dressing up.

Bertie Marshall, Three Piece Suite (2006)

My life revolved around David Bowie and Roxy Music and dressing up and going to gigs. I’d met Siouxsie at a Roxy concert and dressing up and going to gigs. She was from the same part of London as me and she started going out with Steve Severin who was part of the same scene. Berlin was also a very good friend of mine who used to have really good parties. We all went to the 100 Club together to watch Siouxsie. We also used to go to Louise's, a lesbian club in Soho...we used to talk a lot  because we were all speeding at the time - everyone was...we became known as the Bromley contingent after the Pistols played Orpington College and they came to one of Berlin's parties. We were the first fans - in fact. I wasn't really a fan but I just went along with it...”

Simone Thomas, ‘Punk: The Illustrated History Of A Music Revolution’ by Adrian Boot & Chris Salewicz

According to her, she felt like she was in a movie, just wearing the clothes to fit the image, yet she didn’t actually didn't feel the part -nor did she think much of the Sex Pistols as people. She remembers hoping that her dad wasn't watching when she appeared with the band and others on the Bill Grundy ITV interview and recalls McLaren paying them to go to the airport when the Pistols went to Holland to look like they had a lot of fans. 

Given what she said above, it's no surprise she she soon disappeared off the scene some time in the late-’70s. Over the years she would work as a model, an actor and a jazz singer & songwriter, gigging with several groups in London and abroad.

(via, via, via & via)

[talesfromthenorsesmouth]

It was 7.30pm, on 6 July 1972...

“Starman” is David Bowie’s Christmas carol. It offers a promise of deliverance, that the human race has been redeemed by greater powers, with a chorus built for a crowd to sing it... 'Starman' entry on Pushing Ahead of the Dame

Handwritten Starman lyrics

“Starman” seems like a revision of “Space Oddity”—“Space Oddity” had placed a frail human figure against the unfathomable expanse of space and cast him loose to drift into the unknown. It was submission to the void, the human race reaching its limits. In “Starman” the unknown is domesticated: the alien comes to visit us, in our homes, whispering through our radios, speaking softly, promising release. The stoicism of “Planet earth is blue/and there’s nothing I can do” is replaced by “he’s told us not to blow it/’cos he knows it’s all worthwhile.” ... “Starman” is also a pop song about pop music…it’s how pop music can instantly create secret societies, break up the tedium of your life, liberate you from your parents. Starman' entry on Pushing Ahead of the Dame

The essential moment comes when Bowie starts to sing the first chorus and Ronson tentatively approaches the mike. Bowie notices him and sweeps his arm over Ronson’s shoulder, pulls him to the mike. It’s a sweet moment of inclusion, the alien embracing the rocker, and, by proxy, all of the nation’s misfits. “Starman” left community in its wake; its promise came true. Starman' entry on Pushing Ahead of the Dame

"I immediately put on some of my older sister’s make-up. I loved how odd it made me look, and the fact that it upset people. You put on eyeliner and people started screaming at you. How strange, and how marvellous.” -Robert Smith, The Cure

”I was hooked. The Top Of The Pops performance changed lives. In 1972, I’d get girls on the bus saying to me, ‘Eh la, have you got lippy on?’ Until he turned up it was a nightmare. All my other mates at school would say, ‘Did you see that bloke on Top Of The Pops?’ He’s a right faggot, him!’ And I remember thinking, ‘You pillocks’, as they’d all be buying their Elton John albums, and Yessongs and all that crap. It made me feel cooler.” -Ian McCulloch, Echo and the Bunnymen

"The way Bowie pointed that finger, smilingly draped an arm around Mick Ronson, and looked beyond the camera to engage the audience sitting at home, stickily hemmed in by disapproving members of their immediate family, seemed of a piece with the new Ziggy Stardust persona we’d been reading about. It felt like an arrival long delayed." David Hepworth, The Guardian

“I just couldn’t believe how striking he was. That ambiguous sexuality was so bold and futuristic that it made the traditional male/female role-play thing seem so out-dated. Bowie was the catalyst who’d brought a lot of us, the so-called Bromley Contingent, together. And out of that really small group of people a lot happened.” Siouxsie Sioux, Siouxsie and the Banshees

Starman page from Bowie: Stardust, Rayguns and Moonage Daydreams by Michael Allred

"I remember the first time Bowie appeared on TV ... Suddenly, here comes a guy dressed as a gay alien from outer space, singing gay alien songs from outer space .... I remember TOTP was family viewing, and I remember watching it with my Mum and Dad. "Oh, shouldn’t be allowed". And there was one bit in the chorus when Bowie puts his arm round Ronson’s neck and they sing together? My Dad was like "Poofter" ... My mother’s intense disapproval made me think ‘Well, there must be something GREAT going on here"...

(maybe people who celebrate song's birthdays are cringe but fuck that post and happy birthday to the broadcast of this song)

[alienelvisobsession]

The David Bowie Connection

David Jones’s very first performance was not as David Bowie, Ziggy Stardust, or the Thin White Duke, but as an Elvis impersonator in front of a crowd of Boy Scouts in Bromley. The year was 1958, David was 11 years old, and among the songs that he sang for his audience there was probably “Hound Dog”, which his cousin Kristina remembers as one of the records he owned, and to which they danced to “like possessed elves”. It’s important to remember that it was difficult to get American records back then in England, but through his work as a promoter, David’s father managed to bring home a collection of American 45s, which included Little Richard, Fats Domino and, obviously, Elvis. Rock ‘n roll was like a ray of sunshine in David’s grey postwar world, still plagued with food rations and the rubble of bomb sites.

In high school, David liked jamming with his guitar, like Elvis did, and he was also interested in fashion and science fiction like him. Rock ‘n roll was elusive in England, but there were cafés with a jukebox where you could hear it as if it were some secret information. David liked oddities and stagecraft, like Elvis’ gyrations and extravagant clothes. He also loved Little Richard, whom he thought would die on stage because of the energy he put during his concerts. He would later say: “Elvis had the choreography, he had a way of looking at the world that was totally original, totally naïve, and totally available as a blueprint. Who wouldn’t want to copy Elvis? Elvis had it all. It wasn’t just the music that was interesting, it was everything else. And he had a lot of everything else.”

After a few unsuccessful albums, David Jones – now using the name David Bowie, like the knife – started experimenting with what the press called “glam rock”, that a lot of people thought was decadent and deviant. In 1972, when questioned about young boys with glitter makeup attending concerts, he said: “What about Elvis Presley? If his image wasn’t bisexual then I don’t know what is. People talk about fag rock, but that’s an unwieldy term at the best of times.” You could say that Bowie, like Elvis, obliterated boundaries in music, as much as in fashion, changing forever what was permitted and accepted as a stage artist, playing with clothes, makeup and sexuality in new ways.

Bowie’s fascination with Elvis was so big that in June 1972 he attended his concert at Madison Square Garden. “I came over for a long weekend,” Bowie recalled many years later. “I remember coming straight from the airport and walking into Madison Square Garden very late. I was wearing all my clobber from the Ziggy period and I had great seats near the front. The whole place just turned to look at me and I felt like a right cunt. I had brilliant red hair, some huge padded space suit and those red boots with big black soles. I wished I’d gone for something quiet, because I must have registered with him. He was well into his set.”

That was the concert that triggered the famous New York Times headline “Like a Prince from Another Planet”. It’s serendipitous that Bowie’s influential album “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars”, where he plays an androgynous alien rock star, came out that same month. The alter ego and stage persona of Ziggy Stardust, which he used in 1972-73, had started to form the year before, during an American tour. Like everything in his music and stagecraft, Bowie was inspired by many things, from Iggy Pop to experimental theater. Ziggy Stardust was loosely inspired by Vince Taylor, a 1950s rock ‘n roller who Bowie witnessed going off his rocker and obsessing over aliens, but it’s also reminiscent of Elvis (whose fall from grace had already started, according to many, and whose mythology includes being an alien). Unlike other early Elvis fans, though, Bowie loved Elvis’ 1970s jumpsuits and explicitly told his costume designer Freddie Burretti to draw inspiration from them for his stage costumes. As a result, Ziggy’s costumes are as outrageous as Elvis’, but in a different way.

To double down on his rock n’ roll opera, “Rock ‘n Roll Suicide”, the melodramatic song with which Ziggy closed his concerts, is essentially about a washed-up rockstar. Ziggy literally sang it in an Elvis-style jumpsuit, and a solemn voice announced at the end of the concert: “Mr. Bowie has left the building”. Ziggy is an archetypal messiah rockstar who arrives on earth from Mars, becomes a prophet of rock ‘n roll, and then literally destroys himself. You can argue that Ziggy Stardust was a departure from hippies: a postmodern interpretation of a rockstar, and a meditation on superstar status.

The following album, “Aladdin Sane”, where Bowie continues the story of Ziggy Stardust, features the rockstar with a lightning bolt drawn across his face, which many say is a reference to Elvis’ TCB logo.

Elvis and Bowie, who share the same birthday, are very different artists, but if Elvis was the sacrificial lamb of rock ‘n roll, Bowie had his example to become a master in brand renewal, and studied deaths and rebirths. After killing his Ziggy Stardust alter ego, Bowie had other inspirations and continued to create extravagant personas to use on stage and off stage, not without controversies.

Bowie’s connection with Elvis went further than just liking his early hits: he had an awareness of his own fallibility that made him empathize with Elvis on a more profound level. Of his disastrous 1978 movie “Just a Gigolo”, for example, he said that it was “thirty-two Elvis movies rolled into one.” He was still very much fascinated with him in 1975-76, to such a degree that he pitched his song “Golden Years”, which incorporates elements of 1950s doo-wop into a funk tune, to him. Although it’s unclear if Elvis ever heard the song, Bowie’s office did contact Colonel Parker for a possible collaboration, maybe as a producer for one of Elvis’ albums.

Even Bowie’s last song, “Black Star”, references Elvis. Written at a time when Bowie knew he was dying, the song has the same title as an an alternative version of the title track for his 1960 western movie “Flaming Star”. It’s a song about death, as in the movie Pacer knows his time has come and Elvis sings: “Every man has a black star / A black star over his shoulder / And when a man sees his black star / He knows his time, his time has come”. It seems to me that Bowie intended to close a circle with this reference: since they were born on the same day, it seemed only natural to reference Elvis’ fictional death in one of his movies. Only, in one of his most clever postmodern games, Bowie’s death wasn’t fictional after all.

Here is David Bowie imitating Elvis’ voice for a Christmas message on BBC radio 6 Music in 2013:

August 16, 2002 marked the 25th anniversary of Elvis’ death and Bowie opened the concert with “I Feel So Bad” and “One Night”, and told the story of what he was doing when Elvis died:

Here is a link with my other connection posts. I have written about many artists who were inspired by Elvis, from Jimi Hendrix to Quentin Tarantino. If you have any suggestions about artists who have an Elvis connection worth exploring let me know, and I’ll do some research for my next post.

[tesia-a-138]

Art de David Bromley

[oldsardens]

David Bromley - Charlotte with Flowers

[sardens]

David Bromley - Young Artist (Girl)

[ulfgbohlin]

source: www.bromleyandco.com/art - Born in 1960 in Sheffield, England, David Bromley immigrated to Australia with his family in 1964 and emerged as a painter in the mid 1980s.

[1five1two]

David Bromley.