Thursday November 18, 2021 “Panic in Detroit” David Bowie
“Panic in Detroit” comes from David Bowie’s 1973 album Aladdin Sane and takes Bo Diddley’s beat while incorporating a salsa sound for his song about revolution. The guitar on this is by Mick Ronson who would also work with Lou Reed, Mott the Hoople, Bob Dylan and Elton John among so many others.
So we know that David Bowie felt he needed to change his name from David Jones so as not to be confused with the Monkees singer who already had that name but did you know that despite being three years older Bowie was a childhood friend of Peter Frampton, where both attended Bromley Technical High School, and where Frampton’s dad was Bowie’s art teacher. As a teenager Bowie also hung around with a piano player named Reg Dwight, the future Elton John and they had a mutual friend back then in Marc Bolan (“Bang a Gong”).
Bowie was also way ahead of most relative to the promise of social media when in September 1996, he became the first major artist to release a single via internet download only with “Telling Lies.” It took about 11 minutes to download. That was just the beginning: In 1998, Bowie announced that he’d be launching his own internet service provider, known as BowieNet.
Stay safe and well...and in what seems to me a horrible contradiction, David Bowie voiced Lord Royal Highness, a character on Sponge Bob Squarepants.