Down, Down...

Just when you thought 2016 couldn't take away another rock star... Rick Parfitt of Status Quo is gone.

The Quo were formidably good at what they did... but it wasn't really for me, and I never saw them live.

But many musicians rated and respected them – including, maybe surprisingly, John Lydon, who perhaps saw something punkish in the Quo's refusal to ever do anything but stick to basics and go for the lowest common denominator.

This year of the wins of Brexit and Trump and the losses of Bowie, Cohen and Prince (and many more) has been bloody awful. I dare to think that 2017 has to be better – rather than a case of down, down deeper and down.

Death On Mars

Sometimes some space is a good thing… now the hoo-ha over David Bowie has died down a little, maybe it's possible to reflect a bit more clearly.
Neil McCormick from The Daily Telegraph may well have reflected quite a bit after his review of 'Blackstar' which drew the conclusion: "It suggests that, like a modern day Lazarus of pop, Bowie is well and truly back from beyond."
Kitty Empire, who got it similarly wrong, used the whole of a piece in The Observer this weekend to make her excuses in full.
'Blackstar', with the advantage of hindsight, is so obviously a grim farewell to mortality, but few people knew what was coming, so it's not entirely surprising that they got it so wrong.
My own feelings about – and memories of – Bowie are fairly straightforward. I loved 'Hunky Dory' and I loved the fact that you couldn't go into my local bar in the early 1970s without 'Life On Mars' blasting out of the jukebox – the perfect soundtrack for that time.
 I never liked the 'Ziggy Stardust' and 'Aladdin Sane' albums that much. 'Young Americans' was a wonderful return to form. And I'm afraid, for me, that's just about it.
I only saw him once on stage – with Queen – and he was truly remarkable. Bowie was a great musician, and a great performer with great presence – and  a great appetite for sex, drugs and rock 'n roll, and maybe he willingly paid the price for that. 
Now he's gone, 'Life On Mars' still says it all, I reckon.