Snowflake Challenge 2018 - Day 8

[winterlover]

snowflake_challenge

Day 8: In your own space, share a favorite piece of original canon (a TV episode, a song, a favorite interview, a book, a scene from a movie, etc) and explain why you love it so much.

What else could I write about than my first and non-digital fandom on this day when it's his birthday!
David Bowie would have been 71 years old today, on January 8th.

I became a fan when I was 15. One year later I exchanged letters with other fans. If the internet as we know it now had existed then, I'd been active on tumblr, LJ, twitter and everywhere, but we had our ways to connect as well, swapping tapes and videos, collecting articles and writing, writing, writing letters to each other.

The first time I met a fellow fan in real life was at a Bowie convention in Essen, Germany, which was an exciting day. We watched videos, looked at all the merchandise and talked about David Bowie.
The next year we visited the second convention and met more fans in person. We saw him live, wrote more letters.... and drifted apart.

I lost contact to most of the fans and never really started to join the online Bowie-fandom. Probably also due to the fact that you had to pay to access all features of "Bowienet", the official website, which kept me away during the first years, and now that there are many more possibilities to access info, I have turned to other fandoms.

I do love to browse tumblr for pictures and watch videos on Youtube, follow some twitters, but I don't really interact with Bowie fans. Well, there's a time for everything.

Here are two pictures I took at that second convention that I had digitalized recently:




(promo-pictures and -records, and two Bowie-dolls)




(original suit he wore as Ziggy Stardust (right) and the red Glass Spider Tour suit from 1997)


P.S. I seem to turn to Bowie every time on Snowflake challenge. But with January being the month of his birth (8th) and of his death (10th), it's understandable, isn't it?

I made some icons in 2013.

I shared a video in 2014.

I was happy about a new release in 2016.

I mourned him in 2016.


So I celebrate him today! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, David!

Comments

[fannishliss]

happy birthday to David Bowie, who made so much much wonderful music and did so much to help celebrate all the gender fluid side of life :D

[akamine_chan]

David Bowie was one of those musicians who was always just part of the soundtrack of my life. I remember when he did Under Pressure with Queen. I remember when Peter Shilling recorded Major Tom (Coming Home) which repopularized Space Odyssey. I remember when he did duets with Mick Jagger, Tina Turner, Bing fucking Crosby. I remember Labyrinth (themusecalliope used the movie as her Day 8 for Snowflake), I remember Cool World and Tin Machine and I'm Afraid of Americans.

I really just didn't understand how much of his music had been woven into the fabric of my life until he was gone.

[turps]

I'm not surprised at all you talk about him at some point every Snowflake. The dates make so much sense, and he's so obviously important to you.

What interesting photos, too. I love the Bowie dolls.

[turlough]

I'd no idea there were Bowie cons back in the day! I'm so envious of you :-) Apparently I missed A LOT by being a solitary Bowie fan. I just bought records and went to concerts.

Happy birthday, David!!!

[winterlover]

<3 <3 <3

And today (10th) is the day he died, two years ago. But I'm still celebrating.

[winterlover]

Oh nice, I checked out themusecalliope's entry, lots of Labyrinth-love!

Bowie was a huge part of my teenage-life and I remember all the things you mentioned. I started to get involved with other fans because I just discovered him shortly after Live Aid and regretted that I hadn't seen his performance. Instead of being able to rewatching it on youtube I had to find someone to copy me a videocassette.

I still haven't listened to Blackstar, there will be a time for that in the future. But not today, on the day of his death two years ago.

[winterlover]

Yes, even though I'm not listening to his albums as much as I was, I still love his music and love to look at pictures.
It's a good time to remember him.

[winterlover]

I think there were two or three cons in Germany in the early 90s.
Without the internet you had to get your info from fanzines, and I was lucky to become penfriends with a girl who just started her own and already had info and connections.
You went to concerts? When did you see him live? More than once?

[turlough]

Ah, that explains it. By the early 90s I'd more or less stopped listening to music all together and what little I did listen too was no later than baroque. (I didn't really start again until I fell into bandom in 2007.)
I seem to remember going to at least two but while I can pinpoint the first because of the venue I simply can't recall where the second one was. I suspect it must have been the 1978 tour though.

[winterlover]

Wow, those sound great! I have some recordings of those years. I saw him live for the first time in 1990 for his Sound + Vision tour, and then some more times after that. They were always brilliant shows. He was such a good performer.