Now, if you’ve been frequenting this site throughout its almost 8 year history or have followed me through my various social media accounts, you’d know that music has been a lifelong obsession with many of my earliest and most powerfully enduring memories centered around music. And as a child of the 80s, I can trace much of my lifelong obsession — and perhaps, in turn, this site — back to being wildly obsessed with three of the best concert movies of the 80s, David Bowie‘s Serious Moonlight, Talking Heads‘ Stop Making Sense, and The Police’s Synchronicity.
More than 30 years have passed since those concert films’ initial release, and yet I can watch them now with the same rapt sense of awe, that “warm thrill of confusion, that space cadet glow,” as a song says, that I did as a boy; in fact, I can remember watching all of these ridiculously talented people thrill me and countless others, and knowing that I needed to be part of that somehow. Naturally, like countless other Bowie fans out there, I was heartbroken to hear of his death after an 18 month struggle with cancer two years ago; however, because his music in some way has managed to be a major influence on a significant portion of my life, I think it’s appropriate to pay tribute to the man and his work on his birthday. And to celebrate what would have been his 71st birthday, I stumbled across a full version of Serious Moonlight, live footage of his 50th Birthday show at Madison Square Garden, and more. Happy 71st, Mr. Bowie.
