David responsible for saving music + the future*.

View fullsize

David Laurie will shortly publish his "labour of love" book about the way pop music in the early 1980's was transformed from a world of pedestrian dinosaur monochrome lumps, into a new realm of kaleidoscopic enigmatic synth powered marvellousness, inspired by Kraftwerk and David Bowie. OK, David puts it such better than I can and he has supported the launch of the book with a neat Kickstarter campaign, short film, and curated some Spotify playlists to get you into the pivotal early 1980's mood.  I have not had the courage to tell Mister Laurie that I was mainly listening to Rush and Thin Lizzy when he had Visage on the turntable, but am hopeful the book will inspire me to revisit both.  

I have written at length before about David Bowie and particularly how he crash-bang-walloped his self back into our musical lives with The Next Day in 2013, and better still, had given no real clue to the degree with which he would rock-out in that re-emergence through the unexpected release of Where Are We Now.  Now we hear that Bowie is involved in a musical version of the The Man Who Fell To Earth, due to emerge off Broadway sometime this year.  The play is to be called "Lazarus" and it's being made by Ivo van Howe and Enda Walsh.  We loved what Enda Walsh did with Once [one of the highlights of the whole of 2014 for me] so anticipation is high here at Wave Your Arms towers, though mainly hopeful that Bowie's involvement will in some way be creative, not just one of financial support.  Meanwhile, on the theme of creative rejuvenation, David (Laurie) predicts a "really good album from Duran Duran" in 2015 and, as he says, no one would have predicted THAT 35 years ago.  You can see a trailer for David's new book DARE, here.  

*David Bowie.