Dey Street Books

He is the DJ, we are what he plays

The club DJ can tell if the song is bombing or if the girls showed up. But the radio DJ has to believe

The radio is a place where strangers can meet in the dark and share music

A woman who gives you a Bowie song is a woman to remember

Lodger has to be Bowie’s most underrated record

As with so many Bowie fans, what he learned from the master was how to turn loneliness into a grand theatrical gesture—how to turn your loneliness into a work of art.

He also made the charts with his camp finger-snapping Freddie Mercury throwdown “Under Pressure”—it doesn’t sound much like anything else Queen or Bowie ever did, so even though it’s one of the most popular tunes by either artist, it’s oddly disconnected from the rest of their careers.

But it’s a perfect goth-lounge ballad of seething sexual rage, especially in the climactic shriek, “I’ve been putting out . . . fire . . . with gas-o-liiiiiine!” (Quentin Tarantino uses this moment wonderfully in his World War II fantasy Inglourious Basterds.)

my idea of the perfect day off was to take the Red Line into the city and hang out in record stores, flipping through the racks, not even buying them (albums were expensive)

He even described the staging of the Serious Moonlight tour as “a slight parody on all the New Romantics.”