Ziggy Stardust is alive and nicely and teetering up the steps of St George’s Corridor in Liverpool. The previous starman appears to be like fairly good for 50: whip-thin in scarlet leather-based and platforms, crimson cockscomb proudly erect, the 1973 brow flash the one odd anachronism. We observe him up the steps and into the madly ornate, neo-Grecian corridor. Naturally, he has timed his entrance to perfection. The mirrorballs are twinkling, the gang is expectant, and up within the loft the organist is taking part in Mick Ronson’s magnificent orchestral coda to “Life On Mars”.
However one thing’s awry. On the bar, there are three or 4 different Ziggys, patiently queuing for plastic beakers of Heineken. Across the corridor, a rum collection of Skinny (and not-so-thin) White Dukes. There are a few Main Toms, in spacesuits clearly not designed for sultry midsummer nights on Merseyside. There’s a dainty Pierrot queuing for
the women, one terrifying New Romantic nun escaped from the “Ashes To Ashes” video, and a frankly sensational late-period Ziggy in light-up Kansai Yamamoto kabuki trousers. For one specific 10-year-old Duke it’s clearly all an excessive amount of, and he’s led from the corridor in tears by a paternal Aladdin Sane.
We’re deep inside David Bowie’s multiverse of insanity and issues are solely getting stranger…
The Bowie Ball is the cracked cosplay centrepiece of the primary ever David Bowie World Fan Conference, hosted by Dave Pichilingi of Liverpool Sound Metropolis and curated by Andy Jones and Nick Good, co-editors of the David Bowie: Glamour fanzine. Over the course of an extended weekend in mid-June, hundreds of devoted Bowiephiles from internationally have descended upon Liverpool to listen to from the person’s collaborators (Carlos Alomar, Robin Clark, Gail Ann Dorsey, Donny McCaslin, Woody Woodmansey, John Cambridge all maintain courtroom to packed, rapt audiences) biographers, photographers, designers and teachers.
The conference is probably the most vivid occasion but of David Bowie’s miraculous afterlife, however all through the summer season of 2022, his persevering with schedule places the residing to disgrace. Over the weekend, followers gossip about Brett Morgan’s forthcoming documentary Moonage Daydream. Worlds Inc – who created the primary, now fetchingly quaint, on-line Bowie World in 1999 – announce the drop of their Bowie NFTs, a part of a Bowie metaverse “the place augmented actuality, cryptocurrencies, blockchain and non-fungible tokens have emerged as disruptive forces reshaping areas as various as music, gaming, sports activities, positive artwork accumulating and purchasing”.
