THE UNWAVERING BOWIE CULT

I was surprised when a genuine Gen Z Bowie fan enthusiastically recommended I check out his 1995 album Outside. Very surprised that anyone wants to chat about Bowie beyond the monumental 1973-83 run. Why though? Not that long ago I was a teenager fascinated by Bowie decades too late and bursting with my own unconventional opinions about the merits of “filler” tracks on Young Americans and Let’s Dance. Outré youth continues to find their own Bowie.

Why does Bowie inspire such intense devotion? One reason is that Bowie played so fast and loose with temporal reality. He was never "contemporary" - his most enduring avatars are from the future, out of the past, or from nowhere at all. Ziggy Stardust was an alien messiah from the future revving frenzied teens for the apocalypse. The Thin White Duke was an aristocrat relic from the Old World ambivalently analyzing American immaturity and malaise. Berlin Trilogy Bowie is depressed and stateless in the deadlocked time of addiction and geopolitical stalemate. After the Berlin years, Bowie became a bona fide pop idol - an oracle who had already assumed music as ancillary to the real product of pop - the audience itself. A fan of fans, he dreamed hermetic spectatorship into existence a decade before MTV.  

In his own lifetime, Bowie's influence stretched beyond his original context. Prime example - the riff from "Hang on to Yourself" was programmed by Casio engineer and Bowie fan Hiroko Okuda as a preset on the MT-40 keyboard. That preset served as the basis for King Jammy and Wayne Smith's "Sleng Teng" riddim, the first digital dancehall production.

The thrill of being out of step with time is you dance with unexpected partners. The Thin White Duke is always from the past, so when he confronts Americans to "remember your President Nixon" the urgency is alive. Ziggy Stardust last played in 1974, but Ziggy Stardust is always from the future. His "You're wonderful!" love bomb hits as a larger than life promise as live spectacle or streamed on 360p. Net denizens browsing, collaging, and consuming endless media may find it feels like Bowie is speaking specifically to them because he is. Bowie's biggest fans haven't even been born yet. 
 

The out of time drift of Bowie fandom is similarly precious as the cults formed around artists who mined one perennially rediscovered niche - think DJ Screw, Les Rallizes Denudes, Jandek, the Fall, Tangerine Dream, etc. The big difference is Bowie is popular and eclectic. Are there other musicians like this? Tupac Shakur, who drew from often contradictory personae - posi hypeman, "Thug Life" visionary, lost Panther agitator, Ice Age materialist, critical prophet - and who's discography is littered with very out of time posthumous releases is a likely candidate.