David Bowie is with Ian Chapman

David Bowie Is A Podcast # 14  October 2015 Melbourne. Sonja Hammer speaks with Dr Ian Chapman from NZ about his passion for David Bowie at this years David Bowie is Symposium held at ACMI 2015. Ian also chats about his upcoming book, In Experiencing David Bowie: A Listener’s Companion, musicologist, writer, and musician Ian Chapman unravels the extraordinary marriage of sound and visual effect that lies at the heart of the work of one of the most complex and enduring performers in popular music. Still active in a career now well into its fifth decade, Bowie’s influence on music and popular culture is vast. At the height of the “glam rock” era, Bowie stood head and shoulders above his peers. His influence, however, would extend far beyond glam through successive changes of musical style and stage work.

Ian Chapman, is taking part in a symposium on Bowie to coincide with the ACMI exhibition.  Chapman, a writer, performer and senior lecturer in music at the University of Otago in New Zealand, wrote his MA and PhD theses on Bowie. His first encounter with his subject was as a schoolboy in the early 1970s. It was a turbulent time, for all kinds of reasons, he says; the news was full of stories about French nuclear testing in the Pacific, and when he heard the Ziggy Stardust album, it made a grim kind of sense.  – Excerpt from a Sydney Morning Herald article by 

Philippa Hawker

Bowie, he says, helped him survive his teens, a time when he was bullied and isolated. “When I was a kid, if you were a young New Zealand boy, it was compulsory to dream of becoming an All Black, there was no other dream allowed. And suddenly there was this challenging, androgynous character who said there are actually multiple models for being a man,  here’s one. And I thought, it’s a lot better than being an All Black, mate.”

The post David Bowie is with Ian Chapman appeared first on Sci-Fi & Squeam.