Future Nostalgia: Performing David Bowie

Description

Although David Bowie has famously characterized himself as a “leper messiah,” a more appropriate moniker might be “rock god”: someone whose influence has crossed numerous sub-genres of popular and classical music and can at times seem ubiquitous. By looking at key moments in his career (1972, 1977–79, 1980–83, and 1995–97) through several lenses—theories of sub-culture, gender/sexuality studies, theories of sound, post-colonial theory, and performance studies Waldrep examines Bowie’s work in terms not only of his auditory output but his many reinterpretations of it via music videos, concert tours, television appearances, and occasional movie roles. Future Nostalgia looks at all aspects of Bowie’s career in an attempt to trace Bowie’s contribution to the performative paradigms that constitute contemporary rock music. Title Page Copyright Page Contents Acknowledgments List of Figures Chapter 1 Introduction: The Pastiche of Gender Career overview Performance art Gender studies Notes Chapter 2 The Persistence of the Dandy: Subcultures and Resistance Theorizing subcultures Notes Chapter 3 Avatars of the Future: Structuring Music “On Popular Music” “Theodor Adorno Meets the Cadillacs” Musicology The concept album Notes Chapter 4 The Grain of the Voice: Autobiography and Multiplicity Sound Effects Image-Music-Text The embodied voice Song as autobiography Queer Blues Notes Chapter 5 The Lost Decade: Reconsidering the 1980s Music video Orientalisms The late eighties Notes Chapter 6 Music for Cyborgs: Fictions of Disability The soft machines Death artist Tall women Notes General Bibliography Media Bibliography Index