Tour Diary #7 – Here, we see Nneka joking backstage with her crew and endearingly stumble through mistakes during a quick green screen performance. Most tantalizing is the short musical improvisation during the band’s soundcheck that makes you wish the camera had lingered for a bit longer.

Tour Diary #8 – An exhausted Nneka (these videos come from the end of her last go round the U.S) complains about the bags under her eyes and her lack of a Valentine.

Heartbeats – Live at S.O.B’s – An exclusive live clip of Nneka performing “Heartbeats,” a stuttering piano-driven slow burn tinged with reggae accents. She disappears into the song as few performers do while she opines on love and cultural acceptance. If you haven’t seen her live, this video will make you want to.

Bonus: Listen to streaming tracks by Nneka, including “Heartbeats,” on her MySpace page.

Bonus: We’re giving away three copies of the book to lucky readers. Keep reading to find out how to snag one. Last day to submit a comment is Tuesday, March 30. We’ll be asking winners for photo evidence to post on the blog, so keep those descriptions accurate! CONTEST CLOSED. Winner will be announced Monday, April 5.

And some of our favorite shots from the bajillion amazing living spaces scoped by The Selby and featured in The Selby Is In Your Place:

Barneys New York creative director Simon Doonan and potter/interior designer Jonathan Adler playing ping-pong in “hyper decorated ’70s shag pad.”

Fanny Bostrom and Bill Gentle in the backyard of their Williamsburg, Brooklyn home. Fanny, a multimedia artist from Sweden, made the teepee.

Kenyan and Grace Kelsey in the bedroom of their farmhouse in upstate Warwick, New York.

Items from Kenyan and Kelsey’s collection of antiques.

So, you want to win the 256 pages of full-color photography and illustration (plus a title page with stickers) wrapped into The Selby Is In Your Place? Leave us a comment telling us what weird/rare/funny items you collect that would be worth photographing. Let the best three win!

Hidden

Beat Pyramid

Put it all together and you have something that can only be described as Peter and the Wolf at the apocalypse. It’s also one of the year’s finest (and strangest) releases. With eyebrows raised in awe, we asked band mastermind Jack Barnett to dissect for us the numerous elements and influences that combined to create Hidden.

William Byrd

“William Byrd lived and died nearby to where I live. I think its landscape has also influenced me. His consort songs are the saddest pieces of music I’ve ever heard. I like their strictness and inevitability too. I’d really recommend people listen to him.”

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Foley artists

“Foley is the person who invented the early recording techniques used in film soundtracks. At first I was thinking of getting a Foley artist to come in and guest on the album. In the end we just researched it ourselves and spent a day on it. I had an idea for a kind of pop music with a pop/R&B diva singing over a really crystalline clear hi-fi recording of swords and knives swinging and clanking. That’s what led us down that path.”

Benjamin Britten

“Benjamin Britten was the overriding influence on this album — especially his operas. Peter Grimes is good. It’s music that sounds like the sea and that’s what I wanted some of our music to sound like. His music is completely unlike anyone else’s. It’s completely strange but completely immediate.”

Taiko drums

“I can’t remember where I first heard them, but as well as being the loudest and biggest instruments I’ve ever heard, they also have a great tone, a really strange tone. We hired three of them for a day, it’s quite cheap — they arrived on a lorry.”

New London Children’s Choir

“They’re a choir from some primary school in north London. They’re called the New London Children’s Choir. Actually, that was one of the last things to be recorded because we’d arranged it with another school choir. They’d been learning all the music in their class and we went and visited them at their school to talk to them about the music. It was all arranged but then their headmaster pulled out of it at the last moment, so we had to start again with a different school. New London is the name for heaven in Will Self’s Book of Dave, actually.”

Steve Reich

“I’m not really a huge fan of minimalism in general, but Steve Reich is excellent, especially some of the later stuff. I like the infectious rhythms. We wanted to combine some of those rhythms with dancehall rhythms on ‘We Want War’ — you can hear it in places.”

To accompany the album’s release, Rogue Wave has created 30-second mini-films for each track on the record. After the jump, cross the Golden Gate Bridge with the band in the exclusive premiere of the video for “You Have Boarded,” and check out the full set of videos at Brushfire’s YouTube page.

The festival has brought together a global community of DJs, producers, promoters, composers, and music collectives to present an adventurous program of panels, film screenings, multimedia performances, and, of course, plenty of good parties. The lengthy list of artists scheduled to appear includes Carl Craig, Moritz von Oswald, nsi.,  Lillevan, and others, many of whom are making their US debuts.

In the spirit of Unsound’s devotion to talent and creativity, we asked eight of the festival’s most innovative artists the question: “What do you envision as the future of electronic music?” Check out their inspiring responses after the jump.

Petre Inspirescu: “There should be a long discussion on this subject. I think the future is always bright and electronic music will be more diverse and experimental as we evolve. Promoters play a very important role in this because they have the opportunity to enlarge the perspective of audience’s by organizing more artistic events to educate the people. Musically speaking, I think there will be more ‘natural vibrations’ infused into electronic music [to make it] sound more organic. We are evolving as well as the, technology so it’s normal to improve the sound palette with new ‘colors.’ Artists should not be afraid to create new sounds because they might not be appreciated. They have to convince the audience.”

Luke Hess: “What I hope for and what will be may be two very different things. I hope that electronic music will continue to be a release from the mainstream. With exposure can come popularity, and once that popularity becomes the focus, it’s very easy to lose sight of the soul and the meaning behind the original intent of the art. Electronic music, in my mind, is about artistic expression — and this expression has been cheapened in recent years. I hope that the future will allow more genuine musicians to express themselves in the purest form possible without any other ulterior motives besides their passion for expanding musical boundaries and pushing new concepts. I tune out the world, listen to what the Spirit is doing in and through my life and write my heart out. Technology and gear is secondary at best to what you have in your soul.”

Jacaszek: “That depends on what electronic music really means. Jean Michell Jarre is dead, that’s for sure, but the use of digital technology in music isn’t [exhausted] yet. Trends are changing with no mercy. To keep this artistic balance, innovation should not dominate our creative thinking. To do something original now, we should, rather, take from what’s close to us (local tradition, the deepness of our souls) and then express that with contemporary artistic language.”

Tobias Freund (nsi.): “[The future of] electronic music will be abstract and simple. I don’t need to be innovative [because] for me it is a natural process. I will always be curious about music and life. I don’t take to much notice of trends and hype.”

Levon Vincent: “I think we will continue to cycle in and out of equal temperament — things are deeper and more soulful now, and in five years people will find more ‘out’ styles to be most palatable. Things seem to go back and forth every six to eight years or so… I can’t say what my role will be, but I assure you I will be there with a big smile on my face. ”

Newworldaquarium: “That’s one of the big questions in life! [Looking back to] punk, it became clear that you didn’t need an education to play music, and with house and techno it seemed you didn’t have to have a band either. With electronic music today, I guess you don’t even need an instrument anymore, and maybe some day writing a piece of music will be as common as writing something for your blog or a Facebook status-update. For me, it somehow has always been like that.”

Bora Yoon: “I think the future of electronic music will be as vast as the elements that have gone into it — it’s a fascinating swirl to trace: DJ culture, digital producers, classical musicians with software, songwriters with looping pedals, DJs who have live musicians, beatboxers with orchestras, beats with live visuals, multimedia projections, and exciting interdisciplinary approaches like music-reactive or music-generating devices — the formula that comprises what is ‘electronic music’ is only getting wider and more varied, as every genre of music aerates into each other, and the idea of performance expands to become more and more sensory. Electronic music basically encompasses the best of both worlds: the recording realm and the live performance realm — so that whether you’re a DJ, or a studio producer, a live musician with software, etc., the sliding scale between ‘studio’ and ‘concert’ is incredibly flexible [for live performance]… The tenor of electronic music in the E.U. is vastly different than in the U.S., in terms of culture, lifestyles and how it has evolved aesthetically beyond a post-rave era. I’m excited to see more of this cross-pollination, since the evolution of electronic music on a global level is where I truly believe the future of electronic music to be, as each culture has its own unique way of expressing its musical aesthetic, with the technologies it has available and with the intuitive aesthetic that gives each culture the distinct style it has.

“I keep things ‘innovative’ in ways that are unexpectedly not forward-thinking — as in, combining the incredibly new with the incredibly old, or this idea of the ‘ancient future’: combining ambient electronic music with 12th-century choral polyphony, which, strangely, evoke the same feelings, and seem to create a cyclical effect through history. This coming year I will be releasing a wax cyclinder record, with U.K. WIRE artist Aleks Kolkowski’s museum collection, of my track “PLINKO,” made completely of cell phone sounds. It’ll basically be the most digital sound being vomited out of the most analog format possible — which tickles me pink.”

Mike Huckaby: “It’s all a big cycle. It’s all headed towards a back to basics approach. The artist himself, however, will remain more in control of his future. .. We are already seeing the demise of the record company and the restructuring process labels are going through… I look at different ways to reinvent myself while adhering to strong principles centered around the music I’m trying to create. It is very important to have strong musical influences for all the right reasons. If you want to remain in this business, you have to re-educate yourself about what it is you are trying to do. Music is consumed, distributed and sold by entirely different means these days. This is why I studied music theory for the past 10 years and teach software to kids. My motto is this: Always do what your peers cannot, and will not, do. If you adhere to this, you will always [be able to] reinvent yourself.”

Want to listen before you buy your tickets? A free Unsound Festival compilation featuring several exclusive tracks is available here.

Flavorpill: How is the new EP different from your last?

Matt Maust: It’s basically the happier, more vibrant songs that didn’t really fit on the Loyalty album. We realized that in a way, we were starting to work ahead of ourselves, so this EP works as a nice bridge between records. That’s what this little tour and EP is all about: Reinventing ourselves, trying on a new shirt. Thank you for the “sexy” comment, too. I’ve not heard that one yet, I’ll fly with that. The songs were recorded very quickly; I think it adds to the spirit of it. Quick and raw and colorful. I love the album cover. [CWK vocalist] Nathan Willett and I made that at my studio. It’s a drawing of this writer he digs named Joan Didion. He mentions her in “Santa Ana Winds.”

FP: Was it happy coincidence, or did you specifically want to kick off the tour in LA?

MM: Oh, it’s always nicer starting off at home. You go out with a bang, on a high note. All your friends are around. We’re just glad we convinced Alec Ounsworth to make the trek out to LA and San Francisco for the shows. We’re just as excited about seeing him play these shows as we are to play ourselves. His new record is really good.

FP: What came first for you, music or visual art? Did you study it at any point, or ever want to be an artist professionally?

MM: I studied graphic design in college, and I’ve only gotten more excited about it ever since. I worked for a couple of clothing lines before the band. But my interest in music came first. Bands like the Clash and Joy Division really hit me hard early on, for their visual side of things just as much as their musical side.

Matt’s studio. Click through to view a slideshow of his artwork>>

FP: Who were your biggest creative influences as an artist?

MM: Right now I really am into Dieter Roth, and the Dada artists from the 20s were great. Jeff Wall and Rodney Graham are great. I love this British artist named Tacita Dean. Cy Twombly is a favorite of mine; Joseph Beuys; and who doesn’t love Basquiat? Billy Childish is great. Matt Wignall (who did the photos for Loyalty) got me into Peter Beard and Ed Ruscha. Richard Swift makes some pretty mean music and images to go with them. I could go on and on. My roommate Danny Simon did all the drawings on our “new look” for the Cold War Kids website. Talented man, that Danny is.

FP: Do you work while you’re on the road? Is your Mauster blog the best place to see your latest work?

MM: Actually yes. I work a lot from the road. But it’s mostly just taking photos, or thinking and writing a lot of notes for what I want to make when I get home. I forget so easily, so if I don’t write it down, I’ll never make it. But a lot of my pieces involve lots of text, so I write little notes to myself while touring. You can only get so messy with art supplies until the other guys in the band start complaining. A lot of the people in my pieces are people we meet on tour. A lot of times they are the ones that help me translate stuff into other languages. Designing in other languages is something I like to do. I remember back in college trying to convince my teacher to let me do my design projects in German or something, saying that I’ll pay attention to the text better because I can’t read it. Never really convinced them though, so I guess I’m getting it out of my system now.

FP: How do you manage to be productive in two art forms?

MM: I try to make the two only complement each other. I’m very serious about the visual art I make, but only insofar as it really enhances the music. Playing with Cold War Kids really is my passion, and any visual art that comes, really is a direct inspiration from the band lifestyle and our crew. I try to hit my art studio either before or after (or both) we are writing and rehearsing. It’s a great way to warm up to play, and to wind down afterward. Those are my best moments.

Cold War Kids play LA on 1/22; San Francisco on 1/23; New York on 1/29; and Chicago on 1/30.

[Editor's note: We're reposting this feature from last year due to popular demand and the fact that we're wondering if most of you got to see it the first time around. Enjoy!]

On a recent holiday shopping trip uptown, in order to escape the hordes cascading down 5th Avenue, I ducked into one of New York’s contemporary art museums. While sauntering through the maze of galleries I came upon a certain photograph that gave me pause. I studied the slap-dash camera angle and the basic lighting, and thought to myself: “Really? This is what it takes? I can do that!”

And then it hit me like a bolt of lightning: Not only can I do that, I will do that, and then I will pawn off the results on all of my unsuspecting relatives. Why give a Richard Avedon poster, when I can make an original Adda Birnir knock-off? Thus I enlisted the help of my trusty co-conspirator Tom Starkweather and together we picked five masters of photography (Cindy Sherman, Steve McCurry, Philip Lorca Dicorcia, Richard Avedon, and Ryan McGinley) whose work we felt was just begging to be re-created.

Detailed instructions and the results, after the jump.

1. Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #21, 1978

Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills are hands down one of the greatest bodies of photographic work ever made. They’re smart and funny and critical and yet so simply made. Very little art has been able to say so much (about women and media and fiction and film) using so little — she shot the series herself using only a 35mm black and white camera and some basic costume changes.

In order to recreate Untitled Film Still #21 you will need the following:

1 Cindy Sherman look-alike (My good friend Erin Smith)
1 woman’s blouse
1 woman’s blazer (a small men’s blazer will suffice)
1 straw hat
A sunny day (or a powerful flash)

To successfully execute this piece, you will have to make use of a very special secret ingredient that only we here at Flavorpill can tell you about. The secret ingredient? Location, location, location.

Cindy Sherman took the original image right in front of the Custom House building located right outside of the Bowling Green subway stop at the very tip of Manhattan. (The building is now home to the National Museum of the American Indian). Once there, have your model face the building and spend a little time experimenting with where exactly to have her stand and perfecting Sherman’s discerning gaze. Then voila!

2. Steve McCurry, Afghan Girl, 1984

Magnum photographer Steve McCurry’s portrait of an anonymous 12-year-old Afghan girl was taken in a refugee camp on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in 1983. The image, famous for the girl’s piercing green eyes, originally ran as the cover of the June 1985 issue of National Geographic and since that time has become one of the most iconic, recognizable photographs ever taken.

Now, to be fair, it took a lot for Steve McCurry to get this picture. At the time, Afghanistan was under the rule of rebel leaders fighting off the Soviet invasion, and McCurry had to don native garb in order sneak into rebel controlled territories along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. When he left Afghanistan, he sewed his rolls of film into the fabric of his clothing and smuggled the images out of the country. When he returned to the United States he was, deservedly, awarded the Robert Capa Gold Medal for Best Photographic Reporting from Abroad.

In order to re-create this iconic work of wartime journalism, in the comfort and safety of your own home, you will need the following:

1 brown haired, green-eyed girl with long-hair (The wonderful Robin Pearce)
1 turquoise green background
1 red Indian cloth scarf (cut your own holes)

The only trick to nailing this image is to get the right angle and arrangement of hair and scarf. Print out a copy of the original and just keep tweaking the set-up until you get it right. Have your model practice opening her eyes as wide as possible; if she’s not getting the job done, consider having an assistant slam a door or jump out from the shadows to get the desired effect.

3. Philip Lorca DiCorcia, Mario, 1978

For most art photography students who came of age post-1990 (like Tom and I), Philip Lorca DiCorcia holds a certain vaunted place as the photographer for simple but brilliant lighting set-ups. DiCorcia’s early images are known for their hyper-realistic lighting, which imbues the work with a magical, cinematic quality. According to photography lore, this image of his brother Mario was DiCorcia’s first venture into staged photography. So of course, we picked it.

To re-do this image, you will need:

1 Mario look alike (Our own Tom Starkweather)
1 modest kitchen
1 green or yellow tinted light

When we first looked into setting up this picture, we thought that DiCorcia had hidden a light in the fridge in order to get that great yellow glow. As it turns out, the fridge light was sufficiently bright, as long as we exposed the photograph for long enough. Tom used a 1/4 sec exposure to accomplish the right eerie quality of light.

4. Richard Avedon, Marilyn Monroe, Actress, New York City, May 6, 1957

Richard Avedon’s famous image of Marilyn Monroe was taken at the end of a long photo shoot with the actress in 1957. As detailed in a feature on the image in New York Magazine, Avedon described how “for hours she danced and sang and flirted and did this thing that’s — she did Marilyn Monroe.” Then, right as they were finishing up, she sat down and relaxed. This photograph was the last frame he snapped.

If you want to remake this image, obtain the following:

1 Marilyn Monroe look-alike (I had the honor for this one)
1 sparkly black low-cut dress, or
1 yard of sparkly black fabric
Lots of make-up

Ironically, the poignant combination of ease and vulnerability that can be seen on Monroe’s face is extremely difficult to attain. Tom and I spent almost an hour taking picture after picture where I had to tilt my head, slightly relax my face, look up, look down, etc. etc. If you are going to make this picture, make sure to block out plenty of time. Or nail it. Either way.

5. Ryan McGinley, Running Fireworks from I Know Where the Summer Goes, 2007

I have always had mixed feelings towards Ryan McGinley’s work. On one hand, I really love it — I mean who doesn’t like hot naked people running around having adventures? On the other hand, I sometimes feel that’s all the pictures are: hot naked people running around having adventures. So I started to joke with Tom that all we needed to make a Ryan McGinley were some fireworks and a naked person. Tom and I decided the idea was too funny to pass on.

In order to re-create this image you will need:

1-2 naked people (Thank you, Funny Clown)
3-5 firework fountains
1 safe, legal, outdoors space to do the shoot

As it turned out, this was the most difficult to photograph to pull off. The actual shoot happened in five minutes in an undisclosed location in Baltimore, but the planning took weeks.

Our first roadblock was that fireworks aren’t legal in New York. The nearest place that would sell us fireworks legally was in Easton, PA, so Tom and I spent the better part of one Sunday trekking out to Phantom Fireworks to get our loot. Luckily they had a buy-one, get-one-free special going to make the trip worthwhile. If you live in New York, click here for driving directions.

The second roadblock was that since fireworks aren’t legal in New York, we needed to find a safe place to do the shoot.* After exploring a number of options including a co-worker’s roof (too flammable), a friend’s backyard upstate (too snowy), and an abandoned stretch of industrial East Williamsburg (too illegal), we ended up doing the shoot quick and dirty on the mean streets of Baltimore, where fountains are legal. You can read all about your state’s firework laws on Wikipedia.

This image resembles the original the least, and I almost got frostbite on my butt, but I think it’s my favorite.

*In no way is this piece meant to encourage the setting off of illegal fireworks. Or the ripping off copyrighted images for that matter…

SPECIAL THANKS: The production of this piece could not have been possible without my collaborator and co-producer Tom Starkweather. Tom handled all of the technical lighting and photography elements and is just an all around great guy. Erin Smith and Robin Pearce’s patience was remarkable, thank you! To my roommates, who allowed us to invade our apartment with our traveling photo studio. And to the inhabitants of the Comfort Dome, thank you! Without your generosity of time and space this piece would not have happened.

“The movie is about the loss of things, the absence of things, the lack of things. The lack of the wife/mother is present in every frame of the film. The delicate edifice of the film holds the ache of her absence, tenderly and by the tips of the fingers,” Cave has said. “The music was composed as a direct response to the film. A light, haunting, simple score with a sense of absence and loss at its heart.”

Take an exclusive listen below, and let us know what you think.

Nick Cave & Warren Ellis – The House (from The Road sndtrk) by MuteUSA

Flavorpill: You’ve mentioned your father gave you Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions to read when you were just eight years old. What will you give your son to read when he turns eight?

Jonathan Evison: Probably Jack London — Call of the Wild. Or White Fang. Or To Build a Fire. Something that will get the damn kid outside, and out of my hair, so I can write.

FP: If we took Vonnegut’s idea of a karass, as laid out in Cat’s Cradle, and ran with it into real life, what would you say are the common threads linking members of your particular karass? Do you happen upon fellow karass members often or rarely?

JE: Beer, books, hot dogs, and cell phones with duct tape holding them together, mostly. And yes, I run with many of my tribe around campfires, in bars, in bookstores, and in forests.

FP: When did you begin writing and what sorts of things did you write when you were first starting out?

JE: I wrote a poem when I was three, it went like this:

Hello, hello
Fire engines are red.

Things got much worse from there for about twenty years. I cringe to think of some of the beat-inspired poetry I wrote in my teens: “O’, the more I search, size, hypothesize, the farther lost I get in the muss-muddle fog of adolescentdom, etc, etc.” I was a regular Young Werther. It took me a long time to get good.

FP: Before publishing All About Lulu, you physically buried (& salted the earth!) several manuscripts, and you’ve mentioned you burn rejection letters. Do you think symbolic acts are important in life? In what other ways do you bring ritual into your day-to-day?

JE: Yes, I did bury two or three novels, and trust me when I assure you that it was no great loss to the literary world. They died with a whimper. As for ritualism in general, I’m a big proponent. My writing schedule is inflexible. I drink one-and-a-half cups of coffee every morning when I write. I use Pilot G-2 red pens for editing. I walk my dogs on the same four-mile loop every afternoon. I camp almost every single week, spring through fall, just me and my dogs and the white-hairs, with their big Winnebagos. I drink the same three beers, for the most part. And like Joey Ramone, I eat practically nothing but pizza.

My newest, and most favorite ritual of all, is that every evening I take a bath with my son. He’s fifteen. Just joking. He’s ten weeks, and I’m smitten, and we’re bath buddies.

FP: You live on Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound. For a writer, how do you think island life compares to life in a city such as LA or Seattle (both places you’ve also lived)?

JE: Bainbridge Island is a haven for writers. I swear, there’s at least thirty of us, from the Gutersons, to Carol Cassella, to Kathleen Alcala, to Patrick deWitt. I could go on all day. The community here really embraces local writers in a big way. We even have our own conference every spring. I live way the heck back in the woods at the end of the road. The UPS dude hates coming down my driveway. I can’t see my neighbors at all. I’m in Seattle once a week or so — in fact, I could be standing in downtown Seattle in forty-five minutes, so really, I’ve got the best of both worlds. Forty-five minutes the other direction, and I’m in the Olympic Mountains.

FP: Is the novel your preferred form to write in? Or would you like to try your hand at say a screenplay or a book of poetry?

JE: You ended your first sentence in a preposition- tsk tsk. I’ve actually written a half dozen screenplays and optioned a few that never came to anything — again, no great loss to the world. Though I’m a poet by temperament, I love big shaggy stories, so the novel suits me best. I’ve never been much of a miniaturist, so I don’t write short stories much.

FP: You’ve said your aim is to write “stories people can live inside.” What do you think are the keys in succeeding at this?

JE: Well, for me, this quite literally means living inside the story, really getting inside the skin of my characters. It all starts with empathy. My characters are real flesh and blood to me; I suffer and rejoice with them, I really feel their longing and anxiety and frustration. They become so real to me, that often they become willful, which can be a struggle.

In my daily life, I try to be a blotter, soak up anything and everything I can, listen to people really closely when they talk to me, just generally be awake to the world, so that when I try to manifest and distill the stuff of the real world into my fictive world, it will ring true.

FP: How did you get involved writing for Three Guys, One Book? It appears there are actually four guys writing for the blog now, as opposed to the original three. Are you guys considering a name change?

JE: As it turns out, All About Lulu was one of the first books Three Guys, One Book covered. I think they heard about me through my friend, the super-talented novelist James P. Othmer. Jason Rice and I struck up a friendship, and I soon became friends with Dennis Haritou and Jason Chambers, and after awhile, they asked me if I’d be interested in joining up with them. We’ll always be Three Guys even if there’s four of us. I like being the ambiguous fourth guy.

FP: Your upcoming novel, West of Here, takes place in 1889 then jumps to 2006. If you could either time travel to the past or to the future, which would you choose? What year, decade, or century would you go to?

JE: The past, for sure. Right now, my answer is the 19th century American northwest, because that’s the world my imagination has been steeped in the past few years, and I’d love to see how right I got it. But I think 9th century Spain under the Moors would’ve been cool — so many exciting intellectual developments, such a convergence of cultures.

FP: You brought Jello shots, Pabst Blue Ribbon, and Twinkies for audience members on the All About Lulu tour. What will you be carting with you for the West of Here readings?

JE: Just flour and bacon grease, maybe some jerked elk, some oilcloth, a mule, and plenty of whiskey.

Marc Spitz, author of the new biography Bowie, knows this first-hand. Scattered throughout his absorbing, thorough and exuberant book are instances from his own life as a Bowie fanatic: for example, the moment when a college-aged Spitz bragged to his extended family that he’d kissed a man. In writing the book, he wanted his admiration of Bowie to be clear. “I think all these British [biographers] really pretend they’re not a fan, but they would shit their pants if they got to have a beer with him,” he says. “I just wanted to throw it out there that I would shit my pants if I got to have a beer with him.

Of course, there are hundreds of thousands of people who feel the same way. And perhaps that helps to explain why Bowie has had such a massive influence on pop culture. After the jump, we talk with Spitz about the erstwhile Ziggy Stardust’s lasting impact within the musical realm and beyond.

Flavorpill: These days, every other band cites David Bowie as an inspiration. When do you think he started to become a major influence on pop music?

Marc Spitz: It was as early as the late ’70s, when the first wave of kids who were really influenced by Bowie started their own bands — Joy Division, Depeche Mode, Echo and the Bunnymen. They saw him play “Starman” on Top of the Pops and decided that’s what they wanted to do, too. It was their equivalent of The Beatles on Ed Sullivan. There were also the bands that were influenced by Bowie’s Eno records, the whole synth-pop wave: Human League, Soft Cell.

When you say, “The Killers were influenced by Bowie, or Of Montreal was influenced by Bowie” — they’re basically doing a Ziggy Stardust pastiche. Three decades on, these are the most recent examples of a 30-year-long impact the guy made on rock ‘n roll and culture. I think he’s still as influential as he ever was. He’s just not releasing new music.

Below: Bowie miming, 1968. Photo by Ray Stevenson

FP: Which other current artists do you see taking cues from Bowie?

MS: I look at people in the culture now, and I see a really basic, raw, straight line of influence, to Bowie. Look at Lady Gaga or Adam Lambert — who I think did a Bowie medley every night on his tour. Just that he’s able to wear eye makeup and be androgynous, and put it over in a way that is acceptable to the mainstream… he should pay David Bowie a tax or something.

FP: When we talk about someone as being “Bowie-esque,” so often we’re talking about this static, Ziggy Stardust figure. Are there artists out there now who embody his sense of constant transformation?

MS: In the late ’70s, people like Martin Fry of ABC were literally “doing Bowie.” But Kanye West, in his pursuit of the new, whatever’s biggest, whatever’s next, recording with Daft Punk — that’s very Bowie-esque. I think the bridge between Bowie and people like Lady Gaga and Kanye is Madonna. She came in the early ’80s and picked up that idea of constantly searching and co-opting trends, making something her own and, in the process, more interesting than the street trend ever could be. I really wanted to interview her for the book, but that didn’t happen. Someone should sit down and interview her just about Bowie’s influence.

Below: Bowie in the makeup chair. Photo by Andrew Kent.

FP: Do you see Bowie as continuing to impact pop culture — even outside the realm of music — after the ’70s?

MS: He wasn’t as much of a trailblazer as a recording artist [beginning in the '80s]. But the music video, as an art form, owes a lot to Bowie in the ’80s. And now it’s commonplace for artists to use the Internet as a venue for cultivating fans. David Bowie wasn’t just the first rock star to do that but the first celebrity. Even ringtones — the notion that there are various streams of income for one pop song. We’re talking about really revolutionary ideas. Some of them have to do with rock ‘n roll, and some of them don’t.

In the ’90s, there were visual artists, photographers and music-video artists who used “sensation” but then backed it up with real ideas. That’s very Bowie. I’m thinking Damien Hirst. His influence in fashion, on people like Alexander McQueen, is just massive. There’s this idea that the only thing that is really required is thinking of something, then having the courage to put it on and sell it — a pair of knee-high, red patent leather boots or the famous Ziggy “rooster” haircut or the peach-colored zoot suit.

FP: Why do you think Bowie’s later albums have been so much less culture-changing than what he did in the ’70s?

MS: I don’t know that there are people who are influenced by, you know, Earthling or Outside. But that feeds into the theory that Bowie started jumping on various bandwagons, ceased to be a leader and became more of a follower, the way he was in the ’60s. I don’t know that that’s true. I just don’t think he had anything to prove after a point and would embrace things that excited him — like computer technology or industrial rock. But that’s what he always did. It was just easier for him to synthesize Syd Barrett and The Velvet Underground and Jacques Brel and Simon and Garfunkel and Bob Dylan and Scott Walker and Andy Warhol and gay culture in the ’70s, because nobody else was doing it. It’s like he’s been competing with his own legacy ever since. Earthling was in a post-Bowie culture and Ziggy Stardust wasn’t.

I bet if you asked him, he wouldn’t apologize for any of [his later work]. You can’t really expect an artist to justify whatever road they’re taking. In 1997, he couldn’t have done anything else but what he did. I know it’s popular and easy to say that he became a follower on those records. I think he just shook up the culture so much in the ’70s that it became impossible to do that every decade.

All photos courtesy of Crown Publishing Group