Howard Who?

(in no particular order)

10. He made a recording of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

9. He’s married to Iman, who is a supermodel I know only because she was in Star Trek VI.

8. I remember watching The Prestige, thinking “Who is the great actor playing Tesla? He looks really familiar.” And when the credits rolled up, I totally kicked myself as I saw his name. In a film that was all about magic and illusions, that to me was the greatest trick.

7.  He provided backing vocals on Province, a song by TV on the Radio. I listened to that almost everyday for at least a month not knowing it was freaking Bowie.

6. He starred in the Japanese film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. One of his co-stars was Ryuichi Sakamoto, the composer for that film who would later go on to win an Oscar for The Last Emperor among other musical achievements. Okay, I’m a Last Emperor nut.

5. He made some albums with Brian Eno, one of the pioneers of ambient music. Then, he let those albums become reimagined into two symphonies by Philip Glass, one of the pioneers of minimalist music. Okay, I’m a minimalism nut.

4. He co-wrote China Girl with Iggy Pop. The song is supposedly about drugs, not Chinese girls.

3. I haven’t seen it in a long time, but I’m guessing if I watched Labyrinth again, my childhood would come back in a blinding Ratatouille-esque vision. He was the goblin king in that movie terrorizing a young Jennifer Connelly.

2. He’s one of the touchstones in Lodestone Theatre’s final production, “Grace Kim and the Spiders From Mars.” After 10 years of making a name for themselves in the Los Angeles theatre scene, they are moving on to other things. Who better to symbolize that transformation than Bowie. For more info about the Bowie-loving show, click here for the Lodestone homepage. (full disclosure: I’m working with Lodestone on this show.)

1. The songs! Give love, give love, give love, give love, give love, give love, give love…

Let’s Dance - Holmes (MP3)

And from a previous post…

Space Oddity - Emilie Simon (MP3)

This entry was posted on Friday, October 23rd, 2009 at 10:23 am and is filed under Uncategorized, Classical Music, Movies, Film Music, Pop Music, Minimalism, Howard Who?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.