David Bowie keeps it arty, makes it busy, jazzy, jaunty, a black and white movie with a hint of theatre like a new musical by Bertolt Brecht’s Grandson starring a Scott Walker that could have been in another reality, one where he isn’t quite so determined to distance himself from his past.

Songs scuttle along like a million crabs on the sand loose in a city of a thousand horns crammed into a cellar. Outside in the city, rats chew on the wet asphalt table, above the gutters, through a cracked window, a downtrodden couple share their dreams, in love, in struggle, in character as actors, starring in their own play and although they have a colourful past they career towards a monochrome future.

Surrendering the profit of their story to legend, greedy entrepreneurs cultivating creative cells of writers, musicians, actors, comedians, dancers all desperately clawing their way up shiny greased poles, sliding backwards, faster, the harder they try to climb. Resorting to crime or worse still, the crime of not following your heart, unable to manoeuvre their aspirations in the battlefield of their lives.

Birth, death, domesticity, murder, suicide, pointless grappling for meagre gain with only humble wishes. The war comes and goes and comes again, firing squads, death squads, bordellos in ghettos in ruined high streets, shattered displays below unfed signs of empty electricity advertising forgotten pleasures. Nothing Has Changed…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bowie

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_Has_Changed_(album)

http://www.muzu.tv/david-bowie/sue-or-in-a-season-of-crime-music-video/2320282/