"... just go to sleep one day"

It was a shock, this morning, to pop onto Facebook and discover that David Bowie had died. New album last Friday - his 69th birthday - straight to number one in the UK and US and then Monday morning I find he's... gone.

I've been on social media long enough to know it would be a good idea to skip Facebook and Twitter for the rest of the day. I've no axe to grind with the people who make a comment to say how they feel or express some sadness and maybe put up a link to their favourite song: who could object to that? But I needed a bit of space to consider how I felt, away from everyone else's thoughts.

I first encountered Bowie properly through my younger brother, Wol. He would have been fourteen when 'Let's Dance' came out, which he loved. I was seventeen and firmly embedded in my passion for electronic music and found the 'Let's Dance' single a bit formulaic (an view I still hold, to be honest). But, regardless of my opinion, Wol used this album as a launch pad to investigate all of Bowie's back catalogue with great enthusiasm and subsequent gratification.

I'm embarrassed to admit now that even when Wol played me tracks from 'Low' and '"Heroes"' I failed to spot the legacy that Bowie passed down to a number of bands and artists that I loved. I was simply uninterested. And, to be honest, I'm not sure when that changed. It was certainly after university, perhaps even once I was married and a set of Bowie re-issues came out with bonus tracks. I bought 'Low', '"Heroes"', 'Lodger' - the so-called 'Berlin Trilogy' recorded with Brian Eno - and 'Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)' and I have loved them all ever since.

Later, I bought and enjoyed other albums now and again - '1. Outside'' (also with Eno), 'Heathen', and 'The Next Day' - but none of them compared with those four albums released between 1977 and 1980 (although I sometimes think that 'Heathen' comes close). However, it's true to say that although I admire him very much and I do like some of the singles I've heard from his other albums, I'm not a huge Bowie fan, apart from those four years.

In 2013 I met up with a Twitter friend called Mark and we went along to the 'David Bowie is' exhibition at the V&A. It was pretty good, certainly interesting, but far and away the best bit for me was the 'Berlin room'. I loved the photos, particularly those of him with Iggy Pop. The two of them had escaped to the city, to share an apartment and live in relative anonymity while attempting to come off drugs. It was also an amazingly prolific period: in 1977 Bowie released both 'Low' and '"Heroes"', while also collaborating with Pop on his albums 'The Idiot' and 'Lust for Life'. That's incredible.

I was supposed to be at a meeting in Hale, this afternoon, but it was cancelled, so I took the opportunity to meet my delightful friend Kerry for a coffee as she lives nearby. Delightful and also very cool; Kerry is from Boston and used to work in a record shop there. Thus she was equipped with exactly the required armoury of quizzical looks and eyebrow elevations as I casually dismissed 'Hunky Dory' in favour of the Berlin Trilogy. 

Which is quite right, of course. All musicians and music, Bowie included, mean different things to different people. I know there were people in my Facebook and Twitter timelines who were devastated by Bowie's death and I also recognise that for them those platforms helped them deal with their grief. And even for those who were not so hard hit, it allowed them to air their feelings. 

For myself, well, on the way back home in the north, I began to toy with the idea of doing a 'Bowie only' Electronic Ears, this week. I think that that might be a nice way to celebrate him and also to focus on the little corner of his catalogue that I like the best. I'll see how I get on.

'Sons of the Silent Age': "They never die/Just go to sleep one day"