Hunky Dory

Lillian knows exactly what music she wants to listen to these days, and it isn’t Mozart, Chopin, or any other “baby classical” you find in so many places. She asks for it, dare I say demands it, by name.

That name is David Bowie.

It all started on March 2nd of this year. We had a gift certificate for Amazon, and decided a wise purchase (to avoid shipping fees) would be some digital music. They’ve been making a lot of noise lately as a potential iTunes-killer, what with their DRM-free 256 kbp/s MP3 selection, so this was a good way to test the unknown non-iTunes waters of legally-purchased digital music.

One of the albums we got was David Bowie’s Hunky Dory. Minette and I had on several occasions mentioned that we wished we had some more Bowie in our music collection, since we literally had only Space Oddity and the Under Pressure single. We didn’t have any particular album in mind, but listened to many different tracks on many different albums and decided to go with Hunky Dory.

The next day, March 2nd, 2008, I was obviously excited to listen to the new album. I put it on the stereo, cranked the volume to a comforably loud (but quite reasonably considerate) level and had a listen.

And it was good.

I must have explained to Lillian a few times that this new music was “David Bowie.” Perhaps I said it very enthusiastically. Perhaps it just struck a chord (no pun intended) with her. Perhaps after playing the album 5 or 6 times over the next few days it got permanently etched in her impressionable synapsis.

Whatever the reason, she now asks to “hear David Bowie!” once, some times 28, times on any given day. She really can be quite tenacious about it, too. She might start intoning “ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!” (Changes, Hunky Dory) or she might chant “yeah girl!” ((Don’t Sit Down), Space Oddity) or she might exclaim “Oh yeah!” (Queen Bitch, Hunky Dory).

Sometimes she might shout “here comes…. Bowie!” and we might cave in and turn it on (for the Nth time) only for her to dance a few groovy dance moves and then shout “Turn off!” until we turn it off. Then she might repeat this cycle as many times as we can bear.

After we’d listened to Hunky Dory about 1 million times, we put on Space Oddity once when she asked for Bowie. I did say, “OK, here’s Bowie.” quietly, and she listened intently and knew it was so and was happy. It’s as if she actually recognizes Bowie’s voice, not just the repetition of the songs from Hunky Dory. I was very impressed!

Perhaps she really does just like Bowie. Well good on ya, Lily! A fine choice, I have to agree.