This project is in honour of David Robert Jones, aka David Bowie, and starts today — what should have been his 70th birthday — with a little preamble of what Bowie Base One is all about. What we will do in this space, or try to do at least, is listen to and review his full studio and live album discography — and this will take however long it takes. There could will be a few notable detours; I think he would have liked that.
It is impossible to fully assess the impact this artist had on my life; I’ve tried to put my feelings into words for a year now, and have experienced a rare failure to be sufficiently eloquent for the job. Perhaps it is best to simply say that I happened to be the right age at the right time for exposure to his music and artistry, and that it opened up an entirely new world to me that took me in a very different direction than it would have otherwise on multiple levels — from showmanship to sexuality. It is no exaggeration to say his influence on me throughout my entire pre-teen, teen, and adult life has been profound. His sudden death two days after Blackstar was released, on the 10th of January 2016, was the closest I have ever come to what being hit by lightning must be like, and it too changed me on some deep levels. I am glad to have been alive during most of his residency on this planet, and sorry to have been here for the terrible year which was foretold with his passing.
We’ll continue on the first anniversary of his passing with a look at some of his earliest, pre-first-album material, followed by his official UK albums in order (with notes on deluxe editions and other ephemera). In addition to offering a wealth of great (and sometimes not-that-great) music and visual imagery, the albums and related work also paint a portrait of an artist coming into being, flowering, branching out, exploring his possibilities, combusting, re-inventing, selling out, roaming the wilderness, getting his mojo back, retiring, and eventually surprising us all with a brief second flowering before retiring from this planet.
Few indeed are the artists that offer such a complete timeline of their development, warts and all, across six decades. What we hope to accomplish with this project is to get to see this artistic growth and change in full through this series, as well as enjoy a lot of inventive, commercially-risky, artistically-daring (most of the time), mainstream (sometimes), fascinating (always), and memorable music.
I hope you’ll come along for the ride.
— Charles
The Chasbah 
I’m ready for the ride. Bring it on!