I Love Scamp

The TV adaptation of Charlie Mackesy’s bestselling illustrated book, The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse was the most watched BBC programme on Christmas Eve. Maybe I’m getting overly sentimental in my old age, but I thought the understated short film brought the tale of unusual friendships to life beautifully.

However, what really grabbed me was the accompanying documentary which lets us into the author’s world and his meticulous way of working. It’s a fascinating watch and reaffirmed my belief that committing pen to paper remains one of the purest forms of creative expression.

Before I’m accused of being a technophobe, I’m not advocating that we all unplug our computers and ignore the opportunities that technology enables. Even I’m not that naive, but I am suggesting that we’ve neglected an important craft that deserves a renaissance.

Still not sure what I’m on about? Let’s cut to the chase. I’m referring to the lost art of scamping.

Watching Charlie work his magic over Christmas served as a reminder of just how powerful drawing can be during the creative process. So powerful in fact that a hand drawn scamp is capable of not only enhancing an idea, but also playing a valuable role in protecting it.

Let’s start with how they can make an idea better, sometimes even serendipitously. When talking about one of his most popular sketches, captioned ‘the greatest illusion is that life should be perfect’, Charlie reveals that whilst the ink was drying, his dog walked over the drawing ‘clearly trying to make the point’. It’s an anecdote that captures the possibility that comes with hand-drawn work. Yes, Charlie got lucky, but he was using a medium that lends itself to ideas being built upon organically.

There’s also something to be said for the originality that sits at the heart of a scamp, with our thoughts given the freedom to flow onto the page. It’s why I always loved the pencils handed out at BBH. No doubt some of the world’s greatest advertising campaigns started with one of them, a blank sheet of paper and a relentless pursuit of excellence.

If being creative is about doing new original things, defaulting to image libraries when an idea is in its infancy makes little sense to me. Of course, the right kind of accompanying creative reference is invaluable, but placeholder visuals so early on can distract from the core idea and lead to subjective feedback. Why? Because you’re asking the client to takeaway rather than build upon what’s in front of them.

Naturally the agency blames the client ‘for being too literal’, but if we’re armed with this intel, why do we continue to try and sell creative that sort of looks finished, but is nothing like what we really want to make?

We’ve all been there. “What you’re about to see is not the final execution”. “Think of it like a posh scamp”.

It’s a dangerous game and whether we like it or not, creative presentations are passed around internal stakeholders who understandably aren’t always up to speed on the intricacies of a ‘posh’ scamp. Take away the agency disclaimer voice over and it’s hardly surprising that so many good ideas move onto death row without a fair trial.

It’s why I believe the protective role a ‘common’ scamp can play in the creative process is one of its biggest strengths. Ideas are fragile and need to be nurtured. Like a handwritten letter, there’s something more human and therefore persuasive about a new concept presented in its rawest form, particularly given how rare a technique it’s become.

From a strategy perspective it’s why we often include a photograph that captures the organised chaos of a client/agency workshop when presenting back. Even if the day was largely unproductive, (FYI – many ideas are bad ideas), the sea of luminous post it notes with illegible scribbles conveys a sense of shared ownership and a feeling that brief was interrogated from every angle.

Thankfully Charlie Mackesy wasn’t referring to the output from a workshop when he revealed “it blew his mind that he was sitting talking about a film which began with drawings”. Hindsight’s a wonderful thing, but when you look at the quality of his craft, the medium he embraced and the cultural context, there’s a reason why he’s been so successful at selling his work alongside his team.

One of the most important jobs in advertising is to shorten the odds of a client buying great ideas. Like a penalty shoot-out in football, it’s a fallacy to suggest it’s a lottery. That’s why the best agencies obsess about creating the right conditions for a successful meeting. And whilst the humble scamp might not always be the answer, it’s certainly not a bad place to start. Just ask Charlie.

From Januray 9th to January 13th, 2023

09-01-23

THROWING MUSES “Chains Changed EP”; ELVIS COSTELO & THE BRODSKY QUARTET “The Juliet Letters”; LED ZEPPELIN “Led Zeppelin III”; IRON MAIDEN “Live At Donnington”

10-01-23

TOM LEHRER “Songs By Tom Lehrer”; THE BEATLES “Live At The BBC”; SLEATER-KINNEY “Call The Doctor”; THE BREEDERS “Pod”; BIKINI KILL “Reject All American”; KRS-1 “Return Of The Boom Bap”; THE JUNGLE BROTHERS “Raw Deluxe”; BOOGIE DOWN PRODUCTIONS “Live Hardcore Worldwide”;  BILLY BRAGG & THE BLOKES “Mermaid Avenue Tour”; KRISTIN HERSH “Live At Maxwells”; BOB DYLAN “New Morning”

11-01-23

HALF MAN HALF BISCUIT “The Voltarol Years”; LEE PERRY “Upsetter In Dub: Upsetter Shop Volume One”; P.J. HARVEY “A Woman A Man Walked By”; DRAKE “Take Care”; COLDCUT “Sound Mirrors”; THE COUP “Sorry To Bother You”; MOTORHEAD “March Or Die”; MANIC STREET PREACHERS “Know Your Enemy”; RUN THE JEWELS “RTJ3”; ASH “Unplugged @ Sirius”

12-01-23

THE BOYS OF THE LOUGH “Sweet Rural Shade”; MICHAEL McGOLDRICK “Wired”; FAIRPORT CONVENTION “Liege & Lief”; HALF MAN HALF BISCUIT “McIntyre, Treadmore and Davitt”; GORKY’S ZYGOTIC MYNCI “20 (Singles & EPs, ’94-’96)”; KISS “Alive!”; FRANK BLACK & THE CATHOLICS “Dog In The Sand”; THROWING MUSES “Hunkpapa”; GUIDED BY VOICES “King Shit & The Golden Boys”; DAVID BOWIE “Never Let Me Down”

13-01-23

CANNONBALL ADDERLEY “Cannonball Adderley Takes Charge”; THE CHIEFTAINS “The Chieftains 8”; PHIL OCHS “I Ain’t Marching Anymore”; ROY BAILEY “Leaves From A Tree”; MARTIN CARTHY & DAVE SWARBRICK “Life & Limb”; JACKIE OATES “Lullabies”; PEARL JAM “Lost Dogs”

SUEDE: Style & Substances

Alternative Press, May 1997 (no. 106). Mag cover. Written by Dave Thompson. Archived here.

Suede Give Us A Glimmer...

Bleeding through the debate about vocalist Brett Anderson's sexuality and rumored drug intake, the overall glamour with which society equates a fucked-up lifestyle drapes Suede like a second skin. Dave Thompson travels to London to discover why Suede are one of the few bands that matter in an age of stars who are "just like you."

Brett Anderson leans against an amplifier, hands in pocket, shoulders hunched. To his left, the rest of Suede are playing Fleetwood Mac's "Albatross"; to his right, a television crew is fiddling with camera angles. He wants a cigarette, but he never smokes this close to showtime. Instead, he swings a keychain and glowers into the monitors. It's rehearsal time in Studio Four, a theater-sized room as the BBC, and the only person who's enjoying himself is an increasingly rotund-looking Jools Holland. He's the host of this evening's show, and he's away in another room entirely. 

Later...With Jools Holland is a British TV institution. Less than three years old, it has nevertheless sewn up a comfortable niche somewhere between the chart-conscious grooviness of Top of the Pops and the more indulgent pastures of MTV Unplugged. It's a showcase for bands to run through a handful of new songs, play a favorite or two and give a taste of their live prowess without boring the unconverted senseless. Boring themselves senseless, of course, is another matter entirely, and as Suede are counted into the third rehearsal of their opening song "Trash," you can almost sense the desperation in Anderson's face. Then the action starts, and he's utterly transformed. Though he's barely moving and scarcely singing, he's conveying an intensity that explodes from his very presence, drawing the most disinterested eyes in his direction. Even the soundmen look up from their meters, and the camera crew compete for his undying attention. If Anderson weren't a rock star, he'd make a great lunatic. But because he is a rock star...well, he's probably a lunatic anyway. You would be, too, in his shoes. If the 1990s have given us anything, it's the demystification of the rock star. From the boy-next-door Weezers to the angst-ridden whiners, the message is the same: I'm no different from you; I'm no better than you; and, of course, I'm just as screwed up as you. Enter, or more properly, re-enter Suede, with their third album, Coming Up (Columbia). And all that hard work reducing idols to idiots counts for nothing. Because Suede couldn't be "just like you" even if they wanted to. Bleeding through the "is he?/isn't he?" debate about vocalist Brett Anderson's sexuality and the "does he?/doesn't he?" of his rumored drug intake, the overall glamour with which society equates a fucked-up lifestyle drapes Suede like a second skin. The scent of teen spirit clings to them, the doomed romanticism of consumptive youth which peaked on their last album, 1994's Dog Man Star, and peeks through the stunning Coming Up. Suede deal in emotional extremes, from the A Clockwork Orange apocalypse of their "We Are The Pigs" video in which armed hooligans howl through a burning industrial landscape while Suede gaze down from giant video screens, to the incandescent loneliness of the current "Saturday Night" video, in which a London subway station is transformed into a rave to which the band have not been invited. The band's junkie chic is as apparent in the stoned immaculate presentation of their latest wasted-youth album-cover artwork, as it is in the gorgeously gaunt frame which Anderson angles for the television cameras. Add a live show that oozes subversive glamour; couple that with the fearless decadence of Anderson's greatest lyrics, and whether it's all an act or not, Suede are a walking advertisement for the joyful sins of sleaze. Backstage in the bowels of the BBC, Anderson sighs. He's heard all this before. "Yeah, you can look at it like that, but that's other people's interpretation of it, and that's their problem. You can't look at yourself through other people's eyes, then worry about what you say through their ears; you've got to have some self-belief in what you are." Which is, right now, the biggest thing on 10 legs. Across Europe and the Far East, Coming Up charted at No.1 and has already outsold both its predecessors. Three singles have kept the pot boiling ever since, and the current Suede line-up (their fifth on record since their 1990 "Be My God" 7-inch single debut) is their strongest yet. Like Brian Eno's departure from Roxy Music, founding guitarist Bernard Butler's exit did not so much rid the band of one creative spark, as open the door for the flowering of another. Anderson's unequivocal grasping of the reins, only partly aided by the recruitment of guitarist Richard Oakes, may have diluted Suede's overall sound, but it has sharpened their vision to a razor's edge. The further addition of keyboardist Neil Codling fills the gaps that teen maestro Oakes couldn't plug; the Simon Gilbert/Mat Osman rhythm section is a thunderous roar that never lets up; and Coming Up is unmistakably the sound of the same great band that recorded Dog Man Star. The difference is, Anderson affirms, they've stopped pissing around. "After Dog Man Star, everyone thought we were going to do an operetta or something like that. But you get things out of your system. We wanted to refocus the band, the fact that we were virtually starting again; we wanted to readjust the basics." And did it work? "You can't completely divorce yourself from your past. I haven't got the memory of a goldfish; I was aware that I'd made two albums before it. But it felt fresh, and it felt as though we were making the record away from a lot of the crap you have to deal with, away from the spotlight, which was great. Plus...", and here he gestures to new arrivals Codling and Oakes, "... there's less of an obsession with self-importance, which was definitely a change in the band. The last two albums were quite precious and self-important, and that can be good and that can be bad." Ah, preciousness. Plough through five years of Suede press and the buzzwords leap out: "superficial", "fake", "David Bowie" - three hollow sides to the same soulless coin. But most of the people who call Suede "pretentious" are the same ones who fancy the Spice Girls. And the closest those cynics get to class is the corridor outside the school room. "It does bother us a bit," says Anderson. "People always want to polarize bands into camps, and what I always find objectionable, even with journalists who are pro-Suede, is, they always want to write about us as an alternative to this good, honest musicianship going on elsewhere, which kind of implies that there isn't any good, honest musicianship going on within Suede." Anderson resents that implication, just as he resents the accusations of vanity that are flung at him with equal frequency - the two go hand in hand, after all. "People ask, 'Are you vain?' Hang on, let me turn the question around. If you were going to appear on television in front of five million people, you'd probably look in a mirror to see what you look like. You'll brush your hair and put a bit of make-up on because you don't want to look like a pig. Does that mean you're vain? I don't think it does. "Ninety-nine percent of my career thought is dedicated to thinking about music; a very tiny percentage is spent on image. I may go shopping once a month; but while I don't think we're the honest blokes down the pub, we're not kooky weirdos either. We're just what we are." A decent image, though, is still worth a thousand songs (ask Marilyn Manson), and if it's not their Englishness that holds Suede back in the U.S., then it has to be their appearance. They look weird. Catch the "Beautiful Ones" video: Codling apes the same abstracted pose of diffidence and boredom that once made a star of Sparks' Ron Mael; and Osman and Oakes look like they're trying to extinguish a particularly persistent cigarette end. Their singer is fey. Imagine Bryan Ferry if a stick insect stole his trousers. Their music is arty. And they come on like they're somehow special, so special that America poses little interest or challenge to Suede. Other bands make no secret of their desire to crack the country, nor do they hide their disgust when they fail. Suede, though, never seemed bothered. Past U.S. tours (three so far) have been languid affairs, barely publicized flirtations which almost gratefully acknowledge that as far as most people are concerned, Suede might as well be a lesbian performing artist. Anderson dictates the band's Stateside manifesto: "I don't give a shit." "Don't get me wrong: please don't portray us as some sort of anti-American thing, because we're not. But as far as America is concerned, you can talk about airplay and videos, but all it really boils down to is the fact that America doesn't like Suede. And I'm not going to knock it, if they don't like it, they don't like it." And what don't they like? Kurt Cobain had a tummy ache, and a nation felt his pain. Trent Reznor's dog died, and a nation held his hand. Brett Anderson wrote songs about holes in your arm ("The Living Dead") and pantomime horses ("Pantomime Horse"); he equates love with flyaway litter ("Trash"), and he's never been in rehab. "I hate that rehab shit! That's one place where America get really suckered, with those rehab rock bands. Let me explain what going into rehab means. It means you're cool because you used to do drugs, but now you're a good lad, and you're really '90s, so you want to give them up. But it's a complete excuse, and anybody who says it or does it is a complete careerist. I don't think the public shoulg go out and buy records by people whose record companies have told them to say they're going into rehab. You want to talk about fakes and falseness in the music business; I think this rehab rock thing is such a lot of dog shit." So you don't just say no? "I can't sit here and honestly say that drugs are bad for you, because I don't believe that, and I don't think anybody with a brain believes that." He elaborates: "Smoking a bit of pot and taking a bit of LSD can open a few barriers in your mind, although I certainly don't think taking smack, taking coke or taking crack does anything. I know I've taken drugs before and looked back on it and said, 'That's fucking crap; you should have got your act together and stopped taking them.' They just numb you and turn you into a wrong-thinking fucking idiot. "But that's the whole problem with drugs, isn't it? You can't say 'drugs' because there's so many different factes to it. 'It's an aid to creativity.' Well, some of it is, and some of it isn't. You can't paint everything with one brush." As for the veneer of glamour which Suede's own observations convey, the danger that, to quote the new album's "The Chemistry Between Us," "we are young and easily led," Anderson remains equally adamant. "There's no point in trying to filter things like 'Don't talk about this, don't talk about that.' Lots of times when I'm talking about drugs, I'm talking in a pedestrian context. I'm not trying to make it into a big deal; I talk about it like I'd talk about anything else that's in this room." And though he agrees there is a moral question, he also believes it's impossible to do much about it. "The only way you can set yourself up as something moral is in the broader sense, by not treating music as this completely throwaway, meaningless thing, and not treating the sentiments expressed in the music as completely throwaway, meaningless things. "That's where I see my position morally, someone who can write a love song and actually bring a degree of warmth to someone else. You can't act as censor in your words; you just have to be positive about what you're doing and see that making records that people love, that people cling to, and that help people through sticky patches in their lives is, at the end of the day, a positive thing to do. There's very few things I think that are positive in the world, but music is one of them." And that is that. In an age when a star is only as big as his last three videos, and most stars are as interesting as a line at the post office, Suede are three albums into a career that means more to more people than any of the bickering of Suede's petty, wormwood competitors; and certainly far more than the bitter, twisted harping of their detractors. Stars shine, shit stinks, and the lowest common denominator is nothing to be proud of. No one really wants to watch Hootie feed his blowfish, but Brett Anderson spends "Saturday Night" moping around on a subway train, and it's the best thing on MTV this year. Who cares what else he gets up to? Turning as he heads for the soundstage, Anderson won't be drawn. "My drugs of choice are ginseng and chamomile tea, but don't worry. I'm going into rehab soon."

Sunday, September 27, 2020 Canadian TV Listings (Times Eastern)

WHERE CAN I FIND THOSE PREMIERES?: THE SIMPSONS (City) 8:00pm BLESS THE HARTS (City) 8:30pm BOB’S BURGERS (City) 9:00pm FARGO (FX Canada) 9:00pm/10:00pm THE COMEY RULE (Crave) 9:00pm/10:00pm FAMILY GUY (City) 9:30pm BRAVO'S CHAT ROOM (Slice) 11:00pm

WHAT IS NOT PREMIERING IN CANADA TONIGHT         iHEART RADIO MUSIC FESTIVAL (CW Feed) JOE EXOTIC: TIGERS, LIES AND COVER-UP (Premiering on Investigation Discovery on October 08 at 9:00pm 30 FOR 30: THE LIFE AND TRIALS OF OSCAR PISTORIUS  (TBD) LOVE UNPLUGGED (TBD)

NEW TO AMAZON PRIME/CRAVE/NETFLIX CANADA/CBC GEM:

CRAVE TV THE COMEY RULE (Episodes 1-2)

FRENCH OPEN TENNIS: (TSN/TSN4) 5:00am: Day #1

NFL FOOTBALL (TSN3/TSN5) 1:00pm: Bears vs. Falcons (TSN3/TSN5) 4:00pm: Buccaneers vs. Broncos (TSN/TSN3/TSN4/TSN5) 10:30pm: Packers vs. Saints

MLB BASEBALL (SN) 3:00pm: Baltimore vs. Jays (SN1) 3:00pm: Marlins vs. Yankees (SN360) 3:00pm: Phillies vs. Rays

NBA BASKETBALL (TSN4) 7:30pm: Celtics vs. Heat - Game 6

MLS SOCCER (TSN2) 7:30pm: Toronto FC vs. Columbus (TSN2) 10:00pm: Whitecaps FC vs. Portland

BLACK HEARTED KILLER (Lifetime Canada) 8:00pm: A grateful organ recipient reaches out to the couple who donated their daughter's heart. But the more time she spends with them, the more she starts to wreak havoc on their once-peaceful lives.

CANADIAN COUNTRY MUSIC ASSOCIATION AWARDS 2020 (Global) 9:00pm

BRAVE NEW WORLD (Showcase) 9:00pm: Danger awaits Bernard and Lenina in the Savage Lands, where the world is flipped on its head; John grapples with staying true to himself as paths entwine.

AGAINST THE WILD 2: THE JOURNEY HOME (Super Channel Heart & Home) 9:00pm:  A dog tries to lead a blind man safely out of the wilderness while his children launch a rescue mission of their own.

OUTRAGEOUS PUMPKINS (Food Network Canada) 10:00pm (SERIES PREMIERE): Seven carvers must master the classic jack-o'-lantern; in the Quick Carve round, the competitors depict the struggle between good and evil; in the Big Carve round, each competitor is given one of the seven deadly sins to inspire their masterpiece.

FAMILY HOME OVERHAUL (HGTV Canada) 10:00pm (SERIES PREMIERE):  Kortney and Dave Wilson work with Cheryl Hickey to transform an issue filled house back to its prime for Sarah and Kevin; twelve-year-old Landon has required round-the-clock care his whole life because of a rare developmental disorder.

INTELLIGENCE (Showcase) 10:00pm:When the National Health Service's systems are hacked, the team is forced to work through the night; as Christine leaves Jerry in charge, he drags the squad into the thick of his questionable methodology for identifying the malware culprit.

THE FIRST TEAM (BBC Canada) 10:00pm: With the rest of the team away on international duties, Petey announces that he is hosting a barbecue. Mattie, Benji and Jack find themselves the only guests as a long, strange afternoon unfolds.

HITMEN (Showcase) 10:30pm: While Fran and Jamie dig a fresh grave for their latest target, their latest target manages to slip off into the forest.

DOOMSDAY BROTHERS (Adult Swim) 11:00pm: The Real Monster...is You!

Can you name any alternative sites to the dodo? I like their content because I like watching animals, but I see that they are not a real animal conservation/ animal rights group. I just don’t know good alternatives with equal amounts and „quality“ (as in HD videos opposed to shaky cellphone) content

I can try!  So, if quality videos of cute animals being cute is your thing, Zooborns is probably the best blog out there for frequent HD adorable content. It is an aggregation of baby animal videos and news from accredited zoo around the world.  Zooborns also has a youtube channel and under their Subscriptions, there are a ton of zoo channels. AZA. EAZA, WAZA, ZAA accredited zoos have incredibly high standards for animal welfare, support species conservation and public education, and donate millions to conservation programs worldwide so you’re following a good and educational source that cares about the welfare of wild and captive exotic animals when you follow an accredited zoo blog. A lot of larger zoos have really good content online - blogs, twitters, tumblrs, youtube channels, etc - so depending on the medium you like, I’d seek out those. I’ll list a few of my top choices. They’re my favorites because they include a high proportion of pure animal content vs advertising, and because I’m fond of the zoos themselves: 

San Diego Zoo’s Tumblr, their ZooNooz online magazine, Youtube, and San Diego Zoo Safari Park’s Youtube

Woodland Park Zoo’s Youtube

Cincinnati Zoo’s (home of the adorable baby hippo Fiona) Youtube. Some of their animals (like the cheetahs and Fiona) have their own channels.

Dallas Zoo’s Twitter and Oregon Zoo’s Twitter

Andy N. Condor’s Facebook page. Even if you don’t like vultures, he will change your mind.

The Association of Zoos and Aquariums has a Facebook page that shares most of the best video content from their member zoos.

CARE Rescue Texas is an exotic animal sanctuary with mostly big cats and primates, California Wolf Center has wolves, to add some good unaccredited facilities’ channels to the list, because they exist.

If you want videos of animals in the wild, BBC Earth has a youtube channel full of clips from their documentaries. BBC makes the best nature documentaries IMO, but their channel also features good domestic animal clips. Their secondary channel BBC Earth Unplugged has even more stuff. 

US Fish and Wildlife has a youtube channel that regularly features wildlife rescue and rehabilitation stories if that’s your favorite part of The Dodo.

There is a lot of good exotic animal content, but outside of individual pet owner’s blogs/channels, it is hard to find domestic pet video aggregators that actually credit the original owner of the video/picture and uncredited content is a big pet peeve of mine. It’s another problem I have with The Dodo.  Like The Dodo, most other major aggregators of “cute” pet content regularly post videos depicting situations that are dangerous or stressful to the animal so I don’t have many of those to recommend (Animals In Predicaments is generally good about sourcing, and not posting any animals in genuine distress, but it’s not perfect). 

However, here are some individual pet owner blog/channels I like: 

Mr. Max TV has silly cockatoo videos. Sesame has silly cockatiel videos. Einstein is an African Grey who is quite the talker and clearly well-loved and well-kept.  I am a huge bird nerd so unfortunately I’m not familiar with a lot of furry pet content. I have some friends who also work in the animal care field who like The Pipsqueakery, a pocket pet rescue. If anyone wants to chime in with good dog/cat/pocket pet blogs please do.

KaijuTegu has a great blog about pet reptiles with a whole lot of misc but very interesting topics thrown in.

Potamotrygonbio, aquarist and owner of Bisquick and IHOP the rays.

They’re all informative, portray pet ownership realistically, and best of all they don’t force animals into situations that are unsafe or stressful for the sake of creating content.

Some other animal blogs I recommend:

Reptelligence is a facebook group about reptile enrichment and training with lots of videos of reptiles exploring enrichment.

Dr. Ferox runs an outstanding veterinarian blog. Not a source of cute animal videos, but great content, very entertaining and informative.

You probably saw my post through why-animals-do-the-thing but I’ll just throw that out there as my favorite all around animal tumblr blog.

None of these are an exact replacement of the array of videos The Dodo offers but hopefully you find some of them entertaining!

There's a channel on youtube called BBC Unplugged and they have awesome slowmos of dogs and cats running and other resources that animators could probably take a lot of reference from! They even explain the runs.

Really cool! Thanks for the recommendation.

Romantic.

10 breathtaking moments from Life Story | Earth Unplugged

From pack-hunting wild dogs to skydiving goslings and artistic puffer fish, Life Story was jam packed with amazing moments. Now you can own them all on DVD. Click to buy the DVD - http://www.bbcshop.com/factual/life-story-blu-ray/invt/bbcbd0281 Subscribe to Earth Unplugged - http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=earthunpluggedtv Check out the BBC Earth website http://www.bbc.com/earth Join the Earth Unplugged community: Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/EarthUnplugged Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/earthunplugged Want to share your views with the team? Join our BBC Studios Voice: https://www.bbcstudiosvoice.com/register http://www.youtube.com/user/EarthUnpluggedTV http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=earthunpluggedtv This is a channel from BBC Studios, trading as BBC Studios, who help fund new BBC programmes. from EarthOnSight https://earthonsight.org/earth/10-breathtaking-moments-from-life-story-earth-unplugged/ source https://earthonsight.tumblr.com/post/611209200162439168

10 breathtaking moments from Life Story | Earth Unplugged

From pack-hunting wild dogs to skydiving goslings and artistic puffer fish, Life Story was jam packed with amazing moments. Now you can own them all on DVD. Click to buy the DVD - http://www.bbcshop.com/factual/life-story-blu-ray/invt/bbcbd0281 Subscribe to Earth Unplugged - http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=earthunpluggedtv Check out the BBC Earth website http://www.bbc.com/earth Join the Earth Unplugged community: Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/EarthUnplugged Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/earthunplugged Want to share your views with the team? Join our BBC Studios Voice: https://www.bbcstudiosvoice.com/register http://www.youtube.com/user/EarthUnpluggedTV http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=earthunpluggedtv This is a channel from BBC Studios, trading as BBC Studios, who help fund new BBC programmes. source https://earthonsight.org/earth/10-breathtaking-moments-from-life-story-earth-unplugged/ source https://earthonsight1.blogspot.com/2020/02/10-breathtaking-moments-from-life-story.html

10 breathtaking moments from Life Story | Earth Unplugged

From pack-hunting wild dogs to skydiving goslings and artistic puffer fish, Life Story was jam packed with amazing moments. Now you can own them all on DVD. Click to buy the DVD - http://www.bbcshop.com/factual/life-story-blu-ray/invt/bbcbd0281 Subscribe to Earth Unplugged - http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=earthunpluggedtv Check out the BBC Earth website http://www.bbc.com/earth Join the Earth Unplugged community: Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/EarthUnplugged Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/earthunplugged Want to share your views with the team? Join our BBC Studios Voice: https://www.bbcstudiosvoice.com/register http://www.youtube.com/user/EarthUnpluggedTV http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=earthunpluggedtv This is a channel from BBC Studios, trading as BBC Studios, who help fund new BBC programmes. from EarthOnSight https://earthonsight.org/earth/10-breathtaking-moments-from-life-story-earth-unplugged/

New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/funny-useful-interesting-twitter-accounts-you-should-follow/

Funny, Useful & Interesting Twitter Accounts You Should Follow

unplugged

By Mark O’Neill

Last Updated on October 20, 2018

Twitter is not only for political flame wars and pointless trolling. In fact there are many funny and interesting Twitter accounts too. Here are some of them.

Twitter is not just for political flame wars and sports trash talk, believe it or not. There are a great deal many other interesting Twitter accounts which entertain and educate on a daily basis. Today we are going to look at some of them.

Obviously “funny” and “interesting” are objective. What I find funny and interesting may not be your cup of tea. So if you know of anything better to follow on Twitter, please do let us know in the comments.

Funny, Useful & Interesting Twitter Accounts You Should Follow

We’ll start off with funny accounts, because who doesn’t need a laugh these days, with the state of the world?

Funny

@dog_rates

This is Pugsley. He lost control of his rubber duck. Happens to the best of us. 13/10 my thoughts are with him pic.twitter.com/hmC80YVDcf

— WeRateDogs™ (@dog_rates) September 5, 2018

This is actually a very cool startup business success story. Matthew Nelson started up the Twitter account, Dog Rates, where dog pictures and videos are rated by him. The whole thing skyrockets and he realizes he has a big thing on his hands. So he drops out of college, monetizes the business, and now he gets 6,000 submissions EVERY DAY.

If you love dogs, you will love Dog Rates. I have submitted my dog several times but no bites yet (no pun intended).

@VancityReynolds

You’re welcome! I went through puberty at 26 yrs old. Good things happen to those who wait. https://t.co/ikPiFXPGjv

— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) June 18, 2018

In my opinion, Ryan Reynolds is one of the funniest actors ever. His Deadpool character is enough to reduce me to tears of uncontrollable laughter. So when Reynolds gets onto Twitter, you can be sure of a good laugh or ten.

@FakeAPStylebook

If you abbreviate the character name to “Dr. Who,” nerds will get upset. But are nerds ever NOT upset?

— Fake AP Stylebook (@FakeAPStylebook) February 10, 2011

This one will appeal to all the writers out there, as well as English teachers, grammar nerds, and book lovers. AP Style is a style of writing demanded by some employers and editors, but FakeAPStylebook cranks the humour up to 15 by coming up with all kinds of hilarious grammar rules.

I have the book as well and I laughed like crazy for days afterwards. We writers are a weird bunch I guess. This Twitter account is not updated often but when they do add something, it is worth it. But don’t read it if you are easily offended.

Interesting and Educational Twitter Accounts

Let’s now take a look at some interesting and educational Twitter accounts.

Atlas Obscura

Devoted fans pay thousands for bricks of this fermented tea. https://t.co/VOad3m5pXy

— Atlas Obscura (@atlasobscura) October 10, 2018

If you like to read about weird and interesting places in the world, as well as quirky trivia, then Atlas Obscura is for you. You are guaranteed to find something here to pique your interest. It does a nice feature on abandoned ghostly properties.

Long Reads

Physiognomy is a discarded 19th-century pseudoscience. Why can’t we stop practicing it? https://t.co/OdTdwvlBQU @adriandaub pic.twitter.com/vLku3NW5cO

— Longreads (@Longreads) October 10, 2018

I particularly like Long Reads and recommend it to as many people as possible. These days, thanks to the Internet, people skim articles rather than reading them properly. Long Reads tries to bring back the love of long story telling by linking to online articles that take more than 5 minutes to read.

NASA

There it goes! 13 photos assembled in sequence show the @Space_Station pass in front of our view of the Sun while orbiting Earth at a speed of roughly 5 miles per second on Sun, Oct 7.

See more: https://t.co/06Rmsx6JZT Learn when you can #SpotTheStation: https://t.co/IV6AZcoGh3 pic.twitter.com/4Kdzwf0MBj

— NASA (@NASA) October 10, 2018

If there is one government agency that has wholeheartedly embraced the Internet, it is NASA. What they have put online is just breathtaking, and their website is a treasure trove for anyone with even a remote interest in space. Their high-definition photos taken by satellites and spacecraft make wonderful photos and desktop wallpaper.

National Geographic

Guided by ex-FARC rebels, scientists discovered a wealth of rare species in the remote rainforest of Colombia https://t.co/jYAxY5dzQu

— National Geographic (@NatGeo) October 9, 2018

National Geographic has been around for the past 130 years, so most likely you know someone with a subscription to the magazine. Like all other media publications however, National Geographic has made full use of the Internet to widen its coverage of the natural world, especially with the use of videos and other interactive content.

BBC World

China Uighurs: Xinjiang ‘legalises’ Muslim internment camps https://t.co/Za8jqWM9mW

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) October 10, 2018

Finally, I can’t finish the article without providing a shoutout to my native country’s national broadcaster. The BBC has been around since 1922 and was a beacon of hope to everyone in Nazi-occupied Europe during the war, who wanted “real news”.

So if you are tired of the CNN/Fox News combo, and are looking for a foreign broadcaster with a reputation for impartiality, try the BBC. It drove Joseph Goebbels wild with rage. That should count for something.

Conclusion

As I said at the beginning, funny and interesting mean different things to different people. So if you know of anything that you think is funnier and more interesting, let us know about them in the comments below.

Source: https://www.groovypost.com/hero/funny-useful-twitter-accounts-you-should-follow/

Watch How a Bioluminescence Expert Catches a Giant Squid

Visit Now - https://zeroviral.com/watch-how-a-bioluminescence-expert-catches-a-giant-squid/

Watch How a Bioluminescence Expert Catches a Giant Squid

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iStock

Giant squid have been the object of fascination for millennia; they may have even provided the origin for the legendary Nordic sea monsters known as the Kraken. But no one had captured them in their natural environment on video until 2012, when marine biologist and bioluminescence expert Edith Widder snagged the first-ever images off Japan’s Ogasawara Islands [PDF]. Widder figured out that previous dives—which tended to bring down a ton of gear and bright lights—were scaring all the creatures away. (Slate compares it to “the equivalent of coming into a darkened theater and shining a spotlight at the audience.”)

In this clip from BBC Earth Unplugged, Widder explains how the innovative camera-and-lure combo she devised, known as the Eye-in-the-Sea, finally accomplished the job by using red lights (which most deep-sea creatures can’t see) and an electronic jellyfish (called the e-jelly) with a flashy light show just right to lure in predators like Architeuthis dux. “I’ve tried a bunch of different things over the years to try to be able to talk to the animals,” Widder says in the video, “and with the e-jelly, I feel like I’m finally making some progress.”

[h/t The Kid Should See This]

iStock

11 Fuzzy Facts About Pandas

BY Alvin Ward

March 16, 2018

iStock

Happy National Panda Day! Celebrate with some facts about everyone’s favorite black-and-white bear.

  Adobe

8 Pro Tips for Taking Incredible Pictures of Your Pets

Adobe

Thanks to the internet, owning a photogenic pet is now a viable career option. Just ask Theron Humphrey, dog-dad to Maddie the coonhound and the photographer behind the Instagram account This Wild Idea. He gained online fame by traveling across the country and sharing photographs of his dog along the way. But Maddie’s impressive modeling skills aren’t the only key to his success; Humphrey has also mastered some essential photography tricks that even the most casual smartphone photographer can use to make their pet look like a social media star.

1. PLACE YOUR PET IN INTERESTING SITUATIONS …

Based on her Instagram presence, you’d guess Maddie is either in the middle of a road trip or a scenic hike at any given time. That’s no accident: At a pet photography workshop hosted by Adobe, Humphrey said he often goes out of his way to get that perfect shot. “You need to keep situating yourself in circumstances to continue making great work,” he said, “even if that means burning a tank of gas and going someplace you’ve never been.”

2. … BUT KNOW WHAT MAKES THEM COMFORTABLE.

That being said, it’s important to know your pet’s limits. Is your dog afraid of flying? Then leave him with a pet sitter when you vacation abroad. Does your cat hate the water? Resist the temptation to bring her into the kayak with you on your next camping trip, even if it would make for an adorable photo opportunity. “One thing I think is important with animals is to operate within the parameters they exist in,” Humphrey said. “Don’t go too far outside their comfort zone.”

3. TWEAK YOUR SURROUNDINGS.

Not every winning pet photo is the result of a hefty travel budget. You can take professional-looking pictures of your pet at home, as long as you know how to work with the space you’re in. Humphrey recommends looking at every element of the scene you’re shooting in and asking what can be changed. Don’t be shy about moving furniture, adjusting the blinds to achieve the perfect lighting, or changing into a weird outfit that will make your pup’s eyes pop.

4. FIND A FRIEND.

Trying to capture glamorous photos of a moving, barking target is a hard job. It’s much easier when you have a human companion to assist you. Another set of hands can hold the camera when you want to be in the picture with your pet, or hold a toy or treat to get your dog’s attention. At the very least, they can take your pet away for a 10-minute play session when you need a break.

5. TAKE MORE PICTURES THAN YOU NEED.

The advent of digital cameras, including the kind in your smartphone, was a game-changer for pet photographers. Gone are the days when you needed to be picky about your shots to conserve film. Just set your shutter to burst mode and let your camera do the work capturing every subtle blep and mlem your pet makes. Chances are you’ll have plenty of standout shots on your camera roll from which to choose. From there, your hardest job will be “culling” them, as Humphrey says. He recommends uploading them to a photo organizing app like Adobe Lightroom and reviewing your work in two rounds: The first is for flagging any photo that catches your eye, and the second is for narrowing down that pool into an even smaller group of photos you want to publish. Even then, deciding between two shots taken a fraction of a second apart can be tricky. “When photos are too similar, check the focus,” he said. “That’s often the deciding factor.”

6. HAVE THE RIGHT TOOLS.

When it comes to capturing the perfect pet photo, an expensive camera is often less important than your cat’s favorite feather toy. The most memorable images often include pets that are engaging with the camera. In order to get your pet to look where you want it to, make sure you’re holding something your pet will find interesting in your free hand. If your pet perks up at anything that makes noise, find a squeaky toy. If they’re motivated by food, use their favorite treat to get their attention. Don’t forget to reward them with the treat or the toy after they sit for the photo—that way they’ll know to repeat the behavior next time.

7. FOCUS ON THE PET.

According to Humphrey, your pet’s eye should be the focus of most shots you take. In some cases, you may need to do more to make your pet the focal point of the image, even if that means removing your face from the frame altogether. “If there’s a human in the photo, you want to make them anonymous,” Humphrey said. That means incorporating your hands, legs, or torso into a shot without making yourself the star.

8. TRUST THE PROCESS.

This is the mantra Theron Humphrey repeated throughout his workshop. You can scout out the perfect location and find the perfect accessories, but when you’re shooting with animals you have no choice but to leave room for flexibility. “You have to learn to roll with the mistakes,” Humphrey said. What feels like a hyperactive dog ruining your shot in the moment might turn out to be social media gold when it ends up online.

More from mental floss studios

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RSD STOCK UPDATE

Hello friends! Two lists below... the first is everything we currently have in-stock (including some RE-STOCKS that arrived this week which haven't posted about until now) - the second are titles we will receive in the next or two.

Please be aware that on RSD when we sold out of some of these titles that we had no idea that we would be able to get more stock - so please accept our apologies if you waited in line and we had sold out, RSD is a crazy time and sometimes info is scarce and it's out of our control.

Most titles we are down to one copy only, so if you wish to purchase you have to pay up front to secure the stock, ie. we can't hold anything without payment.

Phone: 02 9891 9330 Email: [email protected]

Thanks again!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~ IN-STOCK NOW ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ AJJ DECADE OF REGRESSION: LIVE AT SIDEONDUMM LP ALEXISONFIRE CRISIS LP BLACK LIPS, THE CASSETTE BOX SET CASS CARS, THE LIVE AT THE AGORA, 1978 2xLP CHARGED GBH LEATHER, BRISTLES, STUDS AND ACNE LP PIC DISC CHILLS, THE ROCKET SCIENCE 7" DAVE ALVIN & PHIL ALVIN HARD TRAVELIN' 12" RSD 2017 12" DAVID BOWIE BOWPROMO (GEM PROMO) LP BOX DISCHARGE WHY LP PIC DISC ELTON JOHN 17/11/1970 2xLP FLEETWOOD MAC ALTERNATE MIRAGE LP GOO GOO DOLLS, THE PICK POCKETS, PETTY THIEVES AND TINY VICTORIES LP BOX SET GOOD BOY / JARROW SPLIT 7" HUDSON MOHAWKE DED SEC: WATCH DOGS 2 GAME SCORE 2xLP JANE'S ADDICTION BEEN CAUGHT STEALING 12" JEFF CAUDILL (GAMEFACE) RESET THE SUN 12" JOHN SCOGGINS PRESSED FOR TIME LP KYLESA LIVE AT MAIDA VALE STUDIO (BBC RECORDING) 10" MADONNA DANCE MIX 12" METAVARI METROPOLIS: AN ORIGINAL RE-SCORE 2xLP METHYL ETHEL ARCHITECTURE LECTURE / LAGOTTO ROMAGNOLO 7" NOTORIOUS B.I.G., THE BORN AGAIN 2xLP ONSLAUGHT IN SEARCH OF SANITY 2xLP PETER TOSH LEGALIZE IT (POT SCENTED) LP R.L. BURNSIDE LONG DISTANCE CALL LP RA RA RIOT RA RA RIOT 12" SOLITUDE AETURNUS ADAGIO 2xLP SOLITUDE AETURNUS ALONE 2xLP SOLITUDE AETURNUS IN TIMES OF SOLITUDE 2xLP SOUTHSIDE JOHNNY & THE ASBURY JUKES LIVE FROM E STREET 12" SUBLIME BADFISH 12" SUBLIME WITH ROME UNRELEASED DEMOS 2017 12" TOTALLY UNICORN HORSE HUGGER 12" TWO DOOR CINEMA CLUB LIVE AT KCRW MORNING LP VARIOUS 2016 GOLDEN ERA CYPHER 10" VARIOUS REALLY ROCK 'EM RIGHT: SUN RECORDS LP VARIOUS NUGGETS: COME TO THE SUNSHINE 2xLP VARIOUS FUNCTION UNDERGROUND: THE BLACK AND BROWN AMERICAN ROCK SOUND LP VARIOUS GIRLS IN THE GARAGE: ORIENTAL SPECIAL LP VARIOUS THE ROUGH GUIDE TO DELTA BLUE LP VARIOUS RECUTTING THE CRAP VOL. 1 12" VARIOUS SOUTHWEST SIDE STORY VOL. 19 LP

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ COMING NEXT WEEK OR TWO ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ AGAINST ME! STABITHA CHRISTIE 7" PIC DISC ALICE IN CHAINS WHAT THE HELL HAVE I/GET BORN 2x7" ALL TIME LOW MTV UNPLUGGED LP BEN FOLDS w/ WASO LIVE IN PERTH 2xLP BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN & THE E STREET BAND HAMMERSMITH ODEON, LONDON '75 4xLP DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN, THE INSTRUMENTALIST 7" EASYBEATS, THE VIGIL LP GEORGE CARLIN JAMMIN' IN NEW YORK LP GERARD WAY (MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE) INTO THE CAVE WE WANDER 12" GREG GRAFFIN COLD AS THE CLAY LP HARRY NILSSON NILSSON SCHMILSSON LP JIMMY PAGE & THE BLACK CROWES LIVE AT JONES BEACH 10" MOONDOG MOONDOG LP NEIL YOUNG DECADE 3xLP PINK FLOYD INTERSTELLAR OVERDRIVE 12" ROBERT JOHNSON THE CENTENNIAL COLLECTION 3xLP SANTANA WOODSTOCK SATURDAY AUGUST 16, 1969 LP SOUL ASSASSINS THE SOUL ASSASSINS CHAPTER 1 LP PIC DISC SUN RA JANUS LP TOTO AFRICA 7" PIC DISC VARIOUS WHERE THE PYRAMID MEETS THE SKY: ROKY ERICKSON TRIBUTE 2xLP WAR ON DRUGS, THE THINKING OF A PLACE 12"

CUTE! Puppy Guide Dog Training: First Day to Graduation – Earth Unplugged

Maddie visits a guide dog training center to meet puppies that are undergoing training to become guide dogs for the blind and partially sighted.

Subscribe to Earth Unplugged –

Check out the BBC Earth website

Join the Earth Unplugged community: Facebook: Twitter: Google+:

This is a channel from BBC Worldwide who help fund new BBC programmes.

The post CUTE! Puppy Guide Dog Training: First Day to Graduation – Earth Unplugged appeared first on Funny Dogs World.

Source: http://funnydogsworld.com/cute-puppy-guide-dog-training-first-day-to-graduation-earth-unplugged/

from Funny Dogs World https://funnydogsworld.wordpress.com/2017/03/28/cute-puppy-guide-dog-training-first-day-to-graduation-earth-unplugged/

CUTE! Puppy Guide Dog Training: First Day to Graduation – Earth Unplugged

Maddie visits a guide dog training center to meet puppies that are undergoing training to become guide dogs for the blind and partially sighted.

Subscribe to Earth Unplugged –

Check out the BBC Earth website

Join the Earth Unplugged community: Facebook: Twitter: Google+:

This is a channel from BBC Worldwide who help fund new BBC programmes.

The post CUTE! Puppy Guide Dog Training: First Day to Graduation – Earth Unplugged appeared first on Funny Dogs World.

from Funny Dogs World http://funnydogsworld.com/cute-puppy-guide-dog-training-first-day-to-graduation-earth-unplugged/

In 1993 David Bowie compiled a double CD for friends. Titled All Saints it combined instrumentals from Low and "Heroes" with more contemporary tracks and signalled the singer's rediscovery of the electronic sounds that revolutionised his music in 1977. Delving deep into All Saints, Jon Savage examines the impact of Bowie's sonic revolution on post-punk, electronica and, in the end, Bowie himself.

1993 was a fantastic year for electronic music. Six years after Steve 'Silk' Hurley's Jack Your Body - the UK's first house Number 1 - the pure energy of house and techno had diversified into more than just a series of artificially stimulated genres: it had become a whole new sound world that had very little to do with what had gone before, and that meant rock. Despite the best efforts of Suede and Nirvana that year, electronica sounded like the future.

Passing from the irresistible Euro cheese of 2 Unlimited's No Limit - Number 1 in February - to Acen's brutal classic Window In The Sky - collected on the early junglist compilation Hard Leaders III: Enter The Darkside, there were several releases by Richard ]ames/Aphex Twin, including Polygon Window's Surfing On Sine Waves; Richie Hawtin's first album on Warp, Dimension Intrusion as F.U.S.E., Underworld's Rez, Sabres Of Paradise's Smokebelch II and the R&S compilation In Order To Dance 4 - brilliant records all.

1993 was also the year that David Bowie rediscovered his mojo, It had been a decade since Let's Dance - the rock/R&B fusion that launched him into the global mainstream for the first time. The subsequent years saw Bowie blindsided by that somewhat unexpected success: after two poor studio albums (Tonight and Never Let Me Down), an attempt to recapture his rock roots with Tin Machine had been unsuccessful - despite a couple of good songs. So what to do next?"

"A way through the labyrinth was offered by the past: going forward by going back. During 1991, Rykodisc undertook a comprehensive reissue programme of all the albums between 1967's David Bowie and 1980's Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps), trailed in 1989 by the successful 3-CD compilation Sound + Vision. The cumulative effect of these fifteen records - including the electronic highpoints, Low and "Heroes" - reaffirmed Bowie's status as modernist and innovator.

Released in April 1993, Black Tie White Noise was Bowie's first solo album for six years. It contains what would, with variations, become his basic template for the next decade: mature, almost crooning vocals; iconic covers, in this case Cream's I Feel Free and The Walker Brothers' Nite Flights; an interest in black dance rhythms (assisted here by Nile Rodgers); and futuristic ideas integrated within a full, enveloping sound. It went to Number 1.

Bowie has always been a synthesist of contemporary modes: unlike many rock stars, he actually likes music. His commercial renaissance in 1993 coincided with a greater receptivity to the world around him and a corresponding reassessment of his achievements. Pallas Athena is a string-drenched baggy shuffle, while the title track, Black Tie White Noise, matches a lyric about the 1992 Rodney King riots in Los Angeles with a guest vocal from New Jack Swing singer Al B. Sure!

That November, Nirvana plugged Bowie right into the heart of contemporary rock music with their version of The Man Who Sold The World on MTV Unplugged. A month later, Bowie released his second album of 1993, The Buddha Of Suburbia, an album of all new, subtly electronic material - inspired by his soundtrack work on the BBC Film of Hanif Kureishi's novel, set in their shared south London locale of Bromley - a forgotten gem in his catalogue.

Right from the opening track, which collages the riff from Space Oddity and the chorus from All The Madmen, The Buddha Of Suburbia plugs Bowie back into his avant-garde past. This was deliberate: as Bowie wrote in the linernotes, "My personal brief for this collection was to marry my present way of writing and playing with the stockpile of residue from the 1970s." That meant a list of inspirations that included free association lyrics, Brücke-Museum, Kraftwerk, Eno and Neu!

As if to celebrate the continued influence of Eno on his "working forms", Bowie put together his third release of the year: a double CD compilation called All Saints, produced in an edition of a hundred and fifty and handed out to friends. This was an explicit homage to electronica: mixing all the instrumentals from Low and "Heroes" with stray outtakes like Abdulmajid and All Saints, as well as relevant material from Black Tie White Noise and The Buddha Of Suburbia.

The result is surprisingly homogeneous: sixteen years of material collaged into a flowing whole, with the The Buddha Of Suburbia material, The Mysteries and Ian Fish UK Heir, among the strongest. Which prompts a few questions. If Low and "Heroes" represent Bowie's highpoint of formal inspiration, then how did he get there? Why did they sound so good in the context of their time, and what has their influence been - not just on his own music - but electronica in general? Did that future happen?

It all began, appropriately enough, in science fiction. During the mid to late summer of 1975, Bowie was in New Mexico and other southern locations, filming Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell To Earth. His central role required him to play the part of Thomas Jerome Newton, an extraterrestrial visitor on a quest to find water for his dying planet. Newton is charming, cold, and totally emotionless: as Bowie later admitted, he hardly had to act because that's how he felt at the time.

Space travel and aliens have been a constant theme in Bowie's songs, from Space Oddity through Life On Mars?, Ashes To Ashes and Hello Spaceboy. The possibility of other worlds - and the transformation achieved by leaving this one - is a sure-re way of abstracting from any problems that one has on this Earth. Bowie had always felt apart, and much of his work - for instance, his first masterpiece, 1966's The London Boys - centres around the themes of being in or out, between belonging and not belonging.

His first big hit, 1969's Space Oddity, was a trip to nowhere, in the short term. Bowie achieved fusion in his second phase of chart success: he understood and identified with his new audience, a mixture of weirdos, gays, urban stylists and teenyboppers. But superstardom and artistic restlessness drove him into new, uncharted areas: as he continued his sequence of hyper-speed transformations in 1974 and 1975 - from Aladdin Sane to Diamond Dogs and Young Americans - he became more and more remote.

In summer 1975 he was coked-out and fame blitzed. But The Man Who Fell To Earth offered a lifeline. Saturated in science fiction, becoming the alien, Bowie was able to project forward, into his future, into the future - out of a barren, bleak and occasionally terrifying present. (At the time he was living in Los Angeles, beset by demons, imagined or otherwise, and involved in a sequence of paralysing business disputes).

The first sign of this change was all over his next album. Recorded in autumn 1973, Station To Station was a compelling mixture of abstracted disco and contemporary crooning. TVC 15 set to a vicious funk rhythm the famous scene in The Man Who Fell To Earth, where Newton, rendered incapable by alcohol, goggles at a wall of TV sets: "I give my complete attention to a very good friend of mine / He's quadrophonic / He's a / He's got more channels/ So hologramic / Oh my TVC 15."

The title track was a ten-minute tour de force, with as many twists and turns as a 1967 single or a prog epic, that charted a spiritual journey from the darkside ("Here I am / Dredging the ocean / Lost in my circle") to some kind of possibility that life could continue. Whether consciously or not, Bowie was visualising his own escape: "The European canon is here." Here also are the first traces of modern German music: the motorik rhythms, the panoramic sweep of the train sounds.

The idea of a physical journey was stimulated by the most successful German record to date, Kraftwerk's Autobahn - the title track of which aimed to capture the feeling of driving along the German A roads without speed limits. You hear the car starting, a horn toots, and then you're off into a repetitive, hypnotic twenty-two-minute journey that reflects the different, phasing perspectives of travelling fast as well as the boredom of motorway driving.

As important as the idea of simulating shifts through time and space was Kraftwerk's use of synthesizers to express a melodic sensibility that, at various points, suggested distance, loss, cosiness and large horizons. The two wordless versions of Kometenmelodie, on the album's second side, are saturated in deep, warm analogue synth sounds. This was a futuristic, self-generated, distinct European sensibility that had very little American or English influence.

An edited single of Autobahn went to Number 11 in the UK charts in June 1975. The Kosmische Musik was going overground in 1974/5 just as it hit an artistic peak, with records by Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream (Phaedra and Ricochet), Cluster (Zuckerzeit), Harmonia (Muzik Von Harmonia), Can (Soon Over Babaluma), Neu! (Neu! 75), and Faust, whose Faust IV began with an earth-shaking drone that satirised the flip name given to the genre by British journalists - Krautrock.

This was a music born out of a national rupture: Germany's post-war devastation and reconstruction. As Kraftwerk's Ralf Hütter told this writer in 1991: "When we started it was like, shock, silence. Where do we stand? Nothing. The classical music being nineteenth century, but in the twentieth century: nothing. We had no father figures, no continuous tradition of entertainment. Through the '50s and '60s, everything was Americanised, directed towards consumer behaviour.

"We were part of this '68 movement, where suddenly there were possibilities: we performed at happenings and art situations. Then we founded our Kling Klang studio. German word for sound is 'klang', 'kling' is the verb. Phonetics, establishing the sound, we added more electronics. You had performances from Cologne Radio, Stockhausen, and something new was in the air, with electronic sounds, tape machines. We were a younger generation, we came up with different textures."

With a cover that used a still taken from The Man Who Fell To Earth, Station To Station was released in January 1976, followed a couple of months later by the film: a double whammy that kept Bowie at the forefront of popular culture. In February, Bowie began the sixty-four-date Station To Station tour - for many fans, his peak as a performer - which, after forty or so dates in the US, visited Germany in April. He liked it so much that, in late summer 1976, he moved to Berlin with Iggy Pop in tow.

In the late '70s, Berlin was a schizophrenic city, brutally divided in two by the heavily policed wall that separated the two warring super-power systems of the day - Cold War zoning in excelsis. Totally surrounded by the communist Deutsche Demokratische Republik, the Western side was an oasis of capitalist values, half depressed and half manically liberated. (For two contrasting views, see the contemporary Berlin films Taxi Zum Klo and Christiane F..

Berlin had come back from nothing. It allowed Bowie anonymity, a safe enough haven within which to reconstitute himself and an environment that matched his own psychological state. It also had layers of history that went back beyond the Cold War and World War II: always visually stimulated, Bowie was fascinated by the Brücke-Museum, an institution dedicated to the often stark Work of the first expressionists, the 'Brücke', or Bridge, who celebrated spontaneity and raw emotion.

It also allowed Bowie to immerse himself further in German music: that year he met Edgar Froese, Giorgio Moroder, and Kraftwerk - who would write about it in 1977's Trans-Europe Express: "From station to station / Back to Dusseldorf city / Meet Iggy Pop and David Bowie." This was the melting pot that would go into the four key 1977 albums that Bowie began recording that summer: first Iggy Pop's The Idiot, then his next, begun in France and finished at the Hansa Tonstudio ("By the wall") in Berlin.

Low was a major surprise when it came out in early 1977 but it's a perfect record - conceptually and emotionally. Adorned with a treated cover still from The Man Who Fell To Earth, it's split into two halves: a first side of seven tracks - two instrumentals and ve songs clipped brutally short - and a second of almost wordless, hypnotic instrumentals. The entire album is drenched in electronics, used to evoke a variety of emotions - not the least of which is a strange serenity: the curious comfort in near-total withdrawal.

The record fades in on Speed Of Life, a theme that tied into one of the preoccupations of punk; as Bowie stated in 1977, "People simply can't cope with the rate of change in this world. It's all far too fast." This instrumental matches a ferocious Dennis Davis snare drum sound - achieved by Tony Visconti's Eventide Harmonizer, which fed back a dying echo to the drummer as he played - with synthesizer textures that were at once harsh and melodic, uplifting and decaying.

These were provided by Brian Eno, Bowie's principal collaborator, who was already saturated in German music. During the sessions for Low, he recorded with Harmonia, while his 1975 album, Another Green World, had been partly inspired by Cluster's Zuckerzeit, an album of playful, sugary but relentless synthesizer instrumentals, and the oscillation between recognisable, if slightly swerved pop songs and ambient instrumentals were what Bowie was aiming to achieve.

The five songs on Low's first side are almost randomly edited, formally unconventional - the vocal on the hit, Sound And Vision, doesn't come in for a minute and a half - and almost autistically uncommunicative. Normally profligate with words and storylines, Bowie here offers fragments from unpleasant scenarios that thrust themselves up into the consciousness (Always Crashing In The Same Car, Breaking Glass) or almost desperate attempts at connection (Be My Wife).

The excitement of the record's formal innovations - the successful integration of a new electronic sound with pop/rock music: just listen to the popping synth in What In The World - contrast with a mood that is shut down, cocooned. This feeling of remoteness is deepened by the four instrumentals that begin with Warszawa. Mixing minimalism with random elements, like the discarded Vibraphone found in the studio, they remain shape-shifting pulses of great clarity and beauty.

Low might have alienated the Americans, but it reached Number 2 in the UK: at the same time, Sound And Vision was a UK Top 3 single. While not of punk, it seemed to share a similar mood: the clipped feel, the acceleration, the traumatised emotions - on the surface at least. It was quickly followed by another album, this time totally recorded at the Hansa Tonstudio in Berlin: "Heroes". Although sharing the same split format as Low, this was a very different beast.

The first thing that you notice is that the songs are longer. There are synthesizers and randomness - like the flat interjection on Joe The Lion: "It's Monday" - but the feeling is generally more expansive, as though Bowie has begun to open up to the world again. The sound is fuller, and reaches a peak on the justly celebrated title track, inspired by two lovers meeting under the Berlin Wall, which, with a totally committed, if not desperate vocal, celebrates the uncertain possibility that love can transcend geopolitics.

The second side is like a waking dream. The Kraftwerk homage V-2 Schneider begins with a downward sweep - like a jet, or a rocket terror weapon, levelling out - before hitting a heavy motorik groove as relentless as anything on Neu! 75. Sense Of Doubt leaves a descending, four-note theme hanging in atmospherics and synthesizer washes: you can hear the dripping rain and feel the physical and mental as psychology matches environment.

Moss Garden takes from Edgar Froese's Epsilon In Malaysian Pale in mood - that lush, exotic soundscape - and in its repeating synth whorls. Bowie added a deep, machine-like hum that travels across the channels, and an improvisation played on a koto: the Japanese stringed instrument. The final instrumental, Neuköln, features Bowie's saxophone in a strangulated, highly Expressionist evocation of a drab Berlin district then mainly populated by Turkish immigrants.

These four tracks are the high point of Bowie's career, his point of furthest formal and expressive outreach: sound paintings that have all the complexity and power of a feature film, they take you there, right into their emotional and physical landscape. Just as much as the purely instrumental albums that Brian Eno would release over the next few years, they represent the beginnings of ambient music, certainly in the form that would become popular in the early 1990s.

The impact of Low and "Heroes" was immediate. Both albums were signposts to the young musicians who would come to the fore in 1978 and 1979, after punk's fury had dissipated: among them were Gary Numan, whose super-alienated chart-topper, Are 'Friends' Electric, welded TVC 15 with Speed Of Life, and Joy Division, originally called Warsaw after the opening instrumental on side two of Low, who took that album's distinctive drum sound, mixed with a lot of Can, into their vision of rock and electronics.

The influence went even further. Berlin and bleak Mitteleurope became a pop trope in the late '70s, with the cold wave of The Human League, Ultravox's Vienna and Joy Division's haunted Komakino, written after a visit to the city. The Mobiles went kitsch with the melodramatic Drowning In Berlin, while Spandau Ballet, the breakthrough group of the new romantics (true children of Bowie all), took their name from the district to the west of the city.

Part of this was just pop faddishness, but Low and "Heroes" had, by the end of 1977, offered a way out of punk's stylistic cul-de-sac. Electronics had been a definite no-no for punks - "Moog synthe-si-zer" Joe Strummer had sneered on London Weekend Television in November 1976 - but they returned with a vengeance after Donna Summer's I Feel Love and Space's Magic Fly, with great 1978 singles by The Normal, Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire and The Human League, plus key albums by Suicide and Kraftwerk.

Punk had been the future, but that was quickly superseded by real-time, political events. In the polarising atmosphere of late 1977 and early 1978, it was all too easy to feel shot by both sides. As they had to David Bowie, electronics offered a way of side-stepping impossible demands, while their association with various physical and psychological states - movement late in the night through the city, withdrawal and isolation - were attractive to alienated youth.

In many ways, it was the return of psychedelia, only darker in keeping with the mood of the time. The counter-intuitive analogue synth sound was key: it was deep enough to create an environment and bleak enough to evoke estrangement, while at the same time enveloping the listener in a warm bath of ambience, that "sensurround sound" that would be explored further by The Human League (The Dignity Of Labour Parts 1-4), Joy Division (Atmosphere, The Eternal) and PiL (Radio 4).

Like his post-punk acolytes, Bowie too kept coming back to these albums in the later '70s and early '80s. In 1978, he played Warszawa and Sense Of Doubt on the long Isolar II tour, later collected on the Stage live album. Both also cropped up, together with V-2 Schneider and "Heroes"/Helden on the soundtrack of Christiane F., a stark but overlong depiction of teenage heroin addicts at the central Berlin station that became one of the most popular German films ever.

But apart from Crystal Japan, a Japanese B-side, Bowie retreated from pure electronica thereafter. By the time that he returned with Let's Dance in 1983, the spores he had helped to cast to the wind were beginning to bear fruit in the most unexpected way, as the late '70s white synthetic sound was taken up by black Americans, most notably in rap and techno tracks by Cybotron - 1981's Alleys Of Your Mind and 1984's Techno City - and Afrika Bambaataa And Soulsonic Force on 1983's Planet Rock.

While Bowie busied himself in the mainstream, dance culture proliferated into a myriad forms, assisted by the onset of digital and sampling technology. With such an eclectic, voracious and fast-moving culture, it was hardly surprising that it began to loop back to the analogue late '70s. Just as Low and "Heroes" reappeared on CD in 1991, with several extra tracks, the first products of ambient's second wave were being released: Aphex Twin's Didgeridoo and Biosphere's classic Microgravity.

Reconnecting with his electronic past gave Bowie a burst of energy that has taken him through the '90s and, in fact, the rest of his career to date. During 1992, the year that Philip Glass put out the Low Symphony, he reunited with Brian Eno - on "synthesizers, treatments, and strategies" - for the ambitious 1.Outside. Released in 1995, this was a return to the dystopian landscape of Diamond Dogs with added pre-millennial tension and extra technological weirdness.

The fourteen songs on 1.Outside stretch time and form. Random reappears in the cut-up lyrics, while the constant 4/4 of house phases in-and-out of funk and baggy beats, in the segues Bowie's voice is varispeeded through time and space: one minute he's a fourteen-year-old girl, another a forty-six-year-old "Tyrannical Futurist". The album's big hit, Hello Spaceboy, has hints of Rebel Rebel and Space Oddity. By this stage, in his late forties, Bowie could look back at his catalogue and his obsessions, and still move forward.

The motion was even more extreme on 1997's direct, uptempo and intense Earthling, in which Bowie mixed heavily sampled often squeezed into squalling riffs, as on the opener Little Wonder, with self-generated drum'n'bass rhythms that co-existed with rave patterns (Dead Man Walking). With hints of The Prodigy and Underworld, this was Bowie's most dance-friendly album, adding remixes by Moby, Danny Saber, Nine Inch Nails, and Junior Vasquez.

Both 1.Outside and Earthling made the UK Top 10, as did the more eclectic and uptempo Hours..., from 1999. Two years later, Bowie finally released All Saints as a single disc: dropping the Black Tie White Noise tracks and South Horizon from The Buddha Of Suburbia, and adding Crystal Japan and Brilliant Adventure from Hours.... The result is eminently playable, Bowie's purest, most elemental electronic album.

The extraordinary thing about 2001's All Saints is how well it all hangs together, with nine tracks from 1977 flowing easily in and out of the material from the 1990s, the most recent being the brief, but beautiful Brilliant Adventure. The Mysteries could have segued straight into the second side of "Heroes", and Moss Garden into The Buddha Of Suburbia. That continuity is not a result of standing still, but of being able to retain a love of sound, the wish to move forward.

The long loop of All Saints, from 1977 to 1993 and, finally, 2001, takes Bowie near the close of his musical career to date. In 2002 he released Heathen, an excellent record with tinges of sadness and mortality alongside a surprising cover of Neil Young's I've Been Waiting For You. The next year there was Reality and since then there has been nothing. In a strange way All Saints feels like a closing of the circle: a celebration of an extraordinary breakthrough that remained an inspiration and a talisman.

Just as the prophecies of The Man Who Fell To Earth have come to pass - that bank of TV screens, all showing different channels: if only someone could have told us how boring that would become - then the startling futurism of Low and "Heroes" has been borne out by the events of the last thirty-five years. A radical departure then, seemingly out of their time, they continue to exist in their own world, but they also remain signposts to a future that came to pass.