Bowie Night in Rome with the presentation-concert of the book "For Ever And Ever" by Claudio Fabretti

On Saturday, January 17, at Defrag in Rome (via delle Isole Curzolane, 75), starting at 7 pm, there will be a presentation of the book “David Bowie – For Ever And Ever” by Claudio Fabretti. The author will be interviewed by Paolo Chemnitz, an OndaRock staff writer, about the contents of the book, published by White Star.

Between segments of the book presentation, a selection of up-and-coming Roman bands will pay tribute to David Bowie by reinterpreting some of his best-known songs. Here are the artists taking the stage and the covers featured in the live performance (admission 5 euros):

• Mind Your Step feat. Sveva ("Space Oddity"/ "Life on Mars?") A pop-rock outfit that makes versatility its strong suit, alternating intimate moments with sounds charged with energy and experimentation. For the occasion they will be joined by Sveva, a singer-songwriter and aspiring director from Rome, who will bring her intense vocals to the interpretation of the songs.
• Shylock ("Starman"/"Ziggy Stardust") A pop-rock band with a pronounced British sound, boasting a modern and engaging style that draws on influences from across the Channel such as Arctic Monkeys.
• Aspra (“Heroes/Fame") An original project distinguished by a contaminated sound, able to elegantly blend jazz structures with funk groove.
• Friday Nights feat. Sofia ("Let's Dance"/"Modern Love") They offer an explosive mix of funky grooves, rock and dance. On vocals is also Sofia, a Roman singer-songwriter inspired by artists like Gracie Abrams and Billie Eilish.
• Wild Mint ("I'm Afraid Of Americans"/"Lazarus") A project born in the school classroom and evolved over time into a mature, complex identity: an experimental rock sound enriched with electronic incursions and darkwave.

Across 208 pages, complete with an extensive photo section, “David Bowie. Forever And Ever” traces the story of the son of working-class Brixton who would become rock's great dandy, dwelling on all the key stages: from his early years paying his dues in the Swinging London of the 1960s, to the fame he found in the following decade, a fame that would stay with him forever, without glossing over its dangerous allure and its pitfalls. Central to the narrative is also Bowie's own contribution, through his testimonies from the time and his reflections, always lucid and never too gentle, not even with himself. It's a journey that inevitably winds through the various guises of his characters, an only seemingly external expression of his shifts and psychological upheavals. So, in an ideal gallery, we see them pass by: the psych-folk minstrel of his early days, the glam alien Ziggy Stardust, the subtle and toxic Thin White Duke, the plastic soulman, the refined wave forerunner of Berlin, the new romantic pierrot, the platinum-haired rocker, the reckless post-industrial outsiders of the 1990s. His characters, after all, were always the screen he placed between himself and the world, but also the most truthful evidence of his personality, which perhaps only in the final period of his life had begun to reveal itself without masks, with an ever more imperceptible, ever less transfigured, modesty.

The Starman took his leave of the world on January 10, 2016, at the height of his (rediscovered) popularity, just as his final testament, “Blackstar”, had hit the shops. Complete with a self-written epitaph in the single “Lazarus”: “Look up here, I'm in heaven, I've got scars that can't be seen.” But like a David Lynch film or a Bertolt Brecht play, the great enigma of Bowie's art resists easy captions. In the pages of “For Ever And Ever,” then, an attempt is made to piece it together, to reconstruct one of its possible paths, without claiming to offer a definitive exegesis. Bowie himself, after all, said in 1999: “The work of art is only completed when the audience adds its own interpretation, and it's precisely in that grey space in between that its meaning lies.” All that's left for us, then, is to try to fill it. For ever and ever.

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