(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Morning Open Thread, Tuesday October 6th, Road Trip! David Bowie II [1] ['Chitown Kev', 'Belinda Ridgewood', 'Bill In Portland Maine', 'Major Kong', 'Chloris Creator'] Date: 2026-10-06 Good morning. While you read this we are (hopefully) making good time heading south from our fair commonwealth for a quick visit with our youngest in Maryland. And then a hop skip and a jump to the swing state of Florida. Hey, hope spring eternal right? And i heard gas prices are coming down so this 1,500 mile trip is not gonna be an expensive one. right? In this photo taken with a slow shutter speed, traffic moves past a sign for a Mobil gas station on Wednesday, April 29, 2026, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane) AP For grins i gathered the price per gallon in each state. Massachusetts : $4.39 Rhode Island : $4.38 Connecticut : $4.50 New York : $4.49 New Jersey : $4.38 Pennsylvania : $4.54 Delaware : $4.35 Maryland : $4.37 Virginia : $4.14 North Carolina : $4.12 South Carolina : $4.08 Georgia : $4.19 Florida : $4.34 So Florida which loves to talk about affordability is only a nickle cheaper then “high cost” Massachusetts. I know – you Californians are scoffing at these prices being high – and my god you guys are taking it on the chin – but this 4$ gas is gonna drag on the republicans big time. Screenshot Its hard for anyone to argue with that chart. Trump started the Iran war and there is no denying the effect. Did i just break the unwritten rule to not harsh everyones morning coffee? i did. oops. Apoligies! back to music. David Bowie Part II. Last week we met him as a young mod and he had moved easily through multiple personas and his music had also evolved. And what prompted me to write about him was the album Station to Station which had several great songs. Well that album came out in: 1976 Bowie in 1976 Jean-Luc Ourlin, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons The Thin White Duke persona Its said that this period is when Bowie was his most strung out on cocaine and surviving on a diet consisting of milk and red peppers. Did i mention living on Cocaine? He was emaciated. His chosen persona was nasty by his own admission. damn. i’m gonna harsh the vibe AGAIN. He also, sadly, praised fascism and was photographed either giving a Nazi salute or was caught in mid wave and looked like it. I can recall reading about in those old fashioned things we sold at the store. Newspapers.. In any case he definitely made statements he later repudiated as being the product of a cocaine fueled paranoia. David Bowie, who three months earlier had been photographed apparently giving a Nazi salute in Victoria Station, told Cameron Crowe in the September 1976 edition of Playboy ‘… yes I believe very strongly in fascism. The only way we can speed up the sort of liberalism that’s hanging foul in the air… is a right-wing totally dictatorial tyranny…’ In that same interview Bowie claimed that ‘Adolf Hitler was one of the first rock stars.’ This was Britain then in the sweltering summer of 1976, and in that context Clapton’s comments were potentially incendiary https://www.theguardian.com/ OK – i honestly don’t know what to make of that other then to say he WAS strung out on cocaine and shortly after moved out of LA to get clean. Subsequently he would also say he was “apolitical” but he was increasingly explicit in making anti-racist and anti fascist statements. In an MTV interview years later he called them out for not promoting black performers as much as white ones. Which, by the way, seems a valid observation in my recollection. They played Michael Jackson and Prince but those guys were huge at the time and superb visual as well as musical artists. It was not a heavy lift to put them in rotation. Beyond that i cant recall any black performers. Then again i can’t remember what i had for breakfast. OK sorry for the digression – but it seemed like that particular dark corner could not be ignored. The Nazi thing. not my failed memory. No more Harshing the vibe today. Promise. 1977 — Sound and Vision Helge Øverås, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons 1977 — “Heroes” Cover photograph: Masayoshi Sukita; design: David Bowie and Masayoshi Sukita. 1979 Bowie 1979 Distributed by RCA Records, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Cover photograph: Brian Duffy; design: Derek Boshier and David Bowie. 1980 Cover photograph: Brian Duffy; artwork/design: Edward Bell. 1983 in prepping this MOT i found a lot of Bowie fan sites, reviews, articles etc including one that really dissed his 1983 Album Lets Dance as being overly commercial. Oh and the title song being to long. I say balderdash! I love obscure music and challenging bands. But i also enjoy well crafted popular music that, you know, is popular cause its fun. Greg Gorman; Distributed by EMI America, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Cover photograph: Greg Gorman; design: Mick Haggerty. And here i end our David Bowie adventure… there is a lot of albums and material to cover after Lets Dance but I am gonna call it a day. Theme? DANCE – whatever tune gets you moving. And some fun with Heith Ledger in the movie the Knights Tale – Bowie kicks in about half way through the scene: oh one more thing we spent Sunday with our eldest who lives in a group home near us. This time of year he loves to buy pumpkins to place out doors at the house. This year is no different. During the summer he gets plants for the walkway RandomNeuron anyway the pumpkins sit there and typically get eaten by critters and covered with snow and rot in place to be cleaned in the spring when the landscape guys show up. one year we noticed a pumpkin plant had self seeded. Each year now they self seed and each year they seem to spread a bit. This year, even though the landscaper ripped out at least one when weeding we found three that had fruited. Not bad for a crop that gets zero care! 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