ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ DAVID BOWIE PLAYLIST] 
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]

PROGRAM: [Java]

PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ DAVID BOWIE PLAYLIST]

PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]

I think we’ve already covered my deep, unhealthy obsession with David Bowie. But for those who are either late to the program, or just plain forgot, here’s a quick overview. About two years I was part of a “book reading” circle, except we didn’t read books, we listened to records. Specifically, the life work of somebody, in the order they were released, one album a week. It was a great exercise as it was an opportunity for me to fill in the gaps when we did R.E.M., to cover the I’d-always-been-meaning-to-listen-to-’em-but-never-got-around-to-it-ness of P. J. Harvey and Talking Heads, and, of course, there was the schooling of others in the genius that was Pavement. But, really, the group peaked insanely early with our first candidate: David Bowie. Just a mind-bogglingly amazing output from 1970 (yeah, I’ll start with his third album “The Man Who Sold The World”) through 1983. It was an embarassment of riches to go through that list, even if we did have to suffer through “Pin Ups.”

So y’all know me, if I can get a Bowie reference in the grid, I’m putting it in there, dammit! And like a said a couple weeks back I was sort of surprised nobody’d ever clued STARMAN as the Bowie song. And I guess the reason for that one was that it wasnt’ really a hit in the states. (Although I seem to remember hearing it on WBCN when I was a kid, way back before that station went all corporate.) My bad. This misunderstanding of what was a hit and what wasn’t could have been easily complicated by the fact that two albums played all the time in my home when was a young ‘un were “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars” (featuring, what else? “Starman”) and “The Beatles.”

Sidebar. Will was getting a little cute a couple Monday puzzles ago when had the audacity to claim that “The Beatles” was, in fact, UNTITLED. C’mon! It’s frigging titled “The Beatles!” And he should know better as he loves that record! Even though that clue was not in one of my puzzles, that one’s gonna bother me for a while now.

Sidebar to the sidebar: in one of my puzzles Will changed a clue for ATARI claiming it was the company that made “Donkey Kong.” His logic was that Atari licensed the game for home rights. Now that one really bothered me considering pretty much every character in that game not only built but also blossomed throughout all of the Nintendo universe. Two more quick points on this sidebar to the sidebar: when I was a child I was convinced I was going to design video games. And, if you haven’t seen it yet, there’s a really entertaining documentary about competitive video gaming, specifically breaking the Donkey Kong world record, called “The King of Kong.” Well recommended.

So, anywway, where were we? Oh yeah. I think Rex pointed out in place of STARMAN, he had CHANGES (obviously a massive Bowie hit) and one of the other crossings kinda sorta worked for him. And at the time, it seemed like that might make for an interesting theme. So I wrote down “Bowie songs/CHANGES” in the moleskine and thought I’d get back to it. Thing was, a couple days later, I couldn’t remember exactly what I meant by the “/CHANGES” bit in the note. Ch-ch-ch-ch-changing Bowie songs, I suspect. I went with this gimmick instead.

Coming up you can look forward to puzzles called R.E.M. PLAYLIST, PAVEMENT PLAYLIST, and TALKING HEADS PLAYLIST. (Not really, unless you ask me kindly for them).

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