BELLEVILLE – David Bowie’s music was selling quickly this week at the Sam the Record Man store in the Quinte Mall. Photo by Isaiah Mawhinney, QNet News
BELLEVILLE – The death of the flamboyant music superstar David Bowie is affecting people around the world, including those in Belleville.
Radio station Rock 107 host Rick Kevan dedicated a special hour on Monday, the day Bowie’s death was announced, to commemorate the singer’s life and work. The station received a lot of calls from fans requesting Bowie’s songs, he said.
It wasn’t just Bowie’s hits they wanted to hear, he added: “Some of the stuff was pretty obscure.”
During the special noon-hour broadcast Kevan took calls from local people, and some told stories about their experiences at Bowie concerts. “We shared those as well with the listeners,” he said.
Kevan himself saw Bowie in concert at the Ottawa Civic Centre in 1974 during his Diamond Dogs tour. “It was pretty awesome. He came on stage – there was this huge diamond (and) he was in this diamond. (A giant) hand came down and the thumb on the stairs was (a) banister. It was pretty cool,” he said.
Bowie’s death caused a spike in purchases of his music; the music-streaming service Spotify said streams of Bowie songs were up 2,700 per cent on Monday, while the U.K.site Official Charts Company reported that his album Blackstar, released two days before his death, was headed to the No. 1 sales spot. One local music store, Sam the Record Man in the Quinte Mall, has also been seeing impressive traffic. Sales associate Jesse Benoit told QNet News Wednesday that everyone seems to be interested in Bowie material. “It seemed like every customer coming in either had vinyl of Bowie, or a CD of Bowie, or was asking about Bowie,” he said.
In fact the store temporarily sold out of Blackstar on the day he died, and had to order more copies, Benoit said.
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