Well, like most of the Western world of a certain age I was shocked to hear of Bowie’s passing.

There’s nothing really useful I can add to the avalanche of tributes, analyses, obituaries and hagiographies that are already pouring forth, so I’ll just post this little reminiscence.

When I was young, I had a treasured poster on my wall, that I’d stolen from my older sister. It was titled, “Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane meet the Spider from Mars”, and it had a painting of Bowie, Iggy and Marc Bolan together.

That summed up everything important to me in music then, and for a long time after.