David Bowie's earthly birthday is Friday. It would be his 74th and all those who were inspired by Bowie's chameleonic personalities will pay tribute in the streaming 'A Bowie Celebration-For Just One Day'. You can almost tell the caliber of the muse by the people who are still inspired by him. Trent Reznor, Dave Navarro, Perry Farrell, Joe Elliot, Billy Corgan, Taylor Hawkins from the Chili Peppers and many more including Doug Podell nemesis Ian Hunter, who owes his break to Bowie loaning him the song 'All The Young Dudes'. So, worth the price of 'admission' and $2 will be contributed to the Save The Children Charity. Since this is MY BLOG, I frequently make it all about me. And David Bowie was another one of my teenage inspirations. He was cool, sometimes too cool for himself, reinventing his image innumerable times during his storied career. And friends? There was Ziggy and Iggy, David and Iggy Pop were friends, in fact, they spent some nefarious times here in Detroit. David launched Stevie Ray Vaughn's band Double Trouble. If the stories are true, Bowie refused to pay SRV what he deserved, wouldn't allow Vaughn's band to open the shows on the Cat People Tour and slapped a gag order on Stevie about his own band so Vaughn had enough cojones to quit that tour and do his own thing. For some that would've been a career killing move, but Stevie was a God in his own rite. David was tight with Mick Jagger enough to generate some buzz about their collaborations. And of course, there were many more tales to tell. The media adores Bowie too. I was geeked to hear 'Princess Anne' from the Netflix special "The Crown" singing along to Bowie's 'Starman' in her car on the way to visit mummy, and the Kristin Wigg version of 'Space Oddity' in the "Walter Mitty" movie. And after he died, even the titan of Tesla, Elon Musk revealed his fanboy fascination with Bowie, by launching a Bowie mannikin in a spacesuit inside a Tesla Roadster from a Space X rocket. I think finding out how he inspired all the others around him, both great and small, reignites my belief in how connected we are, if only we'd remember that. And now he's the Starman "..waiting in the sky, he'd like to come and meet us but he thinks he'd blow our minds". Too late. That happened to me years ago. Happy Birthday David, wherever you are in the universe. Enjoy the tribute by Conan.