Legendary rock icon and actor David Bowie died at his home surrounded by his family on Sunday night after an 18-month battle with cancer.

The news broke through Bowie’s official Facebook page just after 2AM EST on Monday.

Lou Reed, the so-called godfather of punk, whose embryonic sounds of that genre and combinations of avant-garde dirty rock and roll helped propel him to become a legendary artist by way of The Velvet Underground and his own solo projects, has died at the age of 71, according to Rolling Stone. The cause of death is unknown at this time, but Reed had undergone a liver transplant back in May [see Update below].

For the Brooklyn-born Reed, it ends a life that was labyrinthine, filled with color and mayhem, sadness, poetry, tender regret, and razor sharp aggression. Reed took early rock and roll and doo wop, and mixed it with the sounds and styles of the mid 1960s, the Andy Warhol New York City which was crystallized by way of illicit drugs, adventurous sexuality and exploring themes, and going to places unknown; not even The Beatles tread to some of the naked, raw narratives that Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground went to in their songwriting.

Lust For Life, a classic Iggy Pop solo album produced by David Bowie and featuring the memorable raunchy title track, is now available on MP3 format from Amazon this month for only $5.00. Lust for Life is also available on CD for only $4.99 and is an AutoRip, which means it comes with a FREE MP3 version of the album.

The follow up to the Pop’s first solo venture The Idiot, Lust for Life finds its dirty fingers in the sonic cookie jar, as The Stooges front man exposes himself in the manner which he is most accustomed to in that band, and spills his darkest secrets and dirty fetishes on the sonic canvas. With the bizarre title track, with its memorable drum beat, and Iggy waxing about wondering where someone got lotion and speaking of taking it in the ear before, or the sexual metaphors of “The Passenger,” with its dark edged, yet bright, almost sing-a-long passages, to the spitting in the face of his detractors with “Success,” (which is almost like a twisted flipside to Bowie’s hit single “Fame”) to “Some Weird Sin,” Iggy still cuts like a knife, but is able to do so under a mid ’70s David Bowie production which finds him in a little bit more at the mainstream party, but still sitting at the juvenile delinquents table however. Lust for Life is a great darkhorse of an album during a time that was sandwiched in between the original proto-punk sounds of The Stooges and The MC5 and the right around the corner blowout success that punk music proper sported.

Browse over 100 albums on sale this month in MP3 format for only $5 each!

This week, YouTube launches subscription channels, Amazon mints its own digital currency, BlackBerry messaging comes to iOS & Android, the Tesla S gets the highest praise, and all the latest from Google‘s I/O developer conference.

The Next Day
David Bowie
CD | MP3
Columbia Records
Release Date: March 12, 2013

For some inexplicable reason, newly released albums by longtime beloved rock stars are judged on a harsher curve than most. Is it because many of these artists have released decades’ worth of quality work, so critics think they are due for a miss? Is it because we as a society love to watch the high and mighty fall from grace? Perhaps it is because at a certain point, we all get set in our ways. We have an artist stowed away neatly in a certain place in our lives, and that’s where they belong. Anything outside of that comfort zone is immediately regarded as dangerous and a threat to their legacy, so it is rejected outright. Especially when, in the case of David Bowie, the artist has spent a considerable amount of time away from the spotlight, why try a “comeback” now?

Well folks, the good news is this: David Bowie has long-defied convention, and he continues to buck the aforementioned trends on his new record, The Next Day. The record is high energy, hard rocking, poetic, and an exhilarating listening experience. If you were to separate it from all of the back story (as interesting as it is) and examine Bowie’s discography to this point, you would never have guessed that a decade has passed since his last foray into the music world. In fact, despite his long-term absence and the vocalization of many detractors, it is arguable that he is more relevant now than ever before.