ayurvedium

A posterized, cartoonified image of David Bowie and band playing was projected onto the screen behind the stage. David Bowie's voice was heard telling Gerry Leonard, "That's good Gerry, keep going," but it was several more minutes before the band took the stage, and another minute before David Bowie came out. Nothing was said then - they immediately launched into the song "Rebel Rebel."

There were, I believe, drugs at the concert - I do not know what they smell like myself, but David Bowie does and apparently recognized it, because he commented that some people had "been to the botanical gardens today!"

I found a copy of last night's set list posted on BowieNet today, so I'm going to record it here and also use it as a way to remind myself of the between-songs banter. "Rebel Rebel" was followed by "New Killer Star," and then some insignificant banter ("What were you doing in the '90s, Daddy? Here's what we were doing in the '90s!") introduced "Battle For Britain (The Letter)," which was followed by "Fame." He paused to praise the Pixies before launching into a cover of their song "Cactus," then said they were going to do a silly song which turned out to be "Fashion."

I believe it was after "Fashion" that he asked the audience whether we liked his effort at an Alabama accent. This didn't get much response (it was unclear why he would have been randomly imitating an Alabama accent in the first place), so he sarcastically and very petulantly declared, "Well, don't be so forthcoming!" and turned on his heel. Then he stopped, looked back over his shoulder at the audience, and slyly announced, "I'll make you forthcome!" This brought giggles, so he came out to the very front of the stage and asked increasingly flirtatiously, "Are you ready to forthcome?" and then slowly, with the tone of having suddenly figured out what people want and being almost too flattered to believe it, "Would you like to forthcome with me?"

(This was far more flirtatious than I ever saw him get at the last concert I saw, in August 2002. I think it helped that in this one he was the exclusive headlining act, instead of sharing the stage with Moby, Busta Rhymes, Blue Man Group and Ash, so this time he could feel confident that practically everyone there was in fact there to see him.)

He sang "All The Young Dudes" next. When it ended, he told the audience to get ready to sing along with the next one, and announced that he was going to sing "China Girl" in Mandarin Chinese. He did sing the first verse of it in Chinese, but then stopped and exclaimed, "What am I doing? You probably know the words to that better than I do! Shall we do it in English instead?" and sang it in English. (He was wrong though - the only song I'd previously heard him sing the Chinese translation of was "Seven Years in Tibet," so I quite definitely did not know the words to "China Girl" in Chinese.)

After that came "The Supermen," which he introduced by saying it was the first time they'd played it on this tour and the first time they'd played it in years, but that they'd rehearsed it that afternoon and he decided it sounded okay. (It sounded, in fact, much better than okay - really better than the original 1971 version. Every song he sang in the whole concert sounded quite good enough to compete with the recorded versions.) When this song was finished, he declared, "Sophomoric slush! I can't believe I used to write like that! What kind of lyrics are these - 'When all the world was very young/and mountain magic mystic hung'???" (He misquoted 'mystic hung' for 'heavy hung' - not that it makes much difference.) "And what about this - 'Where all were minds in uni-thought'? What the hell is a uni-thought??" He turned sideways and mimed riding a unicycle: "Oh look, it's a thought! I think I'll ride it! Look, it's a uni-thought!" Then, realizing of course that his audience wouldn't let him get away with insulting his younger self too much, he waved a hand dismissively in the air and declared, "But hey, as long as it rocks . . . !" which got a laugh.

The next song was "Never Get Old," which was then followed by an extremely emotional version of "The Loneliest Guy," during which David Bowie somehow managed to sound like he was barely suppressing tears with every word he sang. (He sounds that way on the album too, but it seemed more impressive to see him do it in person. I actually rather dislike the album version of the song, but even though the concert version didn't sound particularly different, I somehow liked it much better.) When he finished it he announced, "You've just witnessed an example of interpretive movement." (Pause for audience bemusement.) "See, tonight I made that song about an abortive suicide attempt, but tomorrow I might make it about an unrequited love for one's mother. It's all in the interpretive movement." He turned around with his back to the audience and did that thing where he hugs himself and makes it look like his hands on his back are someone else's hands caressing him. Then: "Not my mother. Your mother!"

Next came "Modern Love," "The Man Who Sold The World," "Hallo Spaceboy," "Sunday," "Heathen (The Rays)," and the duet "Under Pressure" with Gail Ann Dorsey singing Freddie Mercury's lines. Since I already owned a recording made 9 years ago of that same duet with Gail Ann singing Freddie's lines, I already knew that she possesses a miraculous ability to sound so exactly like Freddie Mercury that I couldn't possibly distinguish whether it was her or him if not for the fact that Freddie's dead. But that recording is not widely available (I bought it as a B-side to the "Hallo Spaceboy" single), so most of the audience hadn't heard it and were quite properly astounded by Gail Ann's voice.

Somewhere in here, David paused to ask the audience members in front whether their ears were doing okay. He noticed that the speakers were positioned literally inches from the seats of some of the people in the front row and exclaimed, "Look at this - this is insane!" He was right, it really was insane - I had wisely brought my own earplugs, but if I hadn't, I'd have been deafened even from halfway back in the room and very, very far from any of the speakers. "See, I knew it was going to be bad when I saw it was handled by Clear Channel." (Pause for much booing of Clear Channel from the audience.) "I always like to say those two words together, Clear Channel, for American audiences just to get their reactions. Anyway, I brought some earplugs, anyone need them?" He trotted to the back of the stage and got a few dozen little boxes of earplugs from a bag and started asking who wanted them. "You? You already have earplugs in. You're just asking for them to put them in your bag as a souvenir. Aren't you?" He held out the microphone to her and she admitted that yes, she was. "Thank you for being honest," he told her, then paused and reconsidered. "In fact, I'll give you some for that." And he did. He got out another few dozen sets of earplugs from the bag and threw them to the people in the front few rows until he ran out.

The next songs were "Days," "Afraid," "Ashes To Ashes" (which he introduced by saying "Somewhere in every concert I always have to play one that you know, so this is that one") and "Quicksand" (which was so exceptionally sung that it improved upon the original). Also somewhere in here, David noticed that some of the few scattered people dancing (it was a crowded indoor venue in which most people remained seated) had been whispered to and had then stopped dancing. From what I saw, it seemed that the hired assistants were not trying to stop the dancing, and that it was only the people whose seats were located behind dancing audience members who had asked them to go dance in the aisles where they wouldn't block other people's view. Some of them did go dance in the aisles for a while, but not all of the songs were especially danceable so sometimes they'd go back to their seats and stop dancing. But David became concerned that the hired assistants were asking people not to dance, and he made a point of saying, "You know, if people want to dance, that's fine. My brother - God rest his soul, he's dead now - used to always dance at concerts, it was what he loved, and people would always ask him to stop. I'd like to think we've come on a little from that in the past 35 years." (David Bowie's older half-brother, Terry Burns, was schizophrenic and after living for years in a mental hospital making numerous suicide attempts, killed himself by throwing himself in front of a train in 1985.)

When he got to "I'm Afraid of Americans," he began by saying that he's lived in America most of the time since 1974, mostly in New York City, and almost everyone he knows is an American, "and even my band - except for that Irishman over there" (pointing to Gerry Leonard). So, he assured the audience, he wasn't afraid of all Americans. "But there are about 12 or maybe 13 Americans that I'm really, really, really afraid of." He added that this song has changed its meaning a lot over the years (he wrote it in 1997) and then began singing. When he finished, he referred somewhat obliquely to its most current meaning - the evils of the U.S. government under George W. Bush - by saying, "People will try to tell you that this is all going to blow over in no time, but it isn't. We're in for a long, troubled future."

He's been being sort of tentatively political lately - I heard that at a different concert recently he asked the audience, "Anyone here for John Kerry?" But he's also skittish about saying too much of what he thinks politically, as is clear from a January interview:
Q. You're married to a woman from Somalia, you've traveled the world, and you've always had a global perspective in your art. What do you think about the current political situation: Is it possible for the West to come to an understanding with the Muslim world?

A. I don't want to get into that! Yes, I've got fairly strong opinions about all of that, but I certainly wouldn't give advice in this country! I don't know if anybody can avoid getting the Dixie Chicks treatment. It's really tough to be in a democratic country and have to be very careful about what you have to say.
Maybe someone should quote Audre Lorde's "Your silence will not protect you" line to him. Of course, his voicing the fear of getting the Dixie Chicks treatment says, in itself, a fair amount about what his "fairly strong opinions" are.

Anyway, this oblique political commentary seemed to set off a sudden outpouring of mushy gratitude (perhaps because nobody stormed out in horror at the hint that he's not fond of George Bush's foreign policy?) because he suddenly exclaimed, "I really have to tell you that I really, really, really love you all. It's the one thing that keeps me going, the humanity that I see over and over again in every city I go to . . . I love you all so much." (This, again, was far mushier than he ever got at the previous concert I saw him at.)

The last song he sang before the encore last night was "Heroes," afte which he left the stage, everyone stood up and waited for him to come back, and he obligingly came back and said, "Sure, we'd love to do a few more songs for you tonight." He then introduced "Slip Away" by talking about an old children's television show starring a man called Uncle Floyd and his hand puppet (the video screen behind the stage displayed clips of the TV show, with the puppet asking Uncle Floyd what he would do with his life if he didn't have a TV show to appear on) and how the show claimed to be for children but seemed more like it was just written to entertain the adults writing it, and how David Bowie and his friends used to sit aroud laughing at it. Eventually the show was taken off the air, so David wrote a song to commemorate it. Then one day, David got a telephone call from Uncle Floyd himself: "I hear you wrote a song about me!" "Yes, I did." "Well you know, I'm still performing in bars from time to time. I could be your opening act!" "Errrrrrrr . . . uh, that's great that you're still performing." At this point David indicated a desire to change the subject away from opening acts immediately.

So then he sang "Slip Away" and all 24 members of his actual opening act, the Polyphonic Spree, came out onstage to sing along, this time wearing just their different brightly-colored robes without the white robes over the top of them. The lyrics were projected onto the screen with a little puppet head bouncing on each word to be sung when it was time to sing it, the way that is sometimes done for children's singalong videos. When the song finished, the Polyphonic Spree left the stage again and David Bowie's final songs were "Changes," "Suffragette City" and "Ziggy Stardust."

It was past midnight when the concert ended, and I saw a huge long white limousine with its windows blacked out leaving the premises and suspected that this contained David Bowie and/or his band, but it was impossible to tell for sure.

xoxox