March 30 , 2004 - Colorful Reality

Last night's show was to make up for the fact that he was supposed to be there in December, but he came down with a nasty bout of the flu and his doctor pulled him off the road. So one of the first things he said on-stage was "This show is not postponed."

When The Gryphon and I got there, we walked around, trying to get our bearings and trying to figure out if they were selling any alcohol other than Budweiser. They did have some Smirnoff Ice, which made me happy.

We found our seats, which was difficult because they had the lights turned down for the opening act. I could be wrong about this, but I think it's a little unusual to do that.

Next to us was a middle-aged couple, John and Louise, who were very happy about seeing Bowie for the first time. They were longtime fans. Louise, especially, was funny and talkative. She had a trace of an Eastern European accent. I couldn't quite place it.

Opening for Bowie was a group called Polyphonic Spree. It took us awhile to figure out their name was because nobody there seemed to know, even a radio station that had a table in the lobby. The guy there thought it was Psychedelic Something.

The woman in the seat in front of us got the name right because she had a pair of binoculars and could read it on the drum. But because it was too loud to really hear well, we thought she might have been saying "Polyphonic Spring." That is, until later when The Gryphon borrowed the binoculars and took a look.

Of course, we could have waited. Bowie mentioned them several times during his show because he was so impressed with them.

Louise said they were like a female version of Yes. I understood where she's coming from, even though the lead singer was male. Of course, it was difficult to tell because everyone in the group wore choir robes, white with colored bands at the bottom. And lead singer, Tim DeLaughter's curly shoulder length hair and tenor voice could be seen as somewhat androgynous.

He had a lot of energy, bouncing around as they performed, as did many of the other group members.

Polyphonic Spree, a 22-member group, is like a psychedelic pop orchestra, or as The Gryphon pointed out, anthem rock. The first song they were playing when we came in sounded familiar: "Light and Day." They played an extended version of it, as they did with the other songs they played. I believe they only played about four that we heard, each one of them extended versions.

They had a really positive energy, which was a great way to open the show and get the audience excited.

Between sets, current pop music played to silent film footage of old stunts involving planes and boats. Then they turned off the digital signs and the excitement got more intense.

The show started with the lights down on-stage, and you could hear what sounded like the band vamping. On a screen, a cartoon version of the band appeared, performing. Then one by one, the cartoon versions became live action versions.

The image on screen shifted, and one by one, the band members came out from in front of the screen and took their place on stage. The suggestion was that they were coming down off the screen to play for you, although they didn't use any special effect options to make this more obvious, such as making it actually look like they were stepping off the screen.

They launched into the first song, "Rebel Rebel," and Bowie stepped out onto the stage. This, of course, is a favorite of Bowie fans, and everybody jumped to their feet and stayed there for the first half of the show. It was a powerhouse rendition of the song, a great way to get started.

From there, he went into "Hang Onto Yourself," which is a personal favorite of mine, from the Ziggy Stardust album. This was one of the first of Bowie's albums that I ever owned, and I'd never seen him perform it on-stage until now.

Next was a song from his new album, "New Killer Star." John and Louise, our next-door seat mates, have the new album and they very excitedly pointed out it was off the new album. I told them yes, I knew.

It's entirely possible, although I never asked them, that John and Louise got their tickets the same way we did: through a pre-sale offered to Bowie fans who are members of Bowienet.

I had also prepurchased a white babydoll Reality tour T-shirt, so that I wouldn't want to get one at the show. The Gryphon teased me for wearing a T-shirt to the concert of the band I was seeing. He said he was having Almost Famous flashbacks, especially when I pulled out a notebook so that I could write down the setlist. I assured him that if, like Kate Hudson, he had tossed my notebook into the crowd, he would have been in for some serious pouting on my part.

Throughout the show, they did some interesting things with the lighting. For songs from the new album, they played with visuals on the screen, projecting abstract shapes and colors with a modernist feel, primarily in pinks and blues. They would scroll across the screen, change and shift. I think he did this because people's attention might wonder when they hear a song that's not as familiar to them. This way, they would stay riveted to the stage.

For fan favorites, they did other things with the visuals. For example, they had live cameras on the band members, but instead of projecting it untouched, they often used digital effects to pixillate it, make it different colors, or scroll them back and forth on the screen.

Right out of that, he did a fan favorite, "Fame." Everyone cheered and danced wildly. This was one of Louise's favorites, so she was really excited. It was a stripped down version, more rock than the disco of the original.

He followed it with "Cactus," from Heathen (2002), which is actually a cover of a Pixies song. Louise loved the song, so I told her where it came from. The Pixies were apparently new to her; she thought the name was amusing. As always, Bowie had a lot of fun with that song, even stripping off his fantastic pseudo-captain's jacket (looking, like much of his clothing, as if it had been designed by elves) and flourishing it as if he might just toss it into the audience before throwing it, instead, far down the stage out of reach.

Bowie was definitely having a lot of fun on stage; it was just infectious. This "make up" show, as it turns out, was the first show in the second stage of his tour. So maybe he was getting out some pent-up energy. Or maybe that fantastically fun Polyphonic Spree got him going.

At about this point, looking out over the packed crowd of thousands, he said, "I recognize most of you."

He teased us by mentioning a member of his band was from Philly and that "If you can guess it, you'll win a date with that person and their mum." He actually didn't follow through on that promise but did reveal it was bassist/vocalist Gail Ann Dorsey.
While he said he doesn't usually do sing-alongs, he did one for "All the Young Dudes," which die-hard fans know he wrote, despite it being recorded by Mott the Hoople. Not only did everyone sing along, but they also waved their arms back and forth. Very fun.

From there he went into "China Girl," and as always, as he sang the parts that were supposed to be the woman talking, he got into character. I turned to The Gryphon and said, "He would make a really good woman, wouldn't he?" You know, I think a lot of lesbians try to look like him.

The next song up was "Reality," title track to the new album. He followed that up with the title song to The Man Who Sold the World, so he was sandwiching in the newer stuff amidst old favorites, to keep everyone's interest. I didn't realize it, but guitarist Earl Slick is still playing with him, so while Mick Ronson played on the original album, Earl has a real feel for the song, too.

He followed it up with, I believe, "I Took a Trip on a Gemini Spacecraft." Louise really loved it, and I had to agree. It was a great version of it: very theatrical. He got up on a higher portion of the stage near the screen, a runway he could walk back and forth on. He got down on his knees for one portion of it, lit with red light, as they showed images on the screen emerging from flame. It was powerful.

Then he sang the title track from Heathen. It was a very subdued, almost ethereal performance.

By this point, pretty much everyone had sat down to enjoy the show. As he launched into the next song, "Under Pressure," everyone jumped to their feet. That got a great response, in part because he had Philadelphian Gail Ann Dorsey sing Freddie Mercury's part. They really played off each other well, and it was clear that he has a great relationship with his band, like they're all a huge family.

The Gryphon really loves that song and loved this performance of it.

Then Bowie tried for "Quicksand," from Hunky Dory, but the band wasn't quite there. About halfway through, he started to forget the lyrics, so he decided to stop. But he wasn't going to give up on it, he said. He would come back to it later, when he was feeling it.

After that, he said he was going to do another slow song and "nobody leaves until I get a slow song right." So, from the same album, he performed the favorite "Life on Mars," to which everyone in the audience could sing along. He gave a beautiful rendition of it.

Right afterwards, he went into "Quicksand" again. This time, not only did he get through it, but he really seemed to feel it and the band gave him their all. "It helps if you sing along," he joked.

Bowie picked up his guitar again and performed "Looking for Water," which is from Reality. He called it "a song about unrequited song writing." I found this funny because I've often wondered, how does he keep his lyrical themes fresh. He's happily married with a young daughter, and a good relationship with his son from his first marriage. So it makes you wonder how he writes songs about the sort of love problems that fuel many good songs. I suppose he probably ends up telling other people's stories. He has, indeed, done that with great success before.

"China Girl" was not written from personal experience. He wrote it with Iggy Pop about Iggy's relationship at the time. But Iggy declined to perform it, and Bowie made it a hit on his own.

Speaking about stories like this, before the show started Louise was showing me the T-shirt she had bought of Bowie on a black background. She was excited because you could see his different colored eyes. She said it was as if he had one recessive trait eye (blue) and one dominant trait eye (gray/hazel).

I told her that no, he had different colored eyes because of an eye injury. When he was young, he got into a fight with a friend and that friend damaged that eye, making it impossible for the retina to contract. This probably affects his eyesight to some degree, but I don't know this for sure.

In turn, Louise told me that Mick Jagger sings the way he does because of a childhood accident where he bit off the tip of his tongue. Interesting.

After "Looking for Water," Bowie went into another new song, "Days" from Reality. And then, he promised, "You're going to have fun with this one," and kicked into "Jazzing for Blue Jean." They were doing a lot with the lights for this one, and he was dancing around, although not as insanely as in the video.

Most of the people had sat down, but a woman two rows ahead of me was incapable of restraining herself and jumped up, pulling her boyfriend to his feet to dance with her.

From there it was into "Ashes to Ashes," which started out so mellow that you could scarcely tell what song it was. This turned into another sing-along, even if not officially sanctioned as such.

Next, he launched into "White Light, White Heat," which is actually a cover of a Lou Reed song he's been doing since performing it in Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars: The Motion Picture. As he said, "I've been doing this for 35 years. I'm not going to start now." This is one of my all-time Bowie covers, and he's done quite a few. This time I was the one to jump on my feet and dance uncontrollably.

Then he went into "I'm Afraid of Americans," from Earthling (1997). For this one, they projected a lot of animation loops which showed first a rotoscoped loop of some self-defense moves. A guy comes at a woman with an attack and she blocks it several different ways. Both these characters were red, white and blue. Then they showed images such as monster trucks and Mickey Mouse, shaking back in an ominous but also amusing way.

At the end of the song, where he sings, "God is an American," he was bathed in white light and he held his hands almost as if in prayer and bowed to the audience.

It seemed this would be the last song, but they finished up with a gentle version of "Heroes," another of Louise's favorites. At the end of the song, she jumped up and down gleefully and said, "We can be heroes," and then hugged me.

The band left the stage and the house lighting dropped down to a violet blue light. As one by one golden lighters or other lights in different colors lit the darkness, it was breathtaking, seeing those dots of yellow, white, green, blue or red against the purpled darkness.

And yes, Bowie did take the stage again, starting with one of my favorites, "Five Years" from Ziggy Stardust. Not only is it one of my favorites, but it's one of a few I can play on guitar and sing all the lyrics. That was fantastic.

From there, he went into another fan favorite, "Suffragette City." Of course, when it came time to shout, "Ohhhh! Wham, bam, thank you, Ma'am!" they turned up the lights and everyone screamed it.

Bowie finished up with a rocking version of "Ziggy Stardust," leaving the audience on a high note. But much to our disappointment, the house lights came up meaning no more encores.

As anyone who has heard live recordings of David Bowie knows, he's terrific live because he always takes new chances, gives songs new flavors. Right now, he's touring with the band from his most recent albums, and he's adopted almost a world music quality. There are a lot more things going on, such as additional percussion, vocals and sound effects loops, not to mention synthesizers. These weren't available to him in the 1960s, when he still managed to adopt a very spacy, unusual sound through the methods available in that day.

But to hear the songs that, 30 years ago, were straight up art work, it lends a richness to the performance. It's definitely not just listening to a juke box.

I think the best way to characterize Bowie's performance was that, despite the fact that it was an arena filled with thousands, it felt as intimate as a little club or a cafe. He is the ultimate performer, and he loves to share his music and his art with others. They, in turn, love sharing the experience. We all left in a blissful, giddy sort of purple joy, to return to our own realities.

Moral:
A purple reality suffused with art and music? I can dig that.