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Also this issue: Making the Connection Mould Spores Sand People Snapcase/ Boy Sets Fire Dave Brubeck Isis Songs: Ohia Rilo Kiley |
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October 24-30, 2002
music
 Photo By: Michael T. Regan |
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So I’m in the front row at the Tower, staring up into David Bowie’s nostrils as he’s singing and snarling through “Ziggy Stardust,” elongating “making laav with his eeeeegggooooh” as if sucking face with the very phrase. Women and men around me have hands and arms stretched out while he stares into the crowd, doing the whole leper-messiah thing.
Last line, thunderous applause, blank faces from devoted fans bowled over, I suppose, by his very presence.
This was October 2002, but it could've been November 1972, the first time I went through this-staring-up Bowie's-nose bit at the Tower. Or winter, '73, or the summer of David Live, '74, or watching him play keyboards for Iggy Pop in 1977. (Nobody wants to count the Tower's Tin Machine show.) That's not only the history of Bowie at the Tower, but very much a part of the history of Philadelphia music -- that Philly broke "glam" and Bowie to boot in America. It's a history he weirdly remembers, taunting the "Sigma kids" on Monday, smiling while pronouncing, "I recognize so many of your faces. I really do," singling out one woman, arms stretched, from the front row, by name. His playful giddiness doesn't stop there: He tells bad jokes about Stockhausen, relentlessly mentions bassist/Philly native Gail Ann Dorsey's 61st Street upbringing ("that's two blocks from me").
This indeed is a far cry from the waify thing in a satin unitard and orange cock-a-doodle-doo coif.
Now, he's a weightier presence in his 50s, with mousy blondish winged hair and a white shirt/black vest outfit (much like his Station to Station look). Still, there was a small handful of moments that hearkened you back: the delicate glissando-glitchcore intro of "Sunday" felt like his Clockwork Orange-esque reverie he used for Ziggy's entrance back in the day; pianist Michael Garson's grandiloquent intro to "Life On Mars," that Bowie sang in his sweetest, lightest 1971-like voice, sent chills.
Happily, that's where the past stopped.
Bowie's voice -- whether delivered through clenched teeth or in full yelp -- still soars powerfully when in theatrical croon mode, still bites down archly and chews slowly Dada-ist texts in his clipped English accent. This is good. Any great actor should get better with age. His band, especially multitextural guitarist Earl Slick, makes it simple, finding their own way to rock out in moody, layered fashion. You could see Bowie's satisfied smirk listening to Slick's sinewy turns through the rabid "Cactus" or the terroristic "Breaking Glass," the whammy-bar-driven nosedive through the Technicolor melodicism of "5:15 The Angels Have Gone" or -- as Bowie dances on his heels -- to a gutsy funky "Fame."
What's best about Bowie's show is that he's not playing by rote.
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He rearranged the grand "Heroes" to fit a smaller, liquid, flanging arrangement, ascending to its primal scream finale slowly. He re-routed "Rebel Rebel" and "Let's Dance" into reverb-heavy Latin-inspired shuffles.
You had no reason to walk when the new or the unfamiliar came on. (Anyone at the Stones show will admit they ran to the bathroom when they played that new tune). Along with turning the tepid "Absolute Beginners" into a goose-bumping romantic duet with Dorsey (a perfect angelic harmonic foil to his baritone) and making twinkly the usually-heavy-handed "I'm Afraid of Americans," he let newer tunes like "Heathen (The Rays)" bathe in the same brilliant dramatic light as his usual suspects, nursing each nuance of this apocalyptic paean to steel-and-glass-smashed skies. Few artists of his age and caliber can maintain the passion for artful new writing and performance like this. Bravo.
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