Description

In digipack cover.

On Thursday the 9th of January 1997, David Bowie celebrated his 50th birthday in full media splendour: a sold-out concert at Madison Square Garden, filmed for pay-per-view television, with half a dozen guest rockers who joined in on his songs. The concert and broadcasts are to benefit Save The Children. The performance, a day after his birthday, was two-thirds reminiscences, one-third looking ahead. Along with older material, Mr. Bowie performed seven songs from his coming album, Earthling, which was to be released on February the 11th. The two-hour set omitted songs from Mr. Bowie’s commercial peak in the early 1980’s, when he hinted at romance. Now, Mr. Bowie has returned to the tone of his most innovative work from the 70’s, when he played an outsider: a troubled space alien or a jaded observer who understands the terror of knowing what this world is about.’ He enjoys arena-scale theatrics and big audiences, but he wants to add an avant-garde edge. More than most performers his age, Mr. Bowie has repeatedly staked his career on the new. In 1990 he vowed to stop performing his old hits, though no one minds that he has reneged. He keeps up with fashion and art as well as music, trying to ratify trends on the upswing; if he’s not the hippest 50-year-old alive, he’s in the running. In Telling Lies, from Earthling,’ Mr. Bowie owns up to his trendiness: Ooh, ah, visionary/Feels like something’s gonna happen this year. On Earthling, Mr. Bowie embraces the dance rhythms called jungle or drum-and-bass: twitchy electronic cymbals and snares above slow, detached bass lines. In the new songs Mr. Bowie sang this night, he uses jungle as an overlay of double-time energy and implacable noise, revitalizing what might have been stately arena anthems. With Reeves Gabrels on guitar, who filled spaces with screeches and siren notes, and Mike Garson on keyboards, sprinkling shards of Romantic piano grandeur, the band revamped some old songs — notably The Man Who Sold the World, now a haggard dub-reggae confession — and subtly updated others. The staging alluded to previous Bowie tours. Banks of fluorescent lights echoed the 1978 White Light tour; giant video figures projected on scrims were from his 1990 Sound and Vision tour. There were mannequins on stage, as in Mr. Bowie’s 1995 Outside tour, but on Thursday night they had moving faces from film loops by the artist Tony Ousler. During Voyeur, Mr. Bowie’s own face was projected onto a cocoon looming ominously overhead. Most of Mr. Bowie’s guests were there to pay homage. They had learned from his 70’s androgyny, his literary leanings, his fractured imagery and his early yelp of a voice. Robert Smith of the Cure helped revive a depressive 1971 ballad, Quicksand; Frank Black of the Pixies sang along on Scary Monsters and Fashion, and Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins sang and played guitar on All the Young Dudes and Jean Genie. Other guests orchestrated new songs. The Foo Fighters provided two additional drummers for the primal stomp of Hallo Spaceboy, from Mr. Bowie’s 1995 album, Outside. And Sonic Youth brought its howling, shimmering, pullulating guitars to a new song, I’m Afraid of Americans. Mr. Bowie also had a tribute to pay: to Lou Reed, whose albums with the Velvet Underground showed rockers how to be primal and cerebral at the same time. Mr. Reed joined Mr. Bowie for two Velvets songs and for Mr. Bowie’s Velvets-style Queen Bitch; he also performed his own Dirty Blvd., with Mr. Bowie singing a cameo. Odd as it might seem, Mr. Reed’s streetwise urban insider and Mr. Bowie’s interplanetary stranger share a sensibility. They recognize chaos as both danger and opportunity, and they refuse to equate bleak tidings with hopelessness

Track listing:
1. Little Wonder
2. Hearts Filthy Lesson
3. Scary Monsters-with Frank Black
4. Fashion-with Frank Black
5. Telling Lies
6. Hallo Spaceboy-with Foo Fighters
7. Seven Years In Tibet-with Foo Fighters
8. The Man Who Sold The World
9. The Last Thing You Should Do-with Robert Smith
10. Quicksand-with Robert Smith
11. Battle For Britain
12. The Voyeur Of Utter Destruction (As Beauty)
13. Im Afraid Of Americans-with Sonic Youth
14. Looking For Satellites
15. Under Pressure
16. Heroes
17. Queen Bitch-with Lou Reed
18. Waiting For The Man-with Lou Reed
19. Dirty Boulevard-with Lou Reed
20. White Light White Heat-with Lou Reed
21. Moonage Daydream
22. Happy Birthday To Bowie
23. All The Young Dudes-with Billy Corgan
24. The Jean Genie-with Billy Corgan
25. Space Oddity
26. I Cant Read – Dressing Room Repetition
27. Dressing Room Repetition