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Queens College October 16, 2002 By C. Bottomley If it weren't for the occasional drag queen in the crowd, David Bowie might have been playing a high school reunion at this New York campus gig. Reveling in the auditorium's intimacy and his latest guise as beloved entertainer, Bowie mixed material from this year's Heathen album with his trusty back catalog. The on-stage banter might have sounded like it was broadcast from Major Tom's space capsule, but his past work's restless experimentation and a crack six-person band kept him on relevant ground. Bowie has always played the game of "Who can I be now?," and this tack hasn't been abandoned just because he's old enough to be Avril Lavigne's grand-dad. Gamely dancing like a Cossack, he used his black leather jacket as a symbolic springboard to riff on existentialism ("If Simone de Beauvoir wore this jacket she'd look like a fat Patti Smith."), and his performance was haunted by the ghosts of past personas. Singing Heathen's "Slip Away" in white shirt and black trousers, he could have slicked back his silver hair and instantly become the Thin White Duke of Station to Station. On "5:15 - The Angels Have Gone" he slinked up to the mic - hands clenched on belt, intent look on face - and it was easy to imagine how he stalked the stage during his Jean Genie days. At the end of "Slip Away" he even whipped out the "Space Oddity" stylophone to play an elementary solo. The breadth of the set put his far-reaching career into context. "Rebel Rebel's" signature riff was recast in pulsing electronic textures. Heathen's songs, based around repetitive guitar lines and synthesized backdrops, were of a piece with material from the singer's revered Berlin period, like Low's "Sound and Vision." "Absolute Beginners," the title track to the 1986 box office bomb, was transformed into a duet for Bowie and bassist Gail Ann Dorsey. Their slow dance during the instrumental break was a touching gesture, and the performance's operatic last note received a deserved ovation. Looking a little red-faced from the exertion, Bowie quipped, "We were holding onto each other more out of desperation than love." Bowie played the rock 'n' roll fan, too. Fellow astronaut Black Francis received the ultimate tribute when the Pixies' "Cactus" became a snarling Ziggy Stardust number, and Neil Young's trippy "I've Been Waiting for You" was dosed with several more tabs of acid. The night's biggest surprise was a blinding version of the Velvet Underground's "White Light/White Heat." This self-styled "New York City Marathon" - Bowie's five-gig micro-tour from darkest Staten Island to the Bronx frontier - might be his version of playing the end of the pier, the final resting place of any British vaudevillian. Perhaps he just likes seeing the back of the room once again. Or maybe, with his impenetrable mutterings about de Beauvoir and Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky, Bowie really is as mad as the proverbial hatter. He's certainly the only rock legend left who can keep us dancing - and guessing, too. Read an interview with David Bowie. Tell us what you think of this review. |
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