September 27th and 28th 1997, David Bowie at The Warehouse

I was very lucky to have had the opportunity to see David Bowie play live a few times. Some good shows, some amazing shows, and a few shows that weren't really so great in my mind, but all of them were special to me in some way as a fan. And as a fan, I would have to count the shows that he played at the Warehouse in 1997 as two of the most special performances that I saw him do, a couple of intimate club dates where he played two amazing sets.

It was during the "Earthling" tour, a period where Bowie had embraced the Drum 'n' Bass scene and other electronic elements in a continuation of the career renaissance that had begun with the release of "Outside" a couple of years prior. After a long period of lacklustre albums in the eighties and early nineties, Bowie had finally seemed to have rediscovered his groove, and you could tell from interviews and performances from around the time that he was excited about making music again. That excitement led him to record some great albums including 1997's "Earthling", and when he announced a tour in support of that record I was totally on board for the opportunity to hear it performed live. 

But the appeal of the "Earthling" tour wasn't just the chance to see Bowie live again, it was also about the size of the venue he'd be playing in. This wasn't going to be a big stadium show, or even an arena sized concert, this was a club gig, an audience of only about a couple thousand people and that made it an event. By that point I had already seen him play shows from up close, but those had been at larger spaces where Bowie was still working with that old theatre ideal of making grand gestures because you're playing to the back row. The appeal of the "Earthling" dates was the chance to see a more focused performance, something up close and personal. 

I was able to score a single for each of the two nights, and on the Saturday show I tagged along with my friend Nat who remains one of my most favorite people and a solid Bowie fan to this day. Nat and some other friends and I met up at my place on Queen Street before the show so we could take a cab over to the Warehouse together, and when we told our driver that we were going to see David Bowie he got very excited, telling us that he had gone to school with Iman and that she was very kind and a good student. Nat and I took that to be a good sign for the show to come and we spent the rest of the ride asking him questions about Iman which he was all too happy to answer. It should be noted that even now, twenty five years later, Nat and I still remember that taxi driver who was probably the best driver that either of us have ever ridden with.

We got to the Warehouse shortly before the show started and found a space roughly central to the stage towards the back in a slightly raised area that gave us a nice perspective for the whole band. And just as we got settled in, Bowie walked out on stage with little or no warning, an acoustic guitar over his shoulder and a quick launch into Quicksand from the "Hunky Dory" album. Not a choice that I ever would have guessed to open the show with, but a welcome treat just the same. But that wasn't the only surprise of the night, 'cause he continued the set with The Supermen, Queen Bitch, Panic in Detroit, and a cover of Waiting for the Man by the Velvet Underground before he got around to anything from "Earthling". Bowie did a great job of linking sounds and themes within the set, with the new material working well with a selection of reworked older tracks, and true to his promise to retire the hits after the Sound+Vision tour in 1990, Bowie filled the setlist with mostly choice rarities and deep cuts with a few exceptions for Fame and The Jean Genie.

It was a great night of music, and the band that Bowie had assembled for this tour was particularly strong, with Gail Anne Dorsey on bass, Mike Garson on keyboards, Zachary Alford on drums, and Reeves Gabrels on guitar, all of them veteran players who had a rich history of playing with Bowie. Dorsey shone particularly brightly that night with some tight playing, singing duets with Bowie on Under Pressure and a cover of Laurie Anderson's O Superman, both of which spoke to her impressive vocal talents. Gabrels was on fire too, an amazing guitarist with a distinct and unique sound that defined a lot of Bowie's work up to that point in the nineties. Alford was the perfect live drummer for the pulse of the new material, and of course Mike Garson is always awesome, a steady companion throughout most of Bowie's career. Bowie's voice was in fine form this tour, and as suggested earlier it really felt like he was excited to be there, excited to have reconnected with his work. That excitement, that reconnection made it a particularly great time to see Bowie in concert.

After such a great show on the Saturday night, I had pretty high hopes for the Sunday show, and I'm happy to say that it lived up to my expectations and then some. I went by myself and I ended up walking to the Warehouse so no taxi driver telling stories about Iman and no Nat to listen to me obsess over how he hadn't played X song since the Diamond Dogs tour, but it was still pretty great. Bowie changed the set list up a bit including a jaunty run through My Death and a rare performance of Strangers When We Meet, which is one of my favorite tracks from "Outside", so that was pretty cool. He closed the Sunday night show with Moonage Daydream, and of course he was an alligator and we all kept our electric eyes on him, and we all freaked out as was to be expected. 

There's no question that seeing Bowie in a small venue was pretty special. My experience has always been that there's something about smaller shows that inspires a greater connection between artist and audience, a sense of intimacy that often makes for a better performance. I expect that part of that has to do with actually being able to see the audience, a better opportunity to create some kind of synergy between the artist and the crowd, and I would expect that the synergy from smaller audiences went a long way towards inspiring Bowie's return to form in the nineties and beyond. A club tour was definitely the way to go for him to reconnect and to be re-energized by his music, and the albums that would follow definitely benefit from Bowie's revitalized attitude...

September 20th 1995, David Bowie and Nine Inch Nails at Skydome

There's something magical in the pairing of like-minded artists, a special chemistry that happens when two exceptional talents are able to come together, and David Bowie's Outside Tour in 1995 was a perfect example of that magic, that special chemistry. On the road to support the release of his latest album "Outside", Bowie toured with Nine Inch Nails and it was just as awesome as you would expect it to be.

My friend Robin and I went to the Toronto show at Skydome which was early in the tour, maybe the fourth or fifth stop across North America, and the night began with a set from Prick. Their first album was produced by Trent Reznor so it made sense in terms of them getting the opening spot, and they did an excellent job of warming up the crowd. They played an especially impressive version of their single Animal that night, sparse lighting and shadows complimenting the tension of the song. I would expect that opening for David Bowie and Nine Inch Nails would be a pretty nerve-wracking experience, but to their credit they met and surpassed all expectations.

Nine Inch Nails were up next and their set was epic, a fiery rage filled blend of anxiety, self-loathing, and anger. Reznor and company gave it their all that night, not willing to pull any punches on a journey deep into the heart of darkness. Their set drew widely from the early NIN catalog, blending singles with more obscure album tracks in a skillful way that clearly showed Reznor was interested in flow and artistry more than promotion. I really respect that kind of thinking, it shows a commitment to the work and a respect for the songs. Related to that, in hindsight I kind of feel like this tour was a turning point for Reznor where he began to develop a greater focus for the direction of what he was doing, where he gained a greater clarity and understanding of his work that would inform later more substantial releases like "The Fragile" and other albums. I may be completely off base with that kind of speculation, but there's no denying that his recorded output shifted following this tour, a next level change in sound and a greater complexity to his work that he's still exploring even now over twenty five years later.

After an intense run through Down in It, Nine Inch Nails slowed things down a bit and eased into a slower instrumental jam, drifting through spaces and creating some beautiful musical textures. As it continued the jam gained more shape and form and then David Bowie walked out on stage, quietly reciting some lyrics as NIN started playing Subterraneans from Bowie's "Low" album. It was a moment, unexpected and awesome, the idea of Reznor and Bowie actually sharing the stage something that nobody in the audience had anticipated, and just as it settled in what was happening, NIN launched into a manic and heavy run through Scary Monsters with Bowie that was absolutely brilliant, all the energy and swagger and intensity you'd expect it to be. They played a handful more songs together including Hurt and Hello Spaceboy, with members of Nine Inch Nails slowly leaving the stage after each song to be replaced by Bowie's band, until Reznor himself finally left the stage and Bowie began his own set. 

Having retired a lot of his back catalog during the Sound+Vision tour, Bowie played mostly songs from the "Outside" album, along with a few choice album cuts and a couple of singles. As a fan I thought it was brilliant, the new material was really strong and sounded great live, and the opportunity to see rarely played tracks like Andy Warhol and The Man Who Sold the World was amazing. There was a monstrous run through Teenage Wildlife that filled my heart with all the feels, and even Jump They Say was pretty excellent. And in the same way that this tour heralded a shift in terms of Trent Reznor's work, the same could also be said for Bowie who found himself entering a career renaissance where he would produce engaging and creative work that stands with some of his best. 

Was it something in the water? What was it about the Outside Tour that led to such successful artistic  shifts for both Bowie and Reznor? I don't think that we'll ever know for sure, but I'm inclined to think that they were probably inspired by each other, Bowie finding a connection to a new sound and energy in Reznor, and Reznor challenged to push his talents further by one of his biggest influences. Definitely a positive outcome for both of them, and as a fan of each I'm more than happy with the music and shows that they both made in the years following...

August 24th 1987, David Bowie and Duran Duran at CNE Stadium

Some shows are amazing, defining, life changing. Those are the ones that stay with you forever, the memories that you hold onto for the rest of your life. But there are some shows that aren't nearly as good, and some shows that are disappointments even though you had hoped for more. My first time seeing David Bowie was definitely a disappointment.

There's no question that Bowie is well remembered for his creatively fertile and groundbreaking work in the seventies, but much of what he did in the eighties benefits from selective memory and revisionist history. Undoubtedly "Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)" released in 1980 is the greatest album ever made, and surely "Let's Dance" was a huge pop breakthrough all around the world. But after that point the eighties are a largely forgettable period in his back catalog. There's a valid argument that during this time Bowie was coasting on past achievements, throwing out the occasional single or soundtrack to remind us that he was still around, but there was little if any artistry to compare to his earlier years. Even though I considered him one of my heroes, I can speak from experience that it was hard to be a David Bowie fan in the eighties.

In 1987 Bowie released "Never Let Me Down", which is arguably the most forgettable album in his back catalog. Actually I'm probably being rather charitable in saying that it's forgettable, but I feel a certain loyalty as a fan to defend it, despite it's being ridiculously crappy. To support the release of the album Bowie announced his biggest, boldest, most theatrical extravaganza ever, and it was coming to Toronto. And even though I knew at the time that he had been coasting in terms of new music, this was also the first opportunity I had ever had to see my hero live, and I wasn't going to miss it.

The show was announced for late August at CNE Stadium, and there were some logistical challenges I needed to overcome to get there. Since I was working full time at the record store that summer I couldn't take off a week to line up for concert tickets, so I decided the best course of action was to wheedle and cajole and beg my district supervisor to get me tickets for the show. And somehow it worked. I was a low level cashier in a suburban shopping mall and my district supervisor probably couldn't even remember my name, but he came through and got me tickets to see David Bowie which was pretty damn cool. Thank you district supervisor, there will always be a special place in my heart for you helping me out.

So with tickets in hand, my friend Anton and I headed to CNE Stadium to see David Bowie. To reiterate what I may have shared in past entries, CNE Stadium was a huge baseball stadium in the middle of the Canadian National Exhibition fairgrounds (the Ex) that seated about 70,000 people. It was big. The CNE gounds are down by Lake Ontario, so by the time the sun goes down it can get pretty cold in late August, and as with most stadiums it was an open air venue so there wouldn't be much protection from the elements. I didn't really think to worry about that, but I probably should have. 

The concert was scheduled during the same time as the Ex, so Anton and I went down a little early to check out the midway. The Ex is a Toronto tradition, a yearly event that runs over the last few weeks of August until Labour Day, signalling the end of summer and ushering in the return of school and the September doldrums. It's a typical carnival, there's a midway with rides, and people trying to sell you stuff. There's always some crazy new food to eat that has to be grosser and more repellent than last year's gross and repellent crazy food (I think they were promoting chocolate flavoured pulled pork bacon poutine hamburger pizzas a couple of years ago, but I may be remembering that wrong...), and there are those little powdered donuts that everybody loves. Many people go to the Ex just to eat the little powdered donuts, they're kind of a big thing. Anyway, Anton and I went early so we could check out the Ex, and we paid a visit to a friend of ours who had a summer job as a barker at one of the shooting games where you tried to hit a bunch of targets so you could win a stuffed rabbit or something. The Ex had been open for a week by that point, maybe two, and our friend was quite excited to tell us about how somebody had taken a shit behind his booth that morning. In retrospect I realize in the movie of my life this would be an instance of foreshadowing...

Eventually after we'd eaten powdered donuts and talked about shit with our friend (both figuratively and literally), Anton and I headed to the stadium to find our seats. We were on the open side of the venue in the upper bleachers about two sections away from the stage, two rows down from the edge of the upper wall. Ultimately this meant that we were close to the stage, but way way way up in the sky. It was better than being at the other end of the stadium, or even worse, in the last section of the floors, and I was pretty happy when I realized that the distance we had would allow us to better appreciate the spectacle of the show. In keeping with the title of the tour the stage looked like a great big spider (a Glass Spider to be precise). A large head and abdomen hung over the stage facing the audience and long legs were draped down on either side. Underneath were a series of ramps and scaffolding, and a large video screen in the back with smaller video screens to the left and right (perfect for close up viewing for those of us who weren't in the first few rows). 

It should be pointed out that as with most big stadium shows, David Bowie had a pair of opening acts.  The first was a Canadian band called the Northern Pikes who had a couple of radio hits at the time and were on the same label as Bowie. The Northern Pikes would go on to do a few more albums and actually developed a fairly decent following in Canada in the years to come, and I mean honestly, you've just released your first album and you're playing stadiums with David Bowie? That's pretty fucking impressive. I was happy to see them on the bill. Good on you Northern Pikes, good on you.

The second opener was Duran Duran, and in hindsight it makes perfect sense that they did. Duran Duran were huge stars in their own right at the time, really talented musicians with awesome songs who probably could have sold out CNE Stadium on their own. But they were also heavily influenced by Bowie, a band who had grown up listening to his music, watching his videos, paying attention to what he was doing and giving it their own twist and style. I'm not suggesting that Duran Duran were Bowie clones, certainly they had enough going on themselves to warrant their success, but there was no question they owed a significant debt to Bowie for his inspiration and it made perfect sense that they would share a stage with him that night. I don't think I'd be out of line saying that Duran Duran were just as excited to be there as the audience was.

At the time Duran Duran were on a comeback of sorts, having lost two members since their last album, and there was a feeling that they had something to prove with their new material. Thanks to some slick production from Nile Rodgers (who had coincidentally produced the "Let's Dance" album among many other enormous successes), their latest album "Notorious" had set the stage for a new, more mature sound for the band, and everything clicked together for them on that tour. I'll admit that I don't remember if they opened with A View to a Kill or Notorious, but they started the set with one and played the other right after. Monstrous drums and slithering guitar lines echoed around the stadium and it was all pretty awesome. They played a number of songs from the new album, Meet El Presidente, Skin Trade, others, along with Election Day from the Arcadia album and Some Like it Hot by The Powerstation (side projects from the band during a between album hiatus), and I thought that was kind of cool.

They closed the set with Hungry Like the Wolf and The Reflex, and really they couldn't have made a better choice. There's always been a particular appreciation for The Reflex in Toronto (the video was filmed here), and it sounded particularly amazing that evening. A good opening act should get the audience excited and revved up for the main act, and Duran Duran were an awesome opening act that evening.

After Duran Duran's set there was a brief break, and then the lights went down and the stadium exploded with the roar of me and 69,999 other David Bowie fans. The spider stage was lit with a dark blue glow and long time Bowie guitarist Carlos Alomar stomped out to the front of the stage doing this crazy guitar work that could only be played with the advantage of hundreds of  years of practice and twelve fingers. He swailed away for a few minutes before he was interrupted by a voice yelling for him to shut up, and then suddenly the stage lights came on and a bunch of people rappelled down from the top of the spider, all with their own spotlights just in case we needed to know that this was something important.

At first I thought they were the band, but nooooooo, we would discover very quickly that they were not the band, they were dancers! As they hit the floor they started strutting and dancing and shouting about "Fixing hose pipes to cars" and "The Wrong Stuff!" I've never really figured out what they were on about, but it was delivered with an air of gravitas that has stayed with me for many years, and I have every faith that it was all very important. They picked up drums and started to play a vocal and percussion version of Up the Hill Backwards from "Scary Monsters". Opening the show with an obscure single from my favorite album? Yes, please!

And then everything went completely dark and a spotlight lit the spider's abdomen, just as Bowie began to recite the opening monologue to Glass Spider. There was an air of fantasy and magic and Tolkien and general geekery to what he was saying that was- OHMYGOD, DAVID BOWIE WAS COMING OUT OF THE SPIDER'S ABDOMEN IN A RED SUIT ON A CHAIR AND OMGOMGOMG!!!!!11!!1!!!!!

Ahem. Yes. David Bowie was lowered from the spider's abdomen wearing the best looking red suit ever, sitting in a silver chair while he recited the opening monologue from Glass Spider into a toy telephone. I realize the absurdity of this last sentence, but it was pretty fucking cool at the time, because there was my hero in person on stage in this fabulous red suit, and damn it all, it was pretty fucking cool.

(In the interest of full disclosure I feel it necessary to note that Bowie had a mullet during this period. It was the eighties and such was the time, and such was the style. We will not discuss this particular fashion tragedy again, and for the purpose of our discussion I want you to focus on the fabulous red suit he wore that night. Not the mullet. Never the mullet.)

So Glass Spider is playing and Bowie is singing and there was this whole big dramatic introduction for Peter Frampton who was playing guitar on the tour, and dancers, and lights and Bowie, and the whole audience, myself included, were getting some pretty serious feels from the whole experience.

But as exciting as the moment was, there was something that wasn't quite right about it. The truth is, as much as I was excited about seeing my hero, I didn't really want to hear this song. It wasn't a song that connected with me, it was... just a silly song from his new album that I really couldn't care less about, made significant only by the fact that it was introducing the show. So I waited for the next song.

Which was the latest single Day In, Day Out. I didn't mind that one, but to be honest I much preferred the flipside of the single, Julie. Regardless, it only made sense that he would play the new single early in the set, that's often what happens at shows, it's a way to keep the audience pumped and I've since seen it done hundreds of times. Admittedly it was kind of flabby live, but, ummmm, well, it's never really been one of his best songs so I was willing to forgive the flabbyness.

By this point it was getting pretty cold up in the bleachers. The sun had gone down and the wind had been blowing in off the lake, and we were about ten or fifteen stories off the ground, so it made for a rather uncomfortable experience. I was glad that I had a hoodie, but it was getting pretty chilly...

By the third song I knew something was wrong. Bang Bang was an Iggy Pop song that Bowie had covered on "Never Let Me Down" and it's one of the least objectionable parts of the album and gets delivered with a certain flare that honours the original. Live, it was weak. And it was made even worse by Bowie pulling a fan out of the audience who proceeded to be this amazing dancer and ended up performing throughout the show. And that pissed me off. It wasn't a spontaneous moment, she wasn't a random person from the audience that just happened to be a really awesome dancer, she was a plant that was part of the show, something staged to create the illusion of coolness. That same amazing dancer got pulled up on stage every night, and the spontaneity of the moment, the excitement of being drawn into Bowie's world? Lies. Cheap and manipulative lies.

That's the point where I started to get disappointed. And as the night wore on, it got steadily colder and the show got steadily worse, until eventually I was actually quite sad and hurt. It wasn't just the fact that Bowie was pandering to the audience with weak versions of songs that didn't mean anything to me. It was the fact that there was no heart in what he was doing. There was no connection between the songs he was playing that night and the music I had listened to for all those years that had helped define who I was. This show was Cheap Theatre. Worse, it was Cheap Vegas Theatre, faux style without substance played in a stadium where any detail and nuance were being lost on the audience because of the vast space between us all.

But of course, sometimes you just have to see the worst, so I stayed. And I sat through more songs that didn't mean anything to me like Absolute Beginners and Never Let Me Down. I sat through a version of China Girl that had been sucked dry of any sensuality, a bloated version of Rebel Rebel that stumbled and fell where other live versions I'd heard on record strutted and posed, a version of Let's Dance that completely ignored it's apocalyptic undertones, and a lacklustre run through Fame that was filled with ridiculous dance moves. The lyrical irony of that last one wasn't lost on me. 

It should be noted though that not everything about the show was crap. There were a few songs and a handful of shining moments that made it almost interesting, and a couple that were actually pretty awesome. As stated earlier, I'm quite fond of Loving the Alien, and it was given an interesting live take here. I was impressed by the selection of All the Madmen and Big Brother (including a reworked Chant of the Ever-Circling Skeletal Family) which were surprising choices for a tour that was so hits driven. Sons of the Silent Age was a nice addition to the set list as well (though I found the whole rubbery dance piece associated with it kind of distracting). Best of all, there was a great version of Fashion where Bowie was literally thrown across the stage by the dancers in a primitive take on Edouard Locke's manic dance style, culminating with him ending up perched on a scaffold where he sang Scary Monsters while the dancers and band made scary faces amid a steady pulse of strobe lights. Definitely Fashion and Scary Monsters were the highlight of the night for me, raw, passionate, and so much more true than anything else that had been played that evening. And in some ways that made the experience better, but in other ways it also made things worse because those few brief moments of goodness emphasized how very much I disliked the rest of the show.

There was an encore of Blue Jean and Modern Love, and the night that I saw the show Bowie didn't play Time with the metal wings that have been immortalized in so many pictures from that tour. And as the lights came up Anton and I made our way out of the Stadium, through the crowds, across the parking lot to the subway platform where we waited with 69,998 other people to get home. I was pretty miserable. I felt disappointed, I felt ripped off, and worst of all I felt like David Bowie had let me down.

I thought about it a lot, and it eventually dawned on me that the show was lacking in passion and enthusiasm. And really, passion and enthusiasm are at the heart of any performance. Maybe it was just this show, maybe it was the whole tour, but it very much seemed like Bowie was just going through the motions, like he had lost any connection with the reality of his fans (i.e., ME) and what his music meant to them. The show I saw wasn't about making art or magic or anything cool that mattered in my mind, it just seemed so obviously to be a pretentious grab for cash on the back of his previous artistic success. It was sooooooo disappointing and so upsetting, and in many ways I felt betrayed by that disconnection.

It was pretty devastating, and I spent the rest of the summer pretty bummed out in that particular angsty way that only teenagers and music obsessives can feel, and being both at the time I was hit doubly hard with the angst. But eventually I got over it. I can't remember when it happened, a couple of months later maybe, but eventually I went back to all the albums I had listened to so many times before and found that the music was just as good as I remembered, and it still made me smile the same way it had before. I may have been disappointed by the Glass Spider Tour, but I still appreciated Bowie's music, and that's an appreciation and enjoyment that have stayed with me to this day.