Somebody plays my song in tune…
Not sure how this one slipped under the radar, which is a real shame that it did as it sounds like it was a pretty special evening at The Living Room on Tuesday.
Anyway, our man in NYC, Jimmy ‘The Wardrobe’ King, found out about it last minute and scurried down to kindly provide this report and take a few snaps.
Here’s what he had to say regarding the evening’s entertainment….
———————————————————————————————————————–
Bowie Night at The Living Room, Tuesday December 15th, 2009, by Jimmy King.
A cold Tuesday night at New York’s Living Room warmed up Manhattan’s lower east side by playing host to a diverse mix of forty plus musicians, each performing their own rendition from a set of fifty plus Bowie songs.
Reminiscent of a beatnik speakeasy, the small intimate seated venue was tightly packed as a stream of artists hit the small stage, one after another, to present an interpretation of their own “chord striking” favorites.
This was an evening about the music, there were no look or sound-a-likes, just musicians. Whether it was done with fun, passion or intensity, the one thing that was obvious was the importance and sheer joy it was giving each of them to be expressing something close to their hearts.
The diversity of personality behind each performance made it hard to single out favorites, but Dina Regina’s ‘Moonage Daydream’ was quite beautiful, as was Dayna Kurtz’s ‘5 Years’ and Sam Bisbee’s ‘Heroes’. Other standouts for me were, Eric Fei Genbaum singing ‘Queen Bitch’ and Emilie Cardineaux’s animated ‘John I’m Only Dancing’.
The night was a five hour long marathon with fifty plus songs from across the years on the set list. The pace never faltered and the choice of songs throughout was an interesting and selective mix. The entire evening had a fantastic energy level that kept me glued to the stage in anticipation of the next performance.
A night of sheer poetry, giving a fun but also some very moving perspectives on something familiar…as translating Shakespeare would be to an Actor, this felt like the musicians’ equivalent.
———————————————————————————————————————–
Thanx for that JK, much appreciated.
As I say, not sure how we didn’t get to hear about this one in advance, we normally get notified about these things from several sources beforehand. Anyway, it sounds like the place was packed and everybody had fun.
I’ll leave you with an outrageously huge animation of a few of Jimmy’s pictures of the performers, along with the setlist he managed to grab…even if he did make some of it slightly illegible by spilling his Cinzano on it!
