“Look, it’s the glass box mime thing again… nah, not really.”
All the little rose-kissed foxy girls…
While we’re waiting for pictures and reviews of tonight’s Detroit show, here are a few words, that we promised on Wednesday, (01/07/04 NEWS: TONIGHT’S SET LIST FROM CLEVELAND) from some of the BowieNetter’s in attendance at the Cleveland show.
First up we have a piece from Mego, who also very kindly supplied the pix on this page, then we have some equally generous donations from Raisin13 and Gwnavere… Many thanx to all of you.
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“Hey Saxonny, what are you doing up there love? Get down here!”
Report from Cleveland by Mego…
What was it, twenty degrees below zero, with the wind chill? What was it, really, really cold outside? Yup.
Before the show, a handful of Netters met up at the Sprockets (?) pizza parlor, where, later on, the neighboring club/bar opened up and played some extremely loud ‘Bowie at the Beeb’, while ‘Stage’ was shown on the TV screens. Nothing like Netters in unison on “London Bye Ta-Ta”, while dancing to “Station to Station”. …Or, maybe, nothing quite so confusing as that.
Now full of pizza and beer, we all paraded to the Convocation Center, found our respective seats (most of us together in the center block, first five or so rows), said hello to one another again, and watched Macy Gray, who performed some excellent material. Her new album’s great fun.
Intermission spent cheering for roadies, chatting it up between Netters, solving the mysteries of the pre-show music (one was “So What” from Jeff Beck’s new album, ‘Jeff’ [cool!], as well as more Macy, Mick Jagger, “Queen of all the Tarts”… and the rest I’m not sure). And then, finally, what would be a Mego’s very first David Bowie show (or, “real” show, if Poughkeepsie doesn’t count…), began! Folks who weren’t quite “in the know” didn’t seem to realize it was starting, but a decent handful of people were going crazy cheering before most knew what was happening.
A truly wonderful thing about a Bowie show… the band members certainly get their recognition. Each one got a hearty greeting from the audience. It’s always good to see an artist who lets his band have the recognition it deserves–and these guys certainly got it, and deserve every bit of it. Speaking of a warm reception, it seems the Cleveland crowd was more excited to see this show than our hero had expected. Midway through, he essentially tossed out the type-out set list (including “She’ll Drive the Big Car” … I’m still mad about that, by the way, it’s my favorite ‘Reality’ track.), adding “Fantastic Voyage”, “Be My Wife”, “White Light White Heat”, and a few others, into the mix. What fun!
Brilliant show on its own, with a few moments thrown in there for good measure. During “The Loneliest Guy”, only twenty or so people in the entire arena stayed standing up, and of course, a few people had to cheer and whistle throughout. Bowie teased them a bit, claiming the loud whistle guy was almost as expensive to pay as the band, as he travelled throughout Europe, just to whistle during quiet songs. “So who is it!?” David asked. A small group stood up, pointed to some guy: “It’s you! They’re snitching on you! Orwell was right!” Courtesy laugh in general. A few people guffawing. “Yes, come to a David Bowie show for literary humor!” Bowie says, leaning toward the audience. Mild “Huh?” applause. Mego cheering like a jackass–I love literary jokes, gimme a break. Then he adds, “Remember what Proust said!” …And… silence. The tiny ripple of laughter from a few people who found that funny (cough). Awesome!
Anyway… it was a beautiful, energetic, delightful show. Little Peanut (B.Netter Peanut’s eight-year-old daughter) got a wink and a little hand squeeze from her hero, bringing out a resounding cheer from BowieNetters. Thrustiness was toned down but replaced by what seemed to be a truly warm feeling between audience and musicians. A very nice evening. Great fun indeed, and it looked to us that Bowie had just about as much fun as we did! He even gave Gail a great big smooch to prove it.
Bring on Reality (and Denver, wahoo!)!
Mego.
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Report from Cleveland by Raisin13…
Awesome. Flawless. It was so great. SO GREAT. I can’t even tell you guys how jealous you really should be! We got to the concert early enough to have our first beer before Macy Gray. She’s real good – her band was very impressive and her personality made the show even better.
OK, so we all know that we were there for Bowie. Macy Gray was just something I had to sit through before the magic started. Around 9ish (maybe a little before), the lights went out and the huge TV in the background came to life with faceless cartoon renditions of the band, including Mr. Bowie. The band came out on stage, soon followed by the thin white duke himself. He looked radiant, of course, wearing all black with a brown belt. Black and brown never looked so good.
He’s got an energy about him that’s just undeniable! He opened with “Rebel Rebel” and went on to do some songs from the new album, Reality, some from newer albums (Heathen, Earthling and Outside), and a BUNCH of crowd favorites such as “Suffragette City”, “Ziggy Stardust” (both in the encore – “Ziggy” was the finisher), “Fame”, “Ashes to Ashes”, “Fashion”, etc etc, and also called out some others that weren’t on any of the playlists that I’ve seen, such as “Be My Wife” from Low and “Fantastic Voyage” from Lodger. He played for 2 hours, and it was unbelievable and indescribable the entire time.
The quips, comments and cracks were priceless, including a literary one-liner with reference to George Orwell. It was also great to hear things like “How you all doin’, alright? I think we’ll go on for a bit more….”.
I’ve been a fan of this man for many many years now, and I’m only 21! Seeing him this close and watching such a fantastic show made me SO HAPPY. I was grinning from ear to ear the entire time. My smile was so big that sometimes I could hardly sing or talk! I cannot stress enough how much energy was in the CSU Convocation Center that night. This concert was the first of the new year, and Bowie and the band started off the North American leg of the tour with a bang, to say the least.
I am an avid concert-goer and this was, hands down, the best concert I have ever seen. We had such a good time. It was great. GREAT. Mr. Bowie is the best performer I’ve ever seen. All hail the king!
Raisin13
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Report from Cleveland by Gwnavere…
I thought I’d contribute my thoughts on last night’s show, since not too many bnetters were there….but they were noticed!
I went in holding my rather shoddy sign: “Gwnavere loves you from Florida”-ah, there was a method to that madness (and geekiness regarding that simple phrase that lacked imagination): maybe others (mainly ushers) would see it and take pity on a girl that came that far-it worked. My usher was very nice and looked the other way a few times for me (I will get to that later).
We get to the before party at a little pizza parlor walking distance from the venue. It was quaint, but the new people that we met “the mid-westerners” were more than happy to meet and greet us. They welcomed us with open arms and we shared our war stories a bit. It comes down to the minutes that we were going to venture over to the gig and watch Macy. Let it be known that going to Cleveland…in January…was the absolute COLDEST this girl has ever been in. Now, I seem to travel during the rather smarter months with nicer weather on northern places…so this little Floridian was literally FREEZING HER BUTT OFF! I woke up and Mego tells me it’s 1 degree outside….Gwn was NOT ready for that…but yet, it was David Bowie.
I made my way further and further to the front (being VERY sneaky, but friendly) and managed to hang out in the 3rd row in the aisle. It was highly rewarding! The lights died and I realized that there maybe were probably less than 1 dozen (yes, less than, I’m sure) that had even seen any of these Reality shows…I had that advantage. So, when the lights went down, no one really knew what to do when the “intro music” started. Gwn did. She went bolistic! Absolutely ape nuts….and they followed my lead! People started groovin to it. The opening…I love it. I have nothing else to say about it, but that it still sends shivers down my spine when I hear Sterling start the drums.
David comes out and rocked hard. It was the best I’d seen him, except for Poughkeesie. His energy was through the roof, the band was in good spirits, the smiles on everyone’s faces was priceless. He played on, teasing the audience (like he does) and with witty banter (like he does). But, I had absolutely no problems bouncing about, my hand in the air doing the classic “rock on” sign. I was rewarded…once again. I had caught David’s attention enough, that he started to tease with me. He started to mock me in my “bouncing rock on stance” and repeated what I was doing EXACTLY. He was trying to show me up? Oh, no…I did it again..never stopped and he did it with me. He really made me shine and from there on out, if I thought I couldn’t enjoy myself more….I managed.
Back to playing nice with the usher, who had told everyone else that they couldn’t go to the front row unless their tkt said row 1 had finally passed by me and said, “Go for it” and I ran like a bat out of hell, with a fellow bnetter in front and we managed the absolute prime spot: in front of his Converse. I managed to wiggle and work my way up, with minimal effort (not even to shove anyone out of the way!) and ended up with my hands on the barrier! I could touch his Converse…yes THAT spot. I grooved to the entire 7 encore set, singing and rocking as hard as I could.
To sum it up, this was my favorite performance. My friend Saxonny has another story-not good. My favorite concert experience (before parties, meet-ups, concert, after parties, Bowie acknowledgment) still remains to be the taping of the Riverside gig back in September, but Cleveland has been the best performance with the band I’ve seen yet. Thank you, Sailor. Thank you Gail, Mike, Sterling, Spooky, Earl and Kat. Roll on Minneapolis!
Rock On, Gwnavere (still thawing out)
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Wow, thanx so much for that ladies. We’ll hopefully get some similar contributions and more pix from a few of you who attended tonight’s Detroit show.