I’ll tell you a tale if you lend me an ear…
There’s a four-star Storytellers review by David Buckley in the August edition of
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First, there’s Bowie himself. Then 52, with long, undyed hair, grey hoody and big trainers, he sings wonderfully, with a particular shiver when he soars to the high notes on Life On Mars. He also shows himself to be almost as good a stand-up as he is a singer, interspersing the eight featured songs with amusing and poignant anecdotes, including impersonations of Marc Bolan and Steve Marriott.
Second, there’s the surprise-laced setlist. There may be only eight songs (12 if you count the bonuses on the DVD), but they’re perfectly reconstructed for the intimate setting. Drive-in Saturday and Word On A Wing, neither at the time performed since the mid-’70s, precede a revved-up version of Bowie’s first-ever solo single, Can’t Help Thinking About Me, so old it sounds brand spanking new, and a brilliant reworking of the tale of near-suicide that is Low’s Always Crashing In The Same Car, here as a bonus track. The Storytellers exercise reminds us that very few artists have so malleable a catalogue.
Today as a Bowie live performance, it’s just great to have it. Many tours and concerts never made it onto DVD, so product-starved Bowie brethren will lap this up.
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Stay tuned for our any-day-now Storytellers contest for product-starved Bowie brethren everywhere…well, BowieNet members at least.