Bowie's Astoria gig 1999

Another interesting addition to the set on this tour was Word on a Wing. I have always thought that some of the vocal style of the Station to Station album influenced some of the vocals on the Hours album. Indeed by the summer 2000 tour he had performed all but one of Station to Station's songs on this tour which makes me think he was making a link with the new album.

Two years previously when interviewed by Alan Yentob for his 50th birthday he reflected on the different vocal stylings he used for different songs and he referred to Wild is the Wind as a 'real voice' so I feel on Hours he was exploring the use of that voice.

 

The two ballads from Station to Station were a thrill to hear live. You could be on to something with the connection to that album, or he could simply have been looking to highlight lesser-known gems from his back catalogue. He also brought back “Absolute Beginners” and debuted “This Is Not America” for the summer 2000 shows. All of these songs showed off his late-period vocal skills in their best light.

 

One of the great things about those tours between 1995 - 2004 was when he brought back songs that make you go 'oh my god'.

I remember ahead of the Reality tour he was interviewed by Jonathan Ross who asked him what songs he was planning to do on the tour and Bowie said they were rehearsing Win. Shame they didn't get to do it.

 

We were talking about “Win” recently, on another thread. It was the favourite Bowie song of both Carlos Alomar and Gail Ann Dorsey; both lobbied hard down the years for him to play it live.

 

One show that would have been interesting was the planned millennium gig in Gisborne, New Zealand. I had tickets and flights booked, and was looking forward to it through most of 1999. Of course, it was cancelled in the end, due to poor sales.

Not sure if Dave ever got as far as constructing a setlist for the gig, but it would have been something special, I’m sure. All talk of the gig went quiet afterward, and it is hardly remembered these days, except by those of us who paid money out and had to claw (most of) it back from the promoter and airline.

 

I remember that now you mention it. Kind of curious that they couldn't sell tickets considering Bowie was seen as some kind of figurehead for millennium tension!

 

His stock with the general public was still relatively low at that time. Plus, with the whole world planning millennium events, there was a lot of competition for people’s money. Tickets for the Gisborne event were outrageously expensive (several hundred pounds), and getting to NZ was a dear do (unless you already lived there). There just wasn’t enough interest to make it a viable proposition.

It was reported at the time that Bowie had written a song especially for the event, but I’ve heard nothing about that since.

 

Speaking of unreleased songs, it was around this time that he was working on a film version of Ziggy Stardust. I remember he talked about recording new versions of unreleased demos that had been written for Ziggy.

When Shadow Man came out in 2002 I had assumed this was one of them before deciding to put on the Toy album (but I may be wrong).

I know Nicholas Pegg also mentioned a song called Black Hole Kids that was meant for the film.

I believe there were 6 tracks in total. I wonder how many he actually recorded before the project was abandoned.

 

First rule of being a Bowie fan: never believe anything he says until it has been corroborated by someone else (Still in the present tense, as this was one of the tenets I lived by, when I was an active Bowie follower.)

We’re getting away from the 1999-2000 period here, but you can find more information on the rumoured Ziggy outtakes here:

The Ziggy Stardust Companion - Album outtakes

 

Another observation about the 1999 shows was the decision to start with Life on Mars accompanied only by Mike Garson on keyboards. It's quite unusual to start a show with a stripped back song. But he seems to recognise that he has the power to disarm the audience with a ballad rather than a full tilt rock song.

He used the same trick in '95/96 when he started some shows with The Motel and in '97 when he started some shows with Quicksand.

 

Bowie changed his mind a lot. I remember the hubbub about the Ziggy stage show (and the excitement of the oft-mentioned but never leaked Ziggy era song "Black Hole Kids" being released) and DB said in an interview later that some of the producers he was in talks with to do it were like, "we will do this but you realize what Ziggy means to people and how you're kind of filling it in" and Bowie considered this and I think it rapidly shifted his enthusiasm to other things. He was gutted by 'Toy' not being appreciated by his then-label but also apparently shrugged it off- and moved on to the next thing. I personally was glad- I wasn't interested in a Ziggy re-tread but I would have supported it.

I am also realizing that stepeanut and I must have been at dozens of the same Bowie shows and never ran into each other!

 

@stepeanut - I'm gonna hazard an educated guess you're in Europe? But have you gone to any of these tours or concerts in the past few years with Garson, Plati, Gail, Slick, etc. made of up Bowie band alumni? I'm not talking about Visconti and Woody's band but the straight tribute shows that cover a wide range of DB's body of work.

 

Most likely.

I used to travel with a group of Brits, with the odd Dutchman thrown in for good measure. I knew most of the regulars — the German girls, Lydia from Italy, the Philly crowd, etc. — but these are all people I knew from before BowieNet was a thing. I didn’t know many of the people who sprang up from 2000 onwards.

 

I live in the U.K. these days.

No, I have no interest in seeing tribute bands of any kind. I like to reminisce here, but I don’t live in the past in my so-called real life.

 

Yeah, I have not seen them outside of the more intimate show Plati put together at the Cutting Room in NYC in January of this year but it was very, very well done. I was just curious as to what an educated/experienced fan who has interacted with DB and band members would think of it.

I saw some of the stuff from the Garson-led tour online with Sting's son Joe Sumner (?) and it was atrocious. He was like a lounge singer on a cruise ship, saying "yeah! make some NOISE!" at the end of Life on Mars...? (!!!!) And I couldn't tolerate that s**t and may have literally jumped on stage to punch him

 

I’ve seen two shows at the Cutting Room - Jan this year and iirc a couple of years ago, both put together by Henry Hey and Mark Plati. They were really great. No egos, no whoops, just superb arrangements and performances, very touching tributes.

 

I might be biased (except I'm not) when I say how fantastic and egoless Mark Plati is. Henry Hey did an interview with Plati on his Instagram last week, some good stories.

Yeah that Cutting Room show was great. Admittedly, I've never watched "Dexter" or that other show Michael Hall was on as I am relatively out of the loop with watching television, but he did such a fantastic job singing 'Ashes to Ashes', 'Sound & Vision', etc. I was really ready to just go through the motions listening to stuff but no, it was a great, celebratory and ceremonial night. Plati and Hey did a great, great job.

 

If I come across one, I’ll let you know

Most of the crowd I used to run with have moved on. Some, sadly, are no longer with us.

29 August 2005 is where I draw the line. I rarely listen to him anymore, and haven’t heard his final two albums. Old friends don’t believe me when I tell them that, but it’s true. I don’t like to live in the past.

 

I do understand this and I ignored 'The Next Day' when it came out and then I wanted to ignore 'Blackstar' due to where I was in my life at that time. I was "settling" and trying to rationalize things and I just knew Bowie was going to nudge and inspire me. I really love 'Blackstar' but have still only heard snippets of 'The Next Day'. So I sort of relate to what you mean.

I was obsessive about Joy Division and New Order throughout High School and such, this was the late nineties and it isn't like we had YouTube then; now I've read the original 'Movement' demos were released and that's the kind of thing I used to dream about in 1997 but now in 2020 I'm just like "Ah, interesting." You can't go back, sometimes.

 

To be fair, the drumming is also surprisingly poor on Ashes...

 

Also to be fair, DB was infamous for messing up the lyrics to a couple songs on a semi-regular basis, if you went to a lot of gigs or collected bootlegs, at least 9 times that I can think of, he screws up the lyrics on "Fame".

 

Just thinking about the new members of the band on the Hours tour.

We have talked about Page Hamilton. Mark Plati had been involved in the production of the Earthling album, however this was his first Bowie tour.

Drummer Sterling Campbell had recorded with Bowie on the Outside album but this was also his first Bowie tour.

Also new to the tour were backing vocalists Holly Palmer and Emm Gryner. Along with Page Hamilton they were the only members of the band who did not rejoin the touring band after the release of Heathen in 2002.

 

While Plati didn't return for the 'Reality' tour (and he wasn't hired away; he took the gig as Robbie William's band leader in between Bowie tours), he did play on 'Reality', in fact he's doing all the guitars and bass on the track "Never Get Old".

I loved every Bowie concert or tv appearance I got to see during that entire period. Bowie appeared as if he'd come to terms with things, accepted his lot as a rock god, and just seemed vibrant and genuinely enthused. Nothing ever seemed forced, I mean, it just seemed like he was never ever gonna do anything he didn't want to do again or because he felt like he had to, and you could sense it. Such great performances.

 

I believe Sterling’s first credit on a Bowie record was “Real Cool World” in 1992. He is also on Black Tie White Noise.

Sterling was the protégé of Dennis Davis, so his roots run deep in the Bowie universe.

 

I was going to see the Garson led band until I saw video online and made a hard pass. All of the vocalists were awful. Does Garson have the blessing of the Bowie estate to do these tours? They had a full slate of dates this year before the pandemic. Initially the lineup was full of Bowie alumni but this year the band was made up of lesser backing musicians and some not connected to Bowie at all.