April 15, 2004

the lift, the tug, the slide

It would appear that Maya's got a blog! Go Maya!

Off to Seattle tomorrow morning for the EMP's pop conference, where I'm presenting a paper on "the ersatz Beatles of 1964." This should be a blast. Although I realized last night that I really should have called it "The Butchered Covers."

Last night, in fact, I realized this as I was at the David Bowie show with Lisa. Although we'd seen his early-morning gig in front of the NBC building a few months ago, this was the first full-on show either of us had seen in a long time. (For me, it'd been the "Glass Spider" tour in 1987, yikes, which was also the first time I'd gotten to hang out with Elizabeth at length; for her, it'd been the "Sound+Vision" tour in 1990, on the way to which her car caught fire while she was listening to "Ashes to Ashes.")

Decent if slightly too slick band, featuring the fabulous Gail Ann Dorsey; they refrained from bubbada bubbada, aside from a little bit on the final encore ("Ziggy Stardust"). Bowie in very high spirits, chatting at length between songs, in almost alarmingly good shape--who cuts his hair, anyway, and how many mortgages would I have to take out to get mine cut by them? And wasn't "Sound+Vision" going to be the last time he played his old hits? We got plenty of them last night, as well as some serious trainspottery stuff--"A New Career in a New Town"!! I tend to think of myself as being sort of take-it-or-leave-it about Bowie, but I kept having "oh right, 'Fashion,' I love this song!" moments. (Does this mean Prince is going to be playing "The Ballad of Dorothy Parker" and "Feel U Up" on tour 14 years from now? I hope so. But maybe he has to be in Tin Machine first.)

The Polyphonic Spree opened... judging from their new material, I can't think of many other bands who so completely said everything they had to say with their first record.

Posted by Douglas at April 15, 2004 12:38 AM
Comments

yes yes, please see me while you're here. i swear i apologize for being a total space cadet.

Posted by: rebecca on April 16, 2004 2:37 PM
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