"David Bowie Is God" -- Joe Schneider, April 1988

[acroyear]

That was the first sentence out of his mouth the day after Bowie's Glass Spider tour came through the Cap Center. I was insanely jealous, having seen how strong a Bowie performance could be, even just on tape and doing a "hits" tour, for Serious Moonlight in 1983.

Then I saw the video in 1989. Damn. Arguably among the most spectular stage settings ever conceived for a concert tour, ranking right up there with The Wall and Peter Gabriel's 2-stage Secret World setup. Choreography by Toni Basil, not always as pretensious as she can sometimes be (though it had its moments). Add an incredible song selection digging into is odder musical history with tracks like Loving the Alien and Sons of the Silent Age, plus his better mid-80s faire like Absolute Beginners and Never Let Me Down, among a good collection of classics like Heroes, Fame, Fashion, Jean Genie, and then him descending down from the spider wearing large angel wings singing 1974's "Time" and well, damn it was an incredible show...yeah, it was very typical of the overblown 80s (and some group's 90s excesses like U2 and Pink Floyd would shame it in size without coming near the quality), but it was just something wild to see...



why am i reminiscing? Well, Trio showed the concert again this morning, and I just got reminded of just how incredible that show was. Really brought back memories of my early concert-going years (before college came along and said you can't afford it) and the music that defined my later high-school days of self-discovery...

Comments

as an fyi

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

the VHS is, of course, long out of print. there's no official domestic dvd.

there is, however, a bootleg from brazil, region 0 ntsc, available from amazon.com's used vendors and from ebay. its likely unofficial, but not officially illegal due to brazilian law. the quality is relatively poor, as instead of being a full digital master, they just took a vhs copy and digitized that.