Bowiegasm
Holy shit.
What a fuckin' night.
It was about a dozen bands, most of them played 2 songs each, a couple played three and one played four. Here are some observations:
1. There were many, many hot guys there. Yum.
2. On the thing I posted earlier about expecting all the bands to stick mostly to the 'expected' songs....while that turned out to be true, the first band that played opened the show with "Look Back in Anger" from the Lodger album. Awesome! Bowie used that as the opening song on his Serious Moonlight tour, and ever since then its been one of my favourites. So the whole night started off really well. The guitar/lead vocalist guy saw me singing along with "Look Back" and sort of sang to me a few times. Afterwards, he came up to me in the audience and was like "dude, I'm so glad you were there and were so into that song! I had to fight with the band to get to do that song!" Way cool.
3. The second band up, much to my surprise, was Cinetrope, the band I blogged about a week or so ago after having seen them at an art gallery opening. We actually saw them in a pub before the show, and I told them I'd seen them at the gallery and how much I enjoyed them. They were so nice. They did "Ashes to Ashes" and "Golden Years".
4. One of the other bands that played was The Julia Dream, my friend Sacha's band. They were the next-to-last band to play. I didn't know that they were going to be playing either, so that was a thrill. They were the one band that did 4 songs, and they did some great ones: "Cracked Actor", "Scary Monsters", "As the World Falls Down" (from Labyrinth), and "Life on Mars". Awesome. I hadn't seen Sacha in a couple of months and I talked to him a bit afterwards; he was completely surprised to see me.
5. One of the super hotties in the audience caught my eye early on 'cuz he knew the words to every song being played (well, first 'cuz he was hot). But he noticed me too, 'cuz I knew the words to every song too. Eventually we met and had the best time, talking about all these 'deep cut' songs that we love that we wished someone would play, about seeing Bowie in concert, comparing notes on each of the bands, etc. The whole show was about 4 hours long, and we hung out for the last 2 hours of it. Way fun.
6. About 2 hours into the show, one of the bands had just finished playing, and they were good, but I was sort of lamenting in my head that all the bands were playing it too 'safe', there weren't enough deep cuts, all the bands were sticking too closely to the recorded versions of the songs, no one was doing anything innovative or creative with the arrangements.....and this this 2-guy band called GreyMarket came out and did the most unexpected version -- completely different stylistically -- of "Heroes". They were freakin' amazing. degruy got some film of them and I'll post that here when its available. It was really good. Then they followed it up with a more-or-less straight version of "Moonage Daydream", which was really good. But at the end of it, they did this really long jam with the guitarist just going nuts, and the energy kept building and building 'til they just slammed into an ending with the guy throwing his guitar onto the floor. They were the best band of the night. And just two guys -- one on drums, and one on guitar and vocals. And they were both super hotties. They are playing their own set there tomorrow night, and I may go see them.
7. The biggest surprise of the night: One of the bands, whose first song was "Blue Jean", played "Dancing in the Streets", which Bowie and Jagger recorded for Live Aid. That was a hoot.
8. The biggest head-scratch of the night: One of the final bands, instead of playing "Young Americans", played Little Richard's "Lucille" and threw a mock-up of the chorus of "Young Americans" in a couple of times. It was quite odd and rather confusing. I mean, props for them doing something creative and unexpected, definitely. But they kinda sucked and their singer (who looked too much like Ian Gillan of Deep Purple) tried too hard to be flamboyant and ended up looking dreadful. Eh.
9. The last band of the night had this super-super hottie lead singer and they closed out the show with "Suffragette City", "Modern Love" and "Under Pressure".
All-in-all it was an incredibly fun night, hanging out with degruy and his friend MJ (whom I've met a few times before, she's awesome fun), overdosing on Bowie, meeting other Bowie superfans, getting to see Sacha, etc. Got home at 2:10a. Luckily I already said I'd be coming in to work late (I have to work an event Saturday morning, so have a shorter day tomorrow than normal).
What a fuckin' night.
It was about a dozen bands, most of them played 2 songs each, a couple played three and one played four. Here are some observations:
1. There were many, many hot guys there. Yum.
2. On the thing I posted earlier about expecting all the bands to stick mostly to the 'expected' songs....while that turned out to be true, the first band that played opened the show with "Look Back in Anger" from the Lodger album. Awesome! Bowie used that as the opening song on his Serious Moonlight tour, and ever since then its been one of my favourites. So the whole night started off really well. The guitar/lead vocalist guy saw me singing along with "Look Back" and sort of sang to me a few times. Afterwards, he came up to me in the audience and was like "dude, I'm so glad you were there and were so into that song! I had to fight with the band to get to do that song!" Way cool.
3. The second band up, much to my surprise, was Cinetrope, the band I blogged about a week or so ago after having seen them at an art gallery opening. We actually saw them in a pub before the show, and I told them I'd seen them at the gallery and how much I enjoyed them. They were so nice. They did "Ashes to Ashes" and "Golden Years".
4. One of the other bands that played was The Julia Dream, my friend Sacha's band. They were the next-to-last band to play. I didn't know that they were going to be playing either, so that was a thrill. They were the one band that did 4 songs, and they did some great ones: "Cracked Actor", "Scary Monsters", "As the World Falls Down" (from Labyrinth), and "Life on Mars". Awesome. I hadn't seen Sacha in a couple of months and I talked to him a bit afterwards; he was completely surprised to see me.
5. One of the super hotties in the audience caught my eye early on 'cuz he knew the words to every song being played (well, first 'cuz he was hot). But he noticed me too, 'cuz I knew the words to every song too. Eventually we met and had the best time, talking about all these 'deep cut' songs that we love that we wished someone would play, about seeing Bowie in concert, comparing notes on each of the bands, etc. The whole show was about 4 hours long, and we hung out for the last 2 hours of it. Way fun.
6. About 2 hours into the show, one of the bands had just finished playing, and they were good, but I was sort of lamenting in my head that all the bands were playing it too 'safe', there weren't enough deep cuts, all the bands were sticking too closely to the recorded versions of the songs, no one was doing anything innovative or creative with the arrangements.....and this this 2-guy band called GreyMarket came out and did the most unexpected version -- completely different stylistically -- of "Heroes". They were freakin' amazing. degruy got some film of them and I'll post that here when its available. It was really good. Then they followed it up with a more-or-less straight version of "Moonage Daydream", which was really good. But at the end of it, they did this really long jam with the guitarist just going nuts, and the energy kept building and building 'til they just slammed into an ending with the guy throwing his guitar onto the floor. They were the best band of the night. And just two guys -- one on drums, and one on guitar and vocals. And they were both super hotties. They are playing their own set there tomorrow night, and I may go see them.
7. The biggest surprise of the night: One of the bands, whose first song was "Blue Jean", played "Dancing in the Streets", which Bowie and Jagger recorded for Live Aid. That was a hoot.
8. The biggest head-scratch of the night: One of the final bands, instead of playing "Young Americans", played Little Richard's "Lucille" and threw a mock-up of the chorus of "Young Americans" in a couple of times. It was quite odd and rather confusing. I mean, props for them doing something creative and unexpected, definitely. But they kinda sucked and their singer (who looked too much like Ian Gillan of Deep Purple) tried too hard to be flamboyant and ended up looking dreadful. Eh.
9. The last band of the night had this super-super hottie lead singer and they closed out the show with "Suffragette City", "Modern Love" and "Under Pressure".
All-in-all it was an incredibly fun night, hanging out with degruy and his friend MJ (whom I've met a few times before, she's awesome fun), overdosing on Bowie, meeting other Bowie superfans, getting to see Sacha, etc. Got home at 2:10a. Luckily I already said I'd be coming in to work late (I have to work an event Saturday morning, so have a shorter day tomorrow than normal).