David Bowie: 12/15/03 - Madison Square Garden; New York, NY

[davepeck]

01. Rebel Rebel
02. New Killer Star
03. Reality
04. Fashion
05. Hang On To Yourself
06. Fame
07. Cactus
08. All The Young Dudes
09. China Girl
10. The Loneliest Guy
11. The Man Who Sold The World
12. Hallo Spaceboy
13. Sunday
14. Under Pressure
15. Life On Mars ?
16. Ashes To Ashes
17. Afraid
18. The Motel
19. Changes
20. Five Years
21. I\'m Afraid Of Americans
22. "Heroes"

Encore
23. Jean Genie
24. Suffragette City
25. Ziggy Stardust



ok, i\'m impressed.

in fact, i\'m very impressed. i wasn\'t expecting this show to be as good as it was. i\'m admittedly not a huge DB fan.. like his old stuff, but not familiar with much of his newer material.. i remember seeing him in \'95 (with nin) and not really digging it.. plain and simple, this show rocked.

Macy Gray (who i am a huge fan of and was very psyched to see) opened the show.. unfortunately we were running late, and got to our seats about 20 minutes into MG\'s 45 minute set.. she was still great though - had a really good band behind her.. couple nice pfunk teases.. good stuff..

DB was incredible. great big stage setup, with 4 video screens on top, constantly on the performers, and a huge screen in the back with all kinds of things going on.. band was really good.. some old and new players - went well with the great song selection and mix of old and new tunes. great amount of energy in the room, and the sold-out MSG crowd was really into it.. cougars everywhere too.. :lol:

it was DB\'s first US show, as the previous 6 were postponed because he had the flu, so we got lucky..

turns out that there\'s someone out there in bowieville who\'s got this show on dvd already (bootlegger).. i may bite the bullet and go half with my buddy chris who went to the show with me, and then just spread the thing like wildfire.. we\'ll see..

anyways, just wanted to throw my 2 cents out there and give this show a huge :thumbsup:...

[davepeck]

NY Times Review:

ROCK REVIEW | DAVID BOWIE
Matching Familiar Songs With Their New Relatives
By JON PARELES

Published: December 17, 2003

David Bowie the rocker took the stage of Madison Square Garden on Monday night. He was wearing sneakers, black jeans, a pinstripe T-shirt and the deconstructed tatters of a tail coat, and he was casually balancing nostalgia against what he can still pull off.

Mr. Bowie has stopped chasing the latest dance beats and returned to the thrust and screech of a band driven by guitars. He has also traded his old choreographed spectacles for a show that\'s still minutely planned but lets him appear informal rather than calculated. Unlike many other rockers of his generation, Mr. Bowie, 56, made his recent songs sound just as trenchant as the oldies.

Mr. Bowie\'s most recent albums, this year\'s "Reality" and 2002\'s "Heathen" (both on ISO/Columbia), loop back to the sound of his best years, 1976-80. That was when, under the influence of punk, art and drugs, he pulled apart his old glam-rock to make music that was more jagged and incisive. "I\'ve been right and I\'ve been wrong/ Now I\'m back to where I started from," he sang in "Reality." He has reunited with his 1970\'s producer, Tony Visconti, and — with an added jolt from Sept. 11 — has returned to contemplating apocalypse and alienation, fear and fame.

Mr. Bowie\'s music has always been an unlikely confluence of hard rock, 1950\'s rock, cabaret standards and sonic experiments, and in his less successful stretches he has teetered into bathos or obscurity. This time he had a convincing mix: still and eerie in recent songs like "Sunday" and "The Loneliest Guy," brash in "The Jean Genie," heartfelt in "Life on Mars?" and "Ziggy Stardust."

Mr. Bowie paired old songs with their new relatives; "Rebel Rebel" was followed by "New Killer Star," which contemplates "a great white scar over Battery Park." He triumphantly put across two worthwhile songs, "Hallo Spaceboy" and "The Motel," from his overconceptualized 1995 album "Outside," and he latched on to songs that others have pulled out of his catalog: "The Man Who Sold the World" (which Nirvana revived) and "Under Pressure (which was sampled by Vanilla Ice).

Mr. Bowie\'s band, including musicians who have been with him since the 1970\'s — Earl Slick on guitar and Mike Garson on keyboards — played familiar old songs with the original arrangements but pushed them a little further. Mr. Slick and Gerry Leonard on guitars scrabbled and clawed through "Fashion" and "Fame," and brought out the rockabilly in "Hang On to Yourself." Mr. Bowie has sung many of these songs countless times, but with a shifted inflection here and a sly gesture there he made clear that he was still thinking through them, bringing them into the here and now.

Opening the show was Macy Gray, the scratchy-voiced songwriter who draws on 1970\'s soul for her own slyly multilayered songs of heartbreak and humor. Jokes were tucked into her choreography and arrangements — one tossed in half a dozen television themes — as well as her songs, and she gradually won over an audience that seemed unfamiliar with her superb albums.

[tiedyetoga]

I totaly forgot about this show. I\'m going to see him when he comes around again.

[tiedyetoga]

By Frank Scheck

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Revealing few traces of the bout with the flu that necessitated the postponement of the first five dates of the North American segment of his world tour, David Bowie delivered a killer show at the Madison Square Garden that demonstrated why he\'s become one of the most venerated figures in rock.

Delivering a nearly two-hour, career-spanning set on Monday that included numbers dating back three decades as well as songs from his new "Reality" album, Bowie and his amazing seven-piece band gave a transcendent performance.

From the opening "Rebel, Rebel" to the closing "Ziggy Stardust," Bowie and company somehow managed to infuse every number, no matter how familiar, with a freshness and power that can only come from dedication and hard work as well as brilliance. His distinctive voice showing few effects of the recent illness, Bowie sang with a passion and urgency that belied his age, demonstrating his theatrical expertise with his typically expert physical delivery and body language. Only with the high notes on "All the Young Dudes" did he ask for audience assistance, in his typically understated British way: "If you would join in on the chorus, that would be too delicious." The sold-out crowd naturally responded, with a sing-along so deafening that even Bowie seemed surprised.

The set list was cannily chosen, featuring the classic hits ("Fame," "Ashes to Ashes," "Changes"), vintage favourites ("The Man Who Sold the World," "Life on Mars"), relative obscurities ("Cactus," from last year\'s "Heathen" CD, and the powerful "Motel," from "Outside") and a handful of songs from "Reality." The latter, including the hard-rocking "New Killer Star," for which Bowie just received a Grammy nomination, and the moving "The Loneliest Guy," were strong numbers comparing well to his glory days and fit seamlessly into the set.

Highlights included a mesmerising duet with bassist Gail Ann Dorsey on the Bowie-Queen collaboration "Under Pressure" and a particularly powerful one-two punch of the menacing and now all too resonant "I\'m Afraid of Americans" followed by "Heroes," the latter of which the singer graciously introduced as "the other side of the story." The dynamite encore was an intense triple blast of "Jean Genie," "Suffragette City" and the seminal "Ziggy Stardust."

Opening act Macy Gray had a little trouble making an impact in the massive arena with her 45-minute set of retro-style soul, but eventually her infectious, slinky grooves -- which included entertainingly funky revampings of television theme songs ranging from "All in the Family" to "The Sopranos" -- won the crowd over.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

Source:
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=entertainmentNews&storyID=423919§ion=news

[realisthis]

Niice setlist...

[realisthis]

A funny note from DavidBowie.com about the Mohegan Sun show last night...

The show was hysterical. A real mix of characters. Lots of drunken louts having fun, and lots of people there out of curiosity. David picked on a row of six middle-aged men in the fourth row, sitting down all talking on cell-phones during "Fame" by miming a cell phone conversation while singing the song.

After he ended with "What\'s your name, what\'s your name, what\'s your name..." he again pointed them out and said to one of them: "Don\'t bother telling me your name, just call me with it". And he continued: "So you\'re on the phone... what are you so busy talking about? Buy... sell.... sell... I love this place!" said with good humor.

We also found out that the road trucks got caught in the same traffic jam that I did, and arrived late with no time for sound check. However, the band was tight, and David commented to Gail about some new sybilance she added to a song, asking her did she dream it up on the bus while stuck in traffic.

[davepeck]

:lol:

[Drew_Kingsley]

Setlist observation: If this were my one chance to see Bowie, I would be upset that there was no "Space Oddity".  But it definitely a solid show.

[davepeck]

well, i did it.. made a deal with the devil.. just ordered the dvd... $25, not awful.. and it\'ll be completely worth it once it gets spread to hundreds of people via BT..

here\'s some screenshots...

[davepeck]

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[davepeck]

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[davepeck]

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[tiedyetoga]

Very nice. Who did you get it from? The mc video guy?

[davepeck]

no, someone i saw on a bowie board.. shoots a lot of nyc shows..