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A Space Oddity: David Bowie in L.A.
"I laid David Bowie! I really did!" The titillated young woman descended a flat-lit escalator at concert's end. Her red and blue streaked hair swirled as she slashed the air with her green ostrich feather. "I really did!" she chanted. The escalator plopped her on ground floor. Elated, spinning on five-inch silver platforms, she pirouetted, her silver-sequined pants pulling tight against a supple rump. With pitter-patter steps she floated among the spilling crowd. "I really did!" Breasts jiggling under flaming sating, she tip-toed her way into the cool sea air.
David Bowie is real! Here to save us with dazzling projections on the shape of things to come! Wonder what it'd be like to sleep with a real, live flying saucer? Blast-off! No matter. David Bowie, our boy Ziggy Stardust, fluttered into L.A. not to the gentle swaying of a glass spaceship but by bus and the Queen Elizabeth. You see, the Queen of Glitter Rock takes a Queen ship across the sea, to play in the shadows of Long Beach's Queen Mary, all because he's afraid to fly. Who ever heard of a spaceman that didn't fly, but whose propulsion power lies in a Greyhound pass?
Long Beach. There are 14,000 seats in the arena. There is a Queen Mary, with escalators that don't work, and freight elevators lined with original Victorian carpets. There is the Pike, ancient fun spot of a 1920s Miami West. If you're 30 and live in Long Beach, you don't have friends. There area million people over 65 with their Broadway cafeterias. There is David Bowie.
David Bowie was in Long Beach last Saturday. So was the Frito bandito. And Donald Duck. And gentlemen in full chinchilla coats. Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, Fourth Movement of "Ode to Joy" (the Clockwork Orange theme) pulsated from the speaker bank. Ray guns flashed. Ziggy and the Spiders from Mars leaped to their energizers. A sea of roaches sparkled brighter from the arena bowl (marijuana is in at Long Beach). Red flood lights snap on. Drums roll and "Changes" pounds.
Bowie, in the first of four distinct acts, is dressed like those famous European clowns. He walks bow-legged, stiff-kneed in an elaborate costume, with black and silver-striped pantaloons held taught by his outstretched arms. He wheels on one heel, then the other in a Chaplin imitation. Wheels to the microphone and jerks his head back. "Ch...ch...ch...changes." His carrot-colored hair stands on end. His face is pancake white. He is animated, sharp boned. He plays very little music himself. The audience tends to lose the music in deference to his theatrics. His years in mime, mixed with feminine posing, is totally engrossing. He is a delicate, sensual woman.
The music breaks, Bowie raises his arms, legs spread, spotlight trained upon him. He looks up, Two Spiders rush to his side, grab his costume and flash. Bowie's arms come down in a karate chop, he sheds the clown cocoon and is in his spacesuit, red-booted with three-inch magnet soles for walking on walls. The band smashes into "Ziggy Stardust:" Ziggy played guitar, jamming good with Weird and Gilly ... with god-given ass ... like a leper messiah. The voice is high and emotional. Into "Moonage Daydream." I'm an alligator ... I'm a space invader ... freak out in a moonage daydream.
Space ballet, Bowie, his thin body elegant, graceful in the shiny jumpsuit, leaps among the band. He rises onto his toes, and skitters to the edge of the stage, leans back, with arms raised in a halo above his head.
Music terrific. Incredibly professional. Wizard costumes but no cues missed. The core of the band is Mick Ronson on lead, with blond hair, five inch heels, and a white Flash Gordon suit. Trevor Bolder on bass is dark and quiet. He's dressed in a cheap sci-fi movie costume One left over from Invasion of Mars or maybe that Planet of Space Queen flick with Zsa Zsa Gabor. The kind of suit where the monsters walk down the cave and you see the zippers. Mick Woodmansy, yet another Mick — everyone has to be a Mick — sits high above Ziggy with his spider drum set.
"Space Oddity" is appropriate here. The blue jeans and bi-sex cult crowds both know this tune. A sparkle ball is turned on, spotlights hit its mirrored surface sending flitting stars around the arena. Remember that St. Elmo's fire schtick from the movie version, Moby Dick with Gregory Peck?
The title track from the new album, Aladdin Sane. These are Ziggy's last days on earth. If he returns he will be A Lad Insane. But Bowie might quite concerts and go into flicks. The lead role in Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land sci-fi novel is a possibility. RCA just wants their "product" to record the soundtracks with them.
Their product shines in the Ten Commandments production of "Aladdin Sane." This is the first time in the concert that the five sidemen shine too. And they're truly sidemen, Robin Hood's merry tots tucked into dark stage corners, frozen stiff. They dress in Sherwood Forest green suits with white tuxes. The men are prototype Xavier Cougat sambaites. Bowie handles marachas. "Aladdin Sane" is helter skelter ancient tunes, lyrical bones that should take a carbon 180 test. Primeval Roger Williams is the pianist. Can't remember the Stardusty, Venusy names that jangle about the hypnotic rhythm held by the core of spiders. The tension between sidemen and space invaders is nice. The sissies are Comic Humble Pie while the straight, bubble-music Welk men are twerps. The song fades away with the lingering them from "On Broadway," a place Bowie would rather be. He calls himself an "iceman." He is more a Howard Keel actor-entertainer than a rocker.
The lights off, Ziggy is gone and a wispy figure in beautiful silk Japanese robes is on stage for solo acoustic music. A geisha act. He stands again, arms spread, two women rush from stage side. They grab the flowing robes, rip, and Bowie's a vamp in striped tights with matching gloves and stockings, with a green boa and extended cigarette holder dangling from thin lips. He poses, poses. There's a gaggle of official photographers below the stage and he posts for everyone. Like cheesecake Betty Grable photos of World Way II. The official photographers have a monopoly. The Long Beach Police, at Bowie's request, had confiscated every camera they could find. They got one of ours, but in the fracas, camera unit no. 2 slipped behind enemy lines.
Bowie swings the boa around his neck, humps about stage pouting. His body is long and odd, with slight rounded shoulders and unequally large hips. he sits, elegantly crossing his legs. Every move he makes is graceful. he flicks the cigarette in a patented vamp manner, but the scene begins to seep of kitsch and not true cabaret seediness.
Gaudy, Bowie rolling on belly, winking at Ronson, the fury leaps into "Suffragette City," high point of the evening. Perfect timing, and instead of the first concert tour's fellation on guitar.
The gentle crowd, on that rushed no aisles, slowly spills onto Ocean Boulevard, next to the still humming Pike. A hammer ride traces neon thunder in the renamed "Queen's Land." The jeans and workshirt crowd seems a little confused. Not so for the many Hollywood immigrants sidling toward their cars for the freeway trip north. Space lady and space woman, in gold and silver jumpsuits, hair cut in points like Star Trek skip away. The girl who laid Bowie twirls. Bowie, who got his name from the knife, recedes to some terrestrial bus.
The glitter people have no family, only the prehistoric mother of Mars and an orgiastic sensibility. Their UFO anoints them: "You are all insane and dying rock 'n roll suicides, but you hand onto yourself." An archetypal mother hen that hatches ostrich-feathered chicks, sprinkles them with glitter, readies for the late Hollywood Palladium.
Droogles and ultraviolence are not here. The music is sunk in themes of time and death and "you." It is whisked far away by a mythical, sentimental imagination. The surrogate mom lays his own brick road to a time in the past, not the future, where an iceman can be his of Ozzy Judy Garland in Rainbow Land.
Here's something you might be interested in.
A Space Oddity: David Bowie in L.A.
A Space Oddity: David Bowie in L.A.
"I laid David Bowie! I really did!" The titillated young woman descended a flat-lit escalator at concert's end. Her red and blue streaked hair swirled as she slashed the air with her green ostrich feather. "I really did!" she chanted. The escalator plopped her on ground floor. Elated, spinning on five-inch silver platforms, she pirouetted, her silver-sequined pants pulling tight against a supple rump. With pitter-patter steps she floated among the spilling crowd. "I really did!" Breasts jiggling under flaming sating, she tip-toed her way into the cool sea air.
David Bowie is real! Here to save us with dazzling projections on the shape of things to come! Wonder what it'd be like to sleep with a real, live flying saucer? Blast-off! No matter. David Bowie, our boy Ziggy Stardust, fluttered into L.A. not to the gentle swaying of a glass spaceship but by bus and the Queen Elizabeth. You see, the Queen of Glitter Rock takes a Queen ship across the sea, to play in the shadows of Long Beach's Queen Mary, all because he's afraid to fly. Who ever heard of a spaceman that didn't fly, but whose propulsion power lies in a Greyhound pass?
Long Beach. There are 14,000 seats in the arena. There is a Queen Mary, with escalators that don't work, and freight elevators lined with original Victorian carpets. There is the Pike, ancient fun spot of a 1920s Miami West. If you're 30 and live in Long Beach, you don't have friends. There area million people over 65 with their Broadway cafeterias. There is David Bowie.
David Bowie was in Long Beach last Saturday. So was the Frito bandito. And Donald Duck. And gentlemen in full chinchilla coats. Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, Fourth Movement of "Ode to Joy" (the Clockwork Orange theme) pulsated from the speaker bank. Ray guns flashed. Ziggy and the Spiders from Mars leaped to their energizers. A sea of roaches sparkled brighter from the arena bowl (marijuana is in at Long Beach). Red flood lights snap on. Drums roll and "Changes" pounds.
Bowie, in the first of four distinct acts, is dressed like those famous European clowns. He walks bow-legged, stiff-kneed in an elaborate costume, with black and silver-striped pantaloons held taught by his outstretched arms. He wheels on one heel, then the other in a Chaplin imitation. Wheels to the microphone and jerks his head back. "Ch...ch...ch...changes." His carrot-colored hair stands on end. His face is pancake white. He is animated, sharp boned. He plays very little music himself. The audience tends to lose the music in deference to his theatrics. His years in mime, mixed with feminine posing, is totally engrossing. He is a delicate, sensual woman.
The music breaks, Bowie raises his arms, legs spread, spotlight trained upon him. He looks up, Two Spiders rush to his side, grab his costume and flash. Bowie's arms come down in a karate chop, he sheds the clown cocoon and is in his spacesuit, red-booted with three-inch magnet soles for walking on walls. The band smashes into "Ziggy Stardust:" Ziggy played guitar, jamming good with Weird and Gilly ... with god-given ass ... like a leper messiah. The voice is high and emotional. Into "Moonage Daydream." I'm an alligator ... I'm a space invader ... freak out in a moonage daydream.
Space ballet, Bowie, his thin body elegant, graceful in the shiny jumpsuit, leaps among the band. He rises onto his toes, and skitters to the edge of the stage, leans back, with arms raised in a halo above his head.
Music terrific. Incredibly professional. Wizard costumes but no cues missed. The core of the band is Mick Ronson on lead, with blond hair, five inch heels, and a white Flash Gordon suit. Trevor Bolder on bass is dark and quiet. He's dressed in a cheap sci-fi movie costume One left over from Invasion of Mars or maybe that Planet of Space Queen flick with Zsa Zsa Gabor. The kind of suit where the monsters walk down the cave and you see the zippers. Mick Woodmansy, yet another Mick — everyone has to be a Mick — sits high above Ziggy with his spider drum set.
"Space Oddity" is appropriate here. The blue jeans and bi-sex cult crowds both know this tune. A sparkle ball is turned on, spotlights hit its mirrored surface sending flitting stars around the arena. Remember that St. Elmo's fire schtick from the movie version, Moby Dick with Gregory Peck?
The title track from the new album, Aladdin Sane. These are Ziggy's last days on earth. If he returns he will be A Lad Insane. But Bowie might quite concerts and go into flicks. The lead role in Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land sci-fi novel is a possibility. RCA just wants their "product" to record the soundtracks with them.
Their product shines in the Ten Commandments production of "Aladdin Sane." This is the first time in the concert that the five sidemen shine too. And they're truly sidemen, Robin Hood's merry tots tucked into dark stage corners, frozen stiff. They dress in Sherwood Forest green suits with white tuxes. The men are prototype Xavier Cougat sambaites. Bowie handles marachas. "Aladdin Sane" is helter skelter ancient tunes, lyrical bones that should take a carbon 180 test. Primeval Roger Williams is the pianist. Can't remember the Stardusty, Venusy names that jangle about the hypnotic rhythm held by the core of spiders. The tension between sidemen and space invaders is nice. The sissies are Comic Humble Pie while the straight, bubble-music Welk men are twerps. The song fades away with the lingering them from "On Broadway," a place Bowie would rather be. He calls himself an "iceman." He is more a Howard Keel actor-entertainer than a rocker.
The lights off, Ziggy is gone and a wispy figure in beautiful silk Japanese robes is on stage for solo acoustic music. A geisha act. He stands again, arms spread, two women rush from stage side. They grab the flowing robes, rip, and Bowie's a vamp in striped tights with matching gloves and stockings, with a green boa and extended cigarette holder dangling from thin lips. He poses, poses. There's a gaggle of official photographers below the stage and he posts for everyone. Like cheesecake Betty Grable photos of World Way II. The official photographers have a monopoly. The Long Beach Police, at Bowie's request, had confiscated every camera they could find. They got one of ours, but in the fracas, camera unit no. 2 slipped behind enemy lines.
Bowie swings the boa around his neck, humps about stage pouting. His body is long and odd, with slight rounded shoulders and unequally large hips. he sits, elegantly crossing his legs. Every move he makes is graceful. he flicks the cigarette in a patented vamp manner, but the scene begins to seep of kitsch and not true cabaret seediness.
Gaudy, Bowie rolling on belly, winking at Ronson, the fury leaps into "Suffragette City," high point of the evening. Perfect timing, and instead of the first concert tour's fellation on guitar.
The gentle crowd, on that rushed no aisles, slowly spills onto Ocean Boulevard, next to the still humming Pike. A hammer ride traces neon thunder in the renamed "Queen's Land." The jeans and workshirt crowd seems a little confused. Not so for the many Hollywood immigrants sidling toward their cars for the freeway trip north. Space lady and space woman, in gold and silver jumpsuits, hair cut in points like Star Trek skip away. The girl who laid Bowie twirls. Bowie, who got his name from the knife, recedes to some terrestrial bus.
The glitter people have no family, only the prehistoric mother of Mars and an orgiastic sensibility. Their UFO anoints them: "You are all insane and dying rock 'n roll suicides, but you hand onto yourself." An archetypal mother hen that hatches ostrich-feathered chicks, sprinkles them with glitter, readies for the late Hollywood Palladium.
Droogles and ultraviolence are not here. The music is sunk in themes of time and death and "you." It is whisked far away by a mythical, sentimental imagination. The surrogate mom lays his own brick road to a time in the past, not the future, where an iceman can be his of Ozzy Judy Garland in Rainbow Land.
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