The BowieXperience

My friend Jayne and I recently saw The BowieXperience at The Sands in Carlisle. We are both David Bowie fans, though only Jayne has seen him play live. I thought that the singer's voice was very like the original Bowie's, the backing band was tight and the screen behind them added to the experience and there were countless costume changes for "David." The BowieXperience went through all his great songs and their show was very well performed. Watching it made me realise all the more what an amazing artist the real David Bowie was, how he constantly reinvented himself and his music, pushed boundaries and remained very relevant. I do regret never having seen him play live. Jayne enjoyed the show too and afterwards made the classic quote, "Bowie had better legs"!!

If you are a Bowie fan I would recommend going to see this tribute act, they put on a good, professional show and bring the great artist back to life and make you realise all the more just how amazing his talent was.

(Image from The Bowie Experience Website)

New Bowie Music!

In his long career David Bowie has never been afraid to be experimental and daring. I've liked Bowie since the Ziggy days and loved the various characters he created along with the music. Always reluctant to live his life in the limelight, after nothing new from him for ten years, I, like many others, thought that he had just quietly retired. Then suddenly, with no fanfare at all, on his 66th birthday, he released the single Where Are We Now, via the Internet. It's a poignant, odd and very moving song, which reminiscences  about his time decades ago spent in that most enigmatic of places, Berlin. It is accompanied by a wonderful, slightly surreal black and white video that compliments the song perfectly. Great stuff, good to have Bowie back!

The Jean Genie, David Bowie 1973

This performance by David Bowie of The Jean Genie was first broadcast on Top of the Pops in 1973 and has never been seen since, the tapes having been wiped by the BBC. The footage belongs to John Henshall a cameraman who worked on the programme who kept copies for himself.  He didn't know the BBC had not kept a copy and also was unaware of how important the footage was, and it was only when he mentioned it on Johnnie Walker's Radio 2 show that it all came to light.

Mark Cooper, executive producer of Top of the Pops 2 said: "Bowie singing The Jean Genie is electric and the kind of piece of archive that not only brings back how brilliant Top of the Pops could be, but also How a piece of archive can speak to us down the years."

I loved Bowie in the 70's, he was so pushing the boundaries, mixing theatre with music and he was so different to anything else at the time. He was androgynous, almost alien, sexy, charismatic, unique. This performance is him at his best, it is indeed  "electric," every now and then an artist will do something special and this is an prime example, lost for 38 years (yikes!) and thankfully found again.  As Mark Cooper said, some performances are so amazing they can still captivate people decades later.

Apparently Henshall has hundreds of other tapes, what other delights could he have for us?