Funny times we live in in Dutch music
land. While Marco Borsato and Rene Froger [Dutch artists] easily fill
up stadiums evening upon evening, the more reputable David Bowie doesn't
manage to do the same with one evening in the Amsterdam ArenA.
During his show yesterday the stage was located along the long side of the
stadium, and most of the stadium was blocked off behind black curtains.
Despite of this, plenty of tickets were still available at the ticketbox.
The limited interest is only partly explainable by the fact that Bowie
already played a show at the Rotterdam Ahoy at the start of his world tour.
At the end of that tour the reason for it, the Reality album, has already
been mostly forgotten. That's how it's been with Bowie albums for a while.
Whenever a new album comes out, everybody tries to match it to Bowie's glory
days (the seventies), but after a while, everybody kind of moves on and
forgets about it.
Thus, Reality doesn't really play a big role in the Arena. Plenty of
attention went out to Bowies notorious past. Now, the man who at the end of
the eighties claimed he never would play oldies again, doesn't think twice
about looking at his past. Of course, he has no reason to. If there's
someone who doesn't have to be ashamed of his musical past, it's him.
The wild rocking opening number Rebel Rebel set the tone of the evening.
Bowie, who is (unbelievably so) nearing 60, didn't just look eternally
young, he also sounded it. Similarly eager as him, was his supporting band.
The star of the tight playing 6 headed band was bassist player Gail Ann
Dorsey. Her vocal parts in Under Pressure even allowed to forget Freddie
Mercury, Bowie's original singing partner of the song.
Bowie himself sounded all night as if time doesn't have any grip on his
voice. A perfect host he was too. He said he and has band had no less than
62 songs ready to play. It was pretty obvious the audience wanted to hear
the seventies songs. They got them, but only on Bowie's conditions: "Promise
me NOT to sing along to the next songs" he said during the introduction of
All the Young Dudes. It's possible one of the toilet attendants didn't sing
along, but other than that, everybody in the stadium sang along on top of
their voices.
Such disobedient behaviour should be punished, according to Bowie, "So now a
number from the eighties". Heroes was in this evening of musical history the
expected highlight, a song which can be used in many different ways, as
proven by a vodafone commercial. Bowie and his band also brought a
refreshening renewed version of the song. In the Arena, the song ended up
sounding like a thrusting glamrock song. After that, even Ziggy Stardust put
in a presence during the encore. Some day, Bowie will make another amazingly
good new cd. For the time being, we'll be extrmeely happy to settle for
nostalgia.
(c) Parool (translation by
nemesis from bowienet)