David Bowie 1997-06-02 London ,Hanover Grand (TRY-OUT Concert) (100PCB)
Sound Quality Rating
First set
01. Quicksand – Band Introduction.flac
02. V2-Schneider.flac
03. Battle For Britain.flac
04. Scary Monsters.flac
05. I’m Afraid Of Americans.flac
06. Seven Years In Tibet.flac
07. Fashion.flac
08. Outside.flac
09. Little Wonder.flac
10. Looking For Satellites.flac
11. The Last Thing You Should Do.flac
12. O Superman.flac
13. Hallo Spaceboy.flac
14. Jean Genie.flac
15. Queen Bitch.flac
16. Fame.flac
17. Stay.flac
Second set
19. Pallas Athena.flac
18. I’m Deranged.flac
20. V2-Schneider.flac
21. Dead Man Walking.flac
22. O Superman.flac
23. The Last Thing You Should Do.flac
24. Is It Any Wonder.flac
Label : No label
Audio Source : Audience recording
Lineage : Unknown
Taping Gear : Unknown
Taper: Unknown
Recording Location: Unknown
Total running time : 2:28:16
Sound Quality : very good. Equals record or radio/TV apart from a slight noise and some dullness.
Attendance : 720
Artwork : None
Track split, named and tagged : by Jan Erik
REVIEW GIG OF A LIFETIME:
I have been to many, many live shows over the years, and even hosted my own garden party which among other performers included Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake, Pearlfisher David Scott , the BMX Bandits , Cosmic Rough Rider Daniel Wylie and Belle and Sebastian’s Stevie Jackson, all of whom played over half an hour sets. Guests included half of XFM Scotland and legendary producer Don Fleming, who produced ‘Bandwagonesque’ for Teenage Fanclub and also records for the Posies, Sonic Youth and Hole. All of this took place in the 25 degree heat of summer in Glasgow. A somewhat unusual occurrence, believe me!
I’ve also seen Ash, Athlete, Editors, the Datsuns and Simple Minds in very intimate settings such as King Tut’s and Mono, the Clash as early as 1978 and T-Rex and the Sweet when I was very young at the legendary Apollo Theatre, but nothing compared to the stroke of luck afforded to me with my Gig of a Lifetime, which I got into for free.
I had a call from a close friend who was a Bowie fanatic, and who with his gang of obsessives followed Bowie all over the world and frequented as many gigs as physically possible. This might include heading over to New York just to see the great one perform for, say, ten minutes or so. They had blagged via Bowie’s fan club guest passes to the tiny Hanover Grand just off Regent St in London’s West End and one of them couldn’t make it. Would I like his place? I was living in London at the time and, yes, please I would! The trouble was I had recently broken my tibia fibula and had a double ankle fracture, so was on crutches and a non-weight bearing plaster. I had been told just to keep my head down, not make a fuss and I’d be fine. Oh, and my name on the door was Roy Rogers ! – You couldn’t make it up.
As I hobbled up to the door, the bouncers looked at me and I informed them I was on the guest list. “Name?” came the reply from one of the brutes. “Roy Rogers,” I replied, cueing much tittering. “Sure, it’s not Hopalong Cassidy?” “Where’s Trigger, Roy ?” replied another, and finally another guffawed, “Hope you ain’t brought Bullet because he isn’t getting in, mate. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!” There was lots more laughing from them as I tried to ‘keep my head down.” Coolness was required….but I was in!
I couldn’t believe the place was tiny inside. Touts were asking mortgage payments for tickets outside, and loads of Bowie obsessives were locked out. I thought about them for a second, laughed to myself and settled down for the action.
This line up was rehearsed and ready for the upcoming ‘Earthling’ tour, and the two London shows in the Grand were warm ups for the now legendary Bowie’s 50th birthday gigs in New York City. Featuring Reeves Gabrels on guitar and the amazing Gail Ann Dorsey on bass, I was not sure what to expect as Bowie had previously ducked playing the classics after his infamous battle with Mainman management over royalties. Now Bowie, however, had the rights back and had leased out his future royalties (Bowie bonds) for $55million to the Pru for ten years in what was a nice bit of business. Would he be including his back catalogue hits to the live set? You bet that he would!
The support act was a young electronic genius Talvin Singh who went on to win the Mercury Music Prize with his debut album ‘Ok’ in 1999. Bowie also played an entire set of drum and bass, and then did a much longer conventional couple of hours in this tiny venue. I had supplied the Bowie gang with six tickets for the incredible Tin Machine show at Glasgow Barrowland a few years before in 1991, so I had earned this one. I had also witnessed Bowie at Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh for the ‘Let’s Dance’ tour. He was a tiny speck at which I felt he might as well as have been on Mars, but now I was only 20 feet away I could see the white of his eyes . We were treated to such classics as ‘Fashion’, ‘Queen Bitch’, ‘Fame’ as well as most of ‘Earthling’ and tracks from it like ‘I’m Afraid of Americans’, ‘Little Wonder’ and ‘Seven Years in Tibet’ , all of which I enjoyed.
The drum and bass set even got the thumbs up from me, but it was intolerably loud. I had to move to the back of the hall and I was in a fair bit of pain, but I couldn’t understand why. Looking up at the wall, I could see the picture frames on it literally rattling with the noise levels and it was then that I realised. It was the recently inserted metal plate within my aching leg rattling against my bone. I was in absolute torture but going nowhere. Not a chance. A couple of people come up to me and asked if I was okay as I didn’t look very well, but I thanked them for their concerns and declined assistance. There was still more, even a ten minute version of Laurie Anderson’s ‘Oh Superman’ sung by Gail Ann. My favourite moments if pushed were ‘Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)’ and the brilliant ‘Jean Genie’. There was over three hours of vintage Bowie, which was absolutely untouchable. A bit like my leg for the next few weeks!
David Bowie Tour band 1997 Earthling Tour
Superb Bowie Performance From The Earthling Tour. David Bowie’s 20th studio album was originally released in February 1997 on Arista Records. Earthling showcased an electronica-influenced sound partly inspired by the industrial and drum and bass culture of the 1990s. It was the first album Bowie self-produced since 1974’s Diamond Dogs.
The Earthling Tour started on 7 June 1997 at Flughafen Blankensee in Lübeck, Germany, continuing through Europe and North America before reaching a conclusion in Buenos Aires, Argentina on 7 November 1997. On August 14, ‘97, Bowie performed at Hungary’s Student Island Festival in Budapest, where he put on a quite extraordinary show, accompanied as he was by Reeves Gabrels on guitar, Gail Ann Dorsey on bass, Zack Alford on drums and Mike Garson on keyboards. Playing just a few tracks from the new record plus a fine selection of back catalogue gems, the entire show was broadcast, both across Eastern Europe and indeed in the US too on selected FM stations. Previously unreleased this remarkable gig is now available on this priceless CD for the first time..
The Tour band
• David Bowie: vocals
• Reeves Gabrels: guitar, backing vocals
• Gail Ann Dorsey: bass guitar, vocals
• Zachary Alford: drums
• Mike Garson: keyboards, backing vocals
• Mike Garson: keyboards,
Bowie 97 edit webPublished on June 26th, 2014 | by Martin Aston
David Bowie – Live 1997
In 1997, I reviewed David Bowie’s live show at London’s Hanover Grand for Q Magazine, where Bowie launched his drum’n’bass hope-you-like-my-new-direction.
Bowie 97 webAs with any “intimate” showcase by a Major Rock Icon, a palpable buzz surrounds the 720-capacity Hanover Grand this evening, not least because it’s the smallest UK show that David Bowie has played since Ziggy Stardust first donned platform shoes 26 years ago, but also thanks to talk of last-minute give-aways to the ticketly deprived.
Once far removed from his “roots”, Bowie is now getting to be a dab hand at this diminutive-scaled lark. While making Earthling last autumn, he slotted in an American East Coast club tour; tonight’s event was preceded by a three-hour-plus extravaganza at the 300-capacity Dublin Factory, Bowie’s first chance to fully test-drive the Earthling’s dizbusting drum’n’bass approach in a live setting. The crowd (fellow South Londoner-in-exile Gary Oldman and drum’n’bass king Goldie included: Noel Gallagher will attend tomorrow night’s performance) shuffle impatiently while Bjork percussionist and Asian techno pioneer, Talvin Singh, Djs, adding live tablas to an already disorientating jazz-techno blend that sets the evening’s musical agenda (titled, with Bowie’s usual staginess, Fatal Fame).
As Singh retreats, the main attraction takes over. To the left of the stage stand long-time guitarist Reeves Gabrels and back-in-the-fold keyboardist Mike Garson. On the other side are the “next generation”: shaven-headed bassist Gail Ann Dorsey and shock-haired drummer Zac Alford. And there’s Dazzling Dave, 50 years old but flame-haired and bristle-chinned, wearing a red turtleneck (the Union Jacket of the last two years has thankfully been retired), black strides, strumming the opening chords to Quicksand (from Hunky Dory). At the line “I’m destiny”, the singer raises his eye aloft, in mock self-deprecation, and grins wider still. Ground control to Major Icon: you have lift-off…
“It’s a different kind of performance, the club show,” Bowie tells Q during a break in rehearsals two days before the show. “It’s far more laid-back in a way,a lot more casual, because you don’t have broadcast as big.” Despite some “gimme your hands!” communion with the front row that occasionally threatens to swallow Bowie whole, he’s undeniably “at ease” at the Grand. During Battle of Britain, he attempts a dance that’s sub-Two tone skank before thinking better of it. Then there are token gestures to the art of mime, most noticeably in Fame, when Bowie “fakes” the kind of despair that, in years past, would have been taken for granted. “I suppose I’m self-satisfied these days, “he admits. “I like what I’m doing on all fronts and the more personal side of my life is very together. (Scrunching his face) Yeah, it’s ‘orrible, I get so bored having to tell people!”
Having followed Quicksand with a rearranged V2 Schneider (on which he parps away on sax), the band launch into a prolonged nine-song strike from the “difficult” 1. Outside and Earthling albums interspersed with similarly visceral treatments of Scary Monsters And Super Creeps and Fashion. There’s a fascination tug-of-war going on: the heavy presence of DAT tapes handling the stun-gun electronics while Dorsey and Alford’s thrashy playing ensures that the songs take on an altogether rockier hue. On Hello Spaceboy, Bowie’s music has never sounded more brutal, and Gabrels, though dispassionate of face, deploys his guitar as an incendiary weapon. (“Part of my function in the band is to be the loose cannon,” he explains afterwards.) At several points, Bowie steps back and watches his charges, clearly revelling in their muscular din.
“Honestly, it would be a sin not playing live when I’ve got a band like this,” Bowie had enthused earlier. “They’re the best group I’ve had in twenty years, right up there with the Spiders in terms of cohesive musicianship and attitude. And they surprise everyone.”
It should be noted that Bowie held Tin Machine in similarly high regard too. As far as surprises go, opening with the long-lost Quicksand is only trumped by a cover of Laurie Anderson’s O Superman. “I’m doing it for Gail because I thought it would suit her,” Bowie reasons. “And it does. She sings the shit out of it.”
O Superman provides some much-needed breathing space amid all the drum’n’bombast. Further compensation lies in a few old chestnuts – despite Bowie’s well-documented aversion to wheeling them out. He cheerily confesses to remaining “Pretty much didactic about what I want to play,” and dismisses outright the rumour of an Alladin Sane “revue” at next month’s Phoenix festival. “That was never my intention. It might be a lot of fun for the audience but not for me particularly.”
To make the point, Bowie introduces Little Wonder as “one from way, way back”. But almost as a peace offering, the set closes with barely tweaked renditions of Jean Genie, Queen Bitch, a hybridised Fame (borrowing Dr. Dre’s keyboard parts from the rapper’s 1996 cover) and Stay. Either the band are shagged out or they haven’t mastered the latter’s chugging momentum, because it’s pretty ragged. But the man waving a crutch in the air doesn’t care: he’s been standing five feet from David Bowie for 90 minutes, and in his book, that doesn’t happen every day.
Bowie pre-empts screams for an encore by announcing before Stay that the band will return after 20 minutes for 50-minute “dance” set, including revised versions of V2 Schneider, O Superman and Fame (re-titled Is It Any Wonder). With Dorsey concentrating on keyboards and Alford on drum pads, it’s a bit “hope you like our new direction,” and a slowly dwindling crowd stand non-plussed and rooted to the spot, more fatigued than mesmerised. Of the genuine drum’n’bass luminaries present, opinions of Bowie’s efforts are mixed, with DJ Rap taking the purist’s stance: “There were some nice music bits, but for me it lacked rhythm and soul. Maybe he needs to work with some people in the scene, and study the form a bit more.”
Goldie, however, waxes more supportive: “I still think that Bowie can go a bit further with this music, but it’s up to him to experiment. He should take it somewhere it hasn’t been before, outside the realm of linear drum’n’bass, so that no-one can judge it.”
After London, comes a hovel, in Hamburg, before the band embarks on a whopping 32-date European festival jaunt. “We basically haven’t stopped working since July 1995,” Gabrels informs Q later. “David’s a little tornado of activity wherever he goes.”
Dorian Gray would be envious of this man’s stay-young regime
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