Reflecting absence the title of the World Trade Center Memorial reflects the fact that there is nothing left to say because something is gone …
David Bowie, the world is just not the same without him the loss to our culture is tremendous but his contribution which lives on is huge.
So at Carnegie Hall on March 31st for the first of a two-night celebration of ” The Music of David Bowie” first at Carnegie and the following night at Radio City acts gathered for an event which was already planned at the time of Bowie’s January 10th passing and which the great man himself had planned to attend. This in the fifteenth year of this event founded and produced by the City Winery’s Michael Dorf 20 artists were to perform the Music of David Bowie.
Meanwhile, Dorf got longtime Bowie collaborator Tony Visconti and Spiders from Mars era drummer and last surviving member of the classic Ziggy Stardust lineup Mick “Woody” Woodmansey to be the core of the musical mast of a band at the center of the ship so that it could sail.
So Carnegie Hall filled up with the throngs in the foyer filing into the lobby to be seated for the star-studded tribute whose roster had changed numerous times. I ran into a film executive Danielle Chang who I keep running into everywhere and Dorf came out and explained how he thought he was actually going to meet Bowie.
The first Rocker was Cyndi Lauper with partially bubble gum pink hair doing suffragette city and especially enjoying engaging in the infamous exclaim wham bam thank you, mam
Many of the acts covered the more obscure moody dark songs from the Bowie Berlin and Los Angeles albums “Low” and “Station to Station” until Debbie Harry of Blondie fame came out in a silver hoodie and belted out a rousing version of Starman.
But it was Michael Stipe and Karen Elson’s duet on “ashes to ashes” which made time stand still as if there in the very state of hanging out in the depths of an “all time low”… ashes to ashes…man, artist, songwriter, cracked actor, all time good looker, painter, art collector, trendsetter, fashion icon .. This is a long but never a final goodbye