E-mail to Al, on Discovering Bowie

I was never that much into David Bowie until I started playing in “casuals” bands – weddings, parties, Catholic Singles Dances – in the early 80’s.  Then I developed a keen interest in his music as it reflected the pop music of the immediate past and presaged the music of the immediate future (a saddle-point which can only be reviewed after-the-fact, so why get caught up in current crazes?) and I deemed “Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars” a transformative album.  But I could never get any of the bands I was playing with to seriously prepare a Bowie cover for public performance.

One Wednesday evening in late Spring in the booming Inland Empire community of Temecula (75 miles from the office I had left at noon), we set up in front of the community lake of a semi-private enclave of minimum-easement 2-story houses with rooflines still higher than the crowns of the parkway trees and where the gate cop wouldn’t let us park to unload in the hatched spaces right next to the performing area (I hesitate to call it a “stage”), but instead directed us to park about 100 yards away down a narrow concrete sidewalk along the lake with a public bathroom building blocking our view of the performing area. We strategized on how best to transport the equipment from the cars behind the building to the performing area using 3 men and 2 women (1 still a child, if truth be told) so as to never lose sight of any piece of equipment, not even a patch cord.  I won’t go into the math because it’s too complicated for most of you dear readers, but we drove away after the show with every piece of equipment we came in with.  “Dummy checks,” where all band members individually check the former performing area for overlooked cords, duct tape rolls, microphone cases, tuners, hand percussion, prized coffee mugs, cell phones, and what-not, were outnumbered by “whose got eyes on____” games as we successfully reversed the math that got us from car to performing area to get us and our gear trolleys safely back to the cars in the dark.

In between those comings and goings, we assayed “Young Americans,” with a minor success in that the audience recognized it, although they didn’t get up and dance like they did for “Material Girl” later that night. But I can always say I sang a cover version of Bowie live in front of paying customers, by which I mean at least the band got paid almost enough to cover our gasoline.