Or I feel like one, anyways. Thursday, the night of the first Bowie tribute in NYC, I came home from work feeling too lazy to cook dinner, and ate Chinese leftovers, and if the time stamp on the picture is anywhere near close, before 6:00 PM – so Midwest/small town.
On Friday, the day of the 2nd show at Radio City, that I could’ve listened to streamed, I went to hear the Madison Symphony instead. In a bit of a parallel with Bowie and Michael Dorf presents, one of the pieces the symphony played, Stephen Stucky’s Symphony No. 1, was supposed to be by a living composer. Stucky was alive when his piece was selected for the MSO 2015-16 season, but by the time they played it on the last day of March he was no longer living – he died in February.
On Saturday, the weather was crazy, although maybe us small town types just pay attention to it too much. There was alternating snow squalls and sun. Here’s the back porch at about 7:30 in the morning:
Snow on April 2, 2016
On Sunday morning it was only 32° when I went out to walk at about 8:30. It was 60° when I got my bike out for the first grocery shop by bike of the year, and close to 70° by 6:00. Then it dropped like 30 degrees by bedtime.
We had bacon, egg and cheese biscuits for breakfast. I made them with Marion Cunningham’s recipe from the Fanny Farmer Cookbook, using part butter and part lard, but only about 6 TBLS instead of the whole half cup/ 8 TBLS the recipe calls for. Man, they were good, but you’ll have to take my word for it, because no pictures. Although I did make a bacon & egg biscuit with the leftovers on Tuesday. Couldn’t seem to get the light right for a good pic.
On Sunday afternoon I went to a benefit put on by Friends of Sid Boyum. It’s a group trying to save the art of a local outsider artist. He filled the yard at his house with concrete sculptures, that my kids always wanted to play on when we drove past when they were little. They always wanted to sit in the polar bear, which has since got moved over to city property. Although I think John liked the dragon urn a lot. I lived just a few blocks away when he was born.
Boyum died in 1991 at the age of 77, and his son died in 2000, so his house has just been sitting empty and deteriorating. The group is trying to raise $20,000 so they can buy it and turn it into a park.
The benefit was fun – there was a small cover charge, and the bar was donating a percentage of the take for the afternoon, so I bought a glass of porter, and got a nice little Sunday afternoon one beer buzz. That I think most of the other oldsters there were feeling as well. And there were a couple of pick up bands, a polka band and a Bowie cover band. The partner of my department administrator was the bass player in the Bowie cover band. I left just as the band with the most professional musicians in it started – playing toy instruments – toy piano and toy Rickenbacker guitar, and a mandolin – not a toy, but small. And right after, the photo shoot complete with Sid masks.
I didn’t start looking for set lists for the big Bowie show at all until Monday – and of course there’s a lot on the Internetz, and video too. I felt less small town when Rolling Stone pointed out that Michael Stipe performed wearing a long beard and a ring in his nose – so Brooklyn – the first things I said about his appearance, too, when I watched him on Jimmy Fallon on Wednesday.
On the left, Stipe’s photo on the website for the Bowie tribute, on the right what he looked like singing at it
I guess time moves at different speeds sometimes depending on where you are, small town or big city, especially when you can watch it on YouTube afterward. The thing that actually got me started looking for setlists and vid was this picture from the April 4 New Yorker, that actually came out March 28 or so:
Questlove, Debbie Harry, and Michael Stipe as Bowie
By the time I saw this pic, I knew that the Roots had dropped out of the show, Debbie Harry wore a hood, not that hat, and Michael Stipe wore that ridiculous beard.
I, of course, would’ve loved to have been there to see it all and especially wanted to see Robyn Hitchcock.
Here’s a setlist for Thursday, a little oddly formatted but with lots of links to videos.
And, here’s a setlist for Friday.