"Sordid details following"

Holy Fahk.

I had another adventure this week. Last night I went to see Live On Mars: A Tribute to David Bowie at the local performance hall. Same place I saw Dio earlier this month. 

The email I got for the show was supposed to be an 8pm start with the possibility of out time at 10:45pm. The concert didn't start until 8:10 and finished by 10:30. With the band signing posters at the very end of the show, I was home by 11. 

So... what is this concert you ask? 

It's really a tribute band called Live on Mars, and not "Life On Mars?" like the song, or another martian being of similar fancy. This is a 6 piece British band including a drummer, keyboardist, two guitarists, a bassist and a singer. They are quite young (I wouldn't say more than 50 years old, at best) and full of energy. I had to do a randomly weird, jump through hoops, search to find all the names of the members. According to a review somewhere else, they are:  Alex Thomas (main singer), James Cole and Michael Gay on guitar and backing vocals, Edgar Jones on bass and backing vocals, Rob Stringer keyboards and backing vocals and finally Phil Murphy on drums and backing vocals. It quite possibly rook me 25 minutes to find their names because the only person I could recall was Alex and I then had to google "Live on Mars band members". First hits on the research led me no where, so I had to rethink how I needed to find it. I went through other various keywords to get to the review. Then I cross referenced it with the guys' social media accounts. Yerp. I done my research. And I was close with their ages - Edgar Jones is 48, according to Wikipedia ("Since when do you trust Wikipedia?????" my brain says), but you know what? When I wrote the line "they are quite young", I was going to say that they may not be 50, but the bassist looks like he's close to it. And I would have been accurate in that description. But this also proves that if you do your diligence, you will find the answers you need. Just like the fun fact of these guys are famous in their own rights... which I didn't even know, since I hadn't heard of any of them before. For example: James Cole, not only plays guitar, but he's a British race car driver! Seriously?? How cool is that - something as simple as having "a different day job" then what you're thinking the person does... is not what you'd imagine! 

When I got their autographs, they were super chunky nice. Truly down to Earth guys from the Liverpool area. They were so appreciative of the fans, and I said that I liked the show, and was grateful they came out to play because they were really good. I think they liked hearing that. I shook their hands too. It was neat to have the opportunity to thank them personally and hear their story afterwards - like Alex mentioned he's not been to Florida before, and it could have been August when they were here. I told him it's better they are here now because the weather may be hot, but we'd be deep in rain every day by August. I smiled and joked with him about it, and he laughed back. I think he liked that. I like to make it personal if I get the opportunity for a meet and greet - I like to thank the person and tell them I appreciated the show or whatever it is. It makes everyone feel like they're on the same level, I think, because they're not here to be big shots. If they're doing a meet and greet with autographs at the end of the show, they're here to show they care. It's all good in the end because they took the time to come out and play, and then stay for a hello and a signature. 

Ok... I'm going in circles and not explaining anything else. 

What things transpired through the 2 hour show, you're asking? Well... you got more time to spare?

With the start of Space Oddity, the lads used the big screen behind them to help elevate the songs they were singing. Whether it was a specially curated montage of Dame Bowie images or found concert footage, there was no shortage of db in sight. For the moon song, the background image had pieces of the original short video cut with space graphics - nebulae, moons, images you can find through certain space programs' websites. Other songs the group played (Fame, for example), had Bowie's face morphing through the years - starting with frontal images from when he was younger, all the way to 2013. I'm sure if someone were to keyword search "David Bowie face morph" they'd find various 3D movies of Mr. Jones' face through the years. I just did that and found something highly similar to what Live On Mars played last night. There's also the animated gif of his hairstyles through the years, that played as a background image at one point too. I've seen that animation a lot, but the 3D face morph was new. So again, "found footage". I do have to say, for every song they played, the album it appeared on, along with the year, was thrown on the screen, so you'd know Moonage Daydream came off of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust in 1972. Some of the songs the group played, they had an "introduction" by Bowie - a 60 second video of him explaining a song or a quip about a lyric and then the group went right into the song. When they did Under Pressure, they said they're going to need help from Freddie Mercury. On comes the Live Aid video. That's when you'll see my uploaded video have images from. Other songs were the actual music video (Ashes to Ashes, Let's Dance). It was interesting to see how they incorporated everything together, as a "celebration of David Bowie" rather than a tribute concert, because anyone can do one? Look how many "tribute concert"s are out there for people - George Harrison comes to mind real quick, and that was put together by his celebrity friends plus his family. I think there has been one for Prince recently, but I could be wrong.

The challenge with the whole concert was that I found Alex's vocals to be more on par with later ("modern") Bowie stuff than earlier stuff. Anything pre 1974/5 has a different vocal pitch / range than anything after 1979, really. Bowie starts getting a deeper voice come the late 70s, and it's those songs where Alex can really shine. He did hit the notes he needed for earlier works, but he can get too low in spots and although it has a possibility of working, it's not all there. The other members of the band hit all the right notes, but where can you go wrong with a bass line or a drum pattern? It's hard to mess those up only if you're not musically inclined.

To each his own, I reckon, but it was worth the experience none the less because the guys did know what they were doing and kept the audience on their feet. The only swag at the merch table was a $5 promo CD (by way of a London concert) and the $5 promotional US tour poster. Both of which I got signed. No other things were sold but the $10 I spent on stuff was far less than the Dio concert, even though I had a more understandably hearing time on this one. Would I see them again if they came back this way? Sure; my seat was 7 rows from the stage and I could see perfectly. I knew all the songs and although the moving pictures on the big TV were annoying at times (because you didn't know whether to watch the band or the static image), but I had fun. There were plenty of drunken dancers 5 rows in front of me, so I got to watch 40 year old women make fools of themselves, to the point security had to split up a man and a woman for getting to comfortable while dancing together. Other than that, there was the sole drunken fool who sat in his chair as everyone was leaving, yelling "Encore!!!!" "DO MORE!!!!!!!!!" and I think it was skeeving people out. This guy was way over served on his liquor and someone should have escorted him out, but it was the end of the night already; why bother? (and note: you'll hear him in the video -  he goes "YEEEEEEAAAAAA!!!!" during Under Pressure).

So without further ado, here is the video:

And last but not least: The songs played.
(not in order because I had to try to remember them so I could write them in my phone for this post. I'm sure I'm missing one or two. If anyone is reading this post and was there last night, hit me up and let me know... I'll add it to the list and credit you)

Space Oddity
The Man Who Sold The Wold
Hang On To Yourself
Five Years
Ziggy Stardust
Starman
Queen Bitch
Fame
Young Americans
Life on Mars
Sound and Vision
Let's Spend the Night Together
Under Pressure
All the Young Dudes
Rebel Rebel
Stay
Moonage Daydream
Ashes to Ashes
Changes
Fashion
Jean Genie
'Heroes'
Suffragette City
Modern Love
Let’s Dance


Have fun and be groovy!




Cheers;







See also (aka title reference):
David Bowie Ashes to Ashes

See also (aka the David Bowie Amazon page):
The albums page because most of the songs played were from the same places. It's easier to list everything so people can pick and choose