Wayne Coyne and Chewbacca bring the party to David Bowie tribute
NEW YORK -- Producer Michael Dorf had one rule for his two David Bowie tribute shows: "No shtick, pure art."
He had seen Lady Gaga's performance at the Grammy Awards, where she wore an orange wig and performed on a dancing piano, and he guaranteed that none of the 20 some performers who would be taking the stage at Carnegie Hall and Radio City Music Hall would do anything of the sort. "No one's trying to look like David Bowie, no one's trying to fake his voice or his shtick at all," he promised.
Indeed, Friday night's show at Radio City Music Hall was cautiously reverent, carefully buttoned up, with many of the performers seemingly hoping not to, well, f*ck it up.
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TV on the Radio's Kyp Malone delivered a soft, refreshingly unrefined performance of "Bewlay Brothers" that perfectly illustrated the poetry of the Hunky Dory classic, coming off less like a Radio City performance and more like an intimate campfire gathering. Cat Power delivered an equally reverent performance of 1972's "Five Years," her eyes and hands occasionally looking to the heavens as if Bowie was watching too.
Michael Stipe was joined by English singer Karen Elson for a performance of "Ashes to Ashes" that was an elegy more than anything, but a beautiful, moving one. Choral rockers Polyphonic Spree took their reverence and raised them tenfold with a performance so praise-like that it would have felt much more at home at St. John's Cathedral uptown.
And while these moments were welcome, overall, the night was so heavy with them that at times the show felt more like a wake than a party. While Bowie performed "Sorrow" with an underlying feeling of hope, Jakob Dylan's rendition was mostly just sorrow. Ron Pope's twangy "Moonage Daydream" seemed to take most of the kick out of the original's spiked concoction.
So when things took a more lighthearted turn toward the end of the night, it was welcome. Rickie Lee Jones led the audience in a singalong of "All the Young Dudes" that was simultaneously meditative and celebratory. Jane's Addiction's Perry Farrell followed with a performance of "Rebel Rebel" that infused the show with Bowie's signature glam-rock whimsicality. And Blondie's Debbie Harry did a little dance back and forth before kicking off into an empowering rendition of "Heroes" that had the whole crowd singing along.
But the highlight of the night was when Wayne Coyne went there for his performance of "Life on Mars." The notoriously weird Flaming Lips frontman performed the entire song on top of a bandmate dressed as Chewbacca, a cape with LED lights streaming down him.
It may have been a bit of a shtick, but it was a welcome one.
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