David Bowie - Storytellers

David Bowie
VH1Storytellers
Virgin

You’ve probably never envisioned Ziggy Stardust in a hoodie. However, the sight turns out to be far less revolting than you would have imagined. Finally available for home viewing in a CD/DVD package is David Bowie’s edition of VH1’s Storytellers, sickly cousin to MTV’s Unplugged. Despite our hoodied narrator performing in front of a collection of seated, faux “in-the-know” superfans who very likely have full bootleg’s of all eight shows Mr. Stardust performed at the Tower Theater between 1972 and 1973, yet have never donned a pair of gold lame pants themselves, the performance itself is the furthest thing from the drab collection of top ten hits, phoned-in from-the-space-station that one might expect.

“Life on Mars?,” Mr. Bowie’s masterpiece of all-time, begins the set in an unfortunately abbreviated format, followed with the very fortunately abbreviated rendition of “Rebel Rebel” (no one wants to see a middle-aged Englishman enacting the quintessential anthem of androgyny). Also included is the most raw and sincere performance Bowie has likely ever managed of “China Girl;” the Glamtastic early single “Can’t Help Thinking About Me,” and “Drive-In Saturday,” a brilliant but forgotten piece recently re-legitimized by St. Morrissey.

The set also includes a handful of tracks from 1999’s villainously underrated ‘hours…’, a piece far more worthy of unearthing than recent DVD re-issues of concerts from the Serious Moonlight or Glass Spider tours of the 1980s when the The Thin White Duke made a sincere attempt to get in touch with his heteronormativity. Izzy Cihak