“And there's something in the air”
On 19th November 1999, David Bowie played to an invited audience of fans and contest winners for a gig promoting 'hours...' at the Kit Kat Klub in New York.
The show was recorded and filmed for a webcast the following month via Liveonline.net. If this wasn't the first broadcast of a live show on the web, then it was certainly among the very first. However, it seems the web wasn't quite ready yet as the viewing experience wasn't particularly smooth.
A 12-track bootleg of the show was enjoyed by fans in the absence of any official release, though the source was most likely the official 12-track promotional CD pictured in our montage.
Compare that against the 17-track setlist to identify the five missing tracks.
At the time, cub reporter Andrew Barding wrote a review for Paul Kinder’s brilliant BowieWonderWorld, accompanied by pictures taken by BowieNetters and BowieWonderWorlders at the show.
Andy has revisited the evening and has sent us a new review that captures the moment beautifully.
Over to you, Andy.
#BowieKitKatKlub #BowieHours
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David Bowie Kit Kat Klub 19th November, 1999, by Andy Barding
Take it from someone old enough to remember – the end of the 20th century was a mad old time.
The technological breakthroughs we witnessed in the 1990s were spectacular, but they sent us all a bit loopy. Life was exciting, for sure, but we were struggling to grasp all the new concepts that our inventions were offering us. Remember the “Millennium Bug”? Remember wondering if it would suck planes from the sky, or cause a rift in space-time?
David Bowie, ever the curious little alien, had already thoroughly explored the paranoia of these ultimately anti-climatic non-end times through the pagan savagery of 1.Outside and the techno-fear of EART HL I NG... the first in a trio of albums to be perpetually misnamed by his audience.
Concerts around those releases had been agreeably stark and mysterious – both artful and confrontational. Classic Bowie, you could say.
But by 1999, Bowie had changed (again). He had become readier than ever to reflect on what had happened and on what might come to be in his life. He released a new album full of uncharacteristically pensive, emotional reminiscences and called it ‘hours...’ Everybody else called it Hours.
Meanwhile, the internet was his new obsession. Bowienet, launched in 1998, had been steadily growing over the year but it was nothing like as huge as it would become. There were one or two rudimentary fan sites, too. By today’s scale, this was all very small fry. But it must have been a big enough buzz in 1999 to spark a light-bulb moment for Bowie: “Let’s play a gig! And let’s make it free! And let’s open it up to these kids on the internet!”
And so we emerged, blinking, out of the chilly Autumnal night into a warm little Manhattan nightclub. We, the faithful and true of the internet, had been summoned by fan-site contests, via newsgroup invitations, by promotional emails and other electronic tittle-tattle. We were brought to this place by bits and bytes, a virtual global community united for the first time. We had been handed identical laminate passes to hang around our necks, but we were strangers when we met. We had come from all over the (real) world for this. And it’s very easy to underestimate, two decades on, the importance of that moment.
And so we sat, or stood – either around or in front of little cocktail tables lit by little lamps. When Bowie and Mike Garson stepped silently onstage to open the show with a stripped-back ‘Life On Mars?’ It couldn’t have felt more intimate. This was a supper date for no more than a cool couple of hundred of us.
As the tiny stage filled with musicians, the gig seemed no less informal. ‘Thursday’s Child’, fleshed out by a full band, sounded big and bold, and ‘Always Crashing In The Same Car’ gathered enough swing to get the crowd bouncing.
Somewhere in the set, ‘Something In The Air’ crept in to mash my head. I could only stand agog as I bore witness to what I truly consider to be Bowie’s finest vocal performance, ever. With his eyes snapped shut, and his throat visibly rippling, I saw his breath fly like a jet of steam from his mouth into the smoky air of the Kit Kat. Such power! He sang like his flight home to London depended on it. A remarkable performance and one which I will never forget. As you can probably tell.
There were no lame ducks in the set. ‘Can’t Help Thinking About Me’ rocked like it probably did in the 60s, and a dusted-down ‘Ashes To Ashes (complete with Mark Plati funky bass parts – he and near-birthday girl Gail Ann Dorsey had swopped instruments for the song) was a genuine and welcome surprise.
David was witty and wicked: “I told you it should have been the single,” he muttered very obviously to Page ‘Helmet’ Hamilton after the rousing reception for ‘Drive-In Saturday’. Then to the first few rows: “Industry joke”. And to the record label freeloaders on the balcony: “Or maybe not.”
So it went on. David picked up a harmonica to rock like a bastard through ‘Cracked Actor’, took the vibe back down for a sublime ‘Survive’, then brought it back to business with a guitar-heavy ‘I’m Afraid Of Americans’.
Bowie would go on to pull plenty more rabbits out of his hat for us in future years, of course. But this night in the Kit Kat Klub was the time that felt most special to us fans who were lucky enough to be there. The division lines between his characters are easy to draw – Ziggy is as different from the Thin White Duke as the Soul Tour is to Tin Machine – but this little show is a line in the sand, too. It marked the beginning of a new relationship between Bowie and his audience.
And it was a cracking good way to see out the century.
FOOTNOTE: The photos here are by Alison Hale. I met her at a Bowie gig in Birmingham in 1990 and we became partners in life as well as partners on future Bowie adventures. The pictures she got with a smuggled camera over so many Bowie shows were truly amazing, and her Kit Kat Klub photos – snatched under the glare of security personnel – are among her best. Sadly, Alison passed away in 2012.
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