DAVID BOWIE : AT THE KIT KAT KLUB (LIVE NEW YORK 99)

  1. Life On Mars?
  2. Thursday's Child
  3. Something In The Air
  4. China Girl
  5. Can't Help Thinking About Me
  6. Always Crashing In The Same Car
  7. Survive
  8. Stay
  9. Seven
  10. Changes
  11. The Pretty Things Are Going To Hell
  12. I'm Afraid Of Americans

Label : ISO Records / Parlophone

Venue : Kit Kat Klub, New York City, New York, USA

Recording Date : November 19, 1999

Release Date : April 2021

Length : 54:02

Review (Discogs) : Recorded live at the Kit Kat Klub in New York on November 19, 1999. The show was recorded and filmed for a webcast the following month via Liveonline.net. Originally released officially only as a 12-track promotional release, it was widely available as a bootleg release with same 12 tracks. In April 2021 it was officially released as part 6 of Brilliant Live Adventures [1995-1999] series of six limited edition live albums.

Review (American Songwriter) : Anybody getting tired of the quarterly releases for previously unavailable David Bowie shows from later in his career? Didn't think so. Here's another, again with professionally recorded audio and a typically varied set list. But unlike previous Bowie concerts that reflected different tours, bands, and songs that covered his extensive career, The Kit Kat Klub's dozen tunes are nearly identical to the Paris '99 set that came out last year. The band is the same too, so unless you are a Bowie-phile that needs everything available, you can pass on this shorter show with only two different selections ("Stay" and "I'm Afraid of Americans") from the gig in France. That said, the five piece led by longtime Bowie keyboardist Mike Garson with two backing vocalists was well rehearsed and burns through this somewhat brief 50 minute set. The occasion was in a smaller venue for "an invite-only audience of fans and contest winners" as the promotional notes tell us, yet there is nothing especially intimate about Bowie's approach. Either he wasn't chatty this evening or his between song patter was edited out. This was the tour for the 1999 somewhat underappreciated Hours and includes four tunes (out of the dozen played) from that disc. The biggest surprise and one of the clear highlights is a take on Station to Station's "Stay." This 6 ½ minute version blows away the studio one as the band rides a heavy funk groove with precision and power. Guitarists (Mark) Plati and Page Hamilton lock together, drummer Sterling Campbell is crisply taut and Bowie, who is in stunning voice for the entire night, joins with the backing singers for a gospel inflected, roaring performance that might be worth springing for even if you already own the Paris concert. The closing "I'm Afraid of Americans" punches with a more organic, propulsive attack than the studio original's chilly techno beats. Hits like "Changes," "China Girl" and a bittersweet opening "Life on Mars?" (with Bowie accompanied only by Garson's magnificent piano and synths) show the singer/songwriter wasn't adverse to re-arranging older material to adapt to a new band and current musical trends. Bowie shows no signs of being tired or bored with these oldies regardless of how often he sang them over the decades. Overall, it's a terrific performance. If there wasn't already a longer one that virtually duplicates it available, it would be essential.

Concert Review (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.