David Bowie – A Reality Tour review

ISO / Sony
David Bowie – A Reality Tour

www.davidbowie.com
www.myspace.com/davidbowie


By Mike Bax

Things have been quiet on the Bowie front for the past few years. Reality was released in 2003 – and Bowie toured the album through 2004 until he required a surgical procedure in Hamburg in June of 2004 which cut the tour short. A live DVD of the Reality tour was released in 2004, and this double CD is material taken from the same two nights, recorded live in Dublin on November 22nd and 23rd of 2003. Bowie has contributed to assorted albums and performances over the past few years (Contributing to TV On The Radio and Scarlett Johansson albums and appearing on stage as a surprise guest with David Gilmour and Arcade Fire) but there is no sign of a new album seven years after Reality saw release.

I was never really been a big Bowie fan. For me, he’s neutral music – someone I can enjoy album by album, but I’ve never really been a particularly huge fan. I saw the Reality tour in early 2004, and I went because the Stereophonics were opening the show (No lie. I’m a big Stereophonics fan). It will come as no big surprise that Bowie blew me away when I saw this tour. And I look to this new double album as a souvenir of that particular evening, as it encapsulates how amazing the performance was.

With over 40 years in the entertainment business, Bowie really has nothing to prove. What I enjoyed about seeing his live performance, and what I enjoy about this new live recording, is how obvious this point is when listening to his material. Whether it’s new material, old material or a well placed cover version, Bowie sounds like a piece of rock ‘n roll history, and this double live CD is exactly that - a retrospective on one of the great ones.