The Music of David Bowie-Carnegie Hall 3/31/2016

          Carnegie Hall was the sight of the first night of two tributes to David Bowie.
          After selling out, a second night was added at Radio City Music Hall the following night, with a similar artist roster.
           The original show was part of the annual "Music Of" series that pays tribute to a different artist each year. Last year David Byrne was honored.
            Sadly, Mr. Bowie passed away the same day tickets went on sale for this show.
            This years show seemed to look better on paper than in its execution. I love David Bowie's music, love Carnegie Hall, and a fan of many of the artists who performed, but had a couple issues with the show overall.
             The performance in all were very good, a few being pretty remarkable, but found the sound to be possibly the worst I have ever heard at Carnegie Hall. Possibly it was the section I was in, but found the sound very muffled. All of the artist introductions were very muffled. The best sounding performances were the ones with minimal instrumentation. I do know that acoustic performances tend to sound better there, but I have seen many shows where full bands have performed and the sound was better.
              The highlights, for me, were Betty Lavette performing It Ain't Easy, Michael Stipe and Karen Nelson performing Ashes to Ashes, and The Flaming Lips doing Life on Mars?
               Holy Holy were the back up band, when needed. The band included of Woody Woodmansey and Tony Visconti, both longtime Bowie collaborators, as well as vocalist Glenn Gregory from Heaven 17.

               Here is the setlist:

                                Suffragette City - Cyndi Lauper
                                The Width of a Circle - Holy Holy
                                Soul Love - Robyn Hitchcock
                                Always Crashing in the Same Car - Laurie Anderson
                                Breaking Glass - Eugene Hutz & Sergey Ryabtsev of Gogol Bordello
                                Starman - Debbie Harry
                                The Man Who Sold the World - Joseph Arthur
                                Word on a Wing - The Mountain Goats w/Robyn Hitchcock
                                Ashes to Ashes - Michael Stipe & Karen Nelson
                                Quicksand - J Mascis w/Sean Lennon
                                It Ain't Easy - Betty Lavette
                                Rebel Rebel - Perry Farrell
                                Five Years - Cat Power
                                Let's Dance - Ann Wilson
                                Cactus - Pixies
                                All the Young Dudes - Rickie Lee Jones
                                Heroes - Jakob Dylan
                                Life on Mars? - The Flaming Lips
                                Space Oddity - Choir! Choir! Choir! & All Artists