A Reality Tour

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A Reality Tour was David Bowie's worldwide concert tour in 2003 and 2004, named for the focus of the tour, the recently released Reality (2003) from which many of the songs were taken. The tour visited North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia for the first time since 1987 during the Glass Spider Tour.

Bowie promoted this tour with appearances on primetime television shows such as The Tonight Show and on AOL Sessions [1], performing with his touring band consisting of recently met performers (Gerry "Spookyghost" Leonard, Catherine "Cat" Russle) as well as some of Bowie's common companions through the years (Mike Garson, Earl Slick, Gail Ann Dorsey, Sterling Campbell). He made the headlines many times during the tour, amongst an incident in which a fan in Oslo, Norway, cast a lollipop onstage during a performance and accidentally struck Bowie in his dilated left eye. [2]

Bowie performed continuously until, during a performance in Scheeßel, Bowie suffered from an injury which, first mistaken for a pinched nerve, turned out to be "an acutely blocked artery." [3] Bowie hospitalized for an emergency angioplasty and forced to cancel the remainder of his tour.

A DVD of a 2003 performance in Dublin from this tour was released in 2004 as A Reality Tour.

Contents 1 Performance 2 Repertoire 3 Performers 4 References

[edit] Performance

Bowie sought to perform in the format of a stadium concert with less focus on elaborate staging and more focus on the musicians in his band. The stage featured a number of platforms, some extending into the audience, as well as multiple video-screens projecting artistic images and live footage of the concert along with many colored lights for effects. The stage was typically placed at one end of the stadium or Arena with seating in the stands or on the field itself with a back-stage area on the far side of the stage. [4]

The musicians were dressed in casual but colorful outfits; nearly each musician had a set of outfits in different colors, such as Bowie's cut-off shirt and kneckerchief or Gail Ann Dorsey's dress. Musicians were free to move about the stage as their instruments permitted with wireless amplification, though Bowie and Dorsey interacted most often as part of the acts.

Each concert began with an introduction on the main video-screen, during which the band would enter the stage and prepare the opening number. After the opener, Bowie would greet the audience with the flexible line, "Hello, [city name], you crazy bunch of motherfuckers" as a sign of welcoming. The performances, between the somewhat staged pieces, were informal often with a dialog between Bowie and his audience, jokes, band introductions, and the occasional "Happy Birthday To You".

[edit] Repertoire

The set list included tracks spanning Bowie's 30 plus years in the music business, from The Man Who Sold the World (1970) all the way to Reality (2003), along with collaborations such as Sister Midnight (with Iggy Pop) and "Under Pressure" (with Queen), and snippets and teasers of Bowie classics such as "Space Oddity" and "Golden Years". There is a bit more focus, however, on tracks from the albums released since the Earthling World Tour in 1997, Heathen (2002), and Reality.

The only exception from his latest albums is 'hours...' (1999); no tracks from this album were included, possibly due to poor reception of the album. Other albums with no appearance included Space Oddity (1969), the cover album Pin Ups (1973), the ill-received Never Let Me Down (1987), the albums produced with the band Tin Machine, and Black Tie White Noise (1993).

A notable inclusion into the tour were the tracks from The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust, usually performed as the final encores. Though Bowie had performed the pieces many times through his career, the pieces had not been toured since 1978 when the live interpretations were featured on the Stage album. "Ziggy Stardust" was nearly always the finale of each concert.

The inclusion of tracks from Let's Dance and Tonight was also notable, considering a fan tendency to reject the albums as "too commercial" [5] (the reason no "Never Let Me Down" track has ever been performed live since 1987), seeing the return of the singles "Modern Love", "Blue Jean", and a semi-acoustic version of "Loving the Alien".

The interpretations presented often a heavier and more complex sound than those of the album releases to suit the band for which the Reality album had been written; a more dynamic "Rebel Rebel" which later saw a release as a bonus track was arranged as an opener which included notably some audience participation, though on a few occasions "New Killer Star" or "The Jean Genie" were played first. Use of audience vocals appear in a number of songs, most notably in interpretations of "China Girl", in which Bowie first invited the audience to sing on their own, only to inevitably fail, and then restarted the song singing it on his own. The process occurred somewhat vice-versa during performances of "All the Young Dudes", in which Bowie's voice was somewhat out of range to sing the chorus.

[edit] Performers

The band:

• David Bowie: vocals, guitars, stylophone, harmonica
• Earl Slick: guitar
• Gail Ann Dorsey: bass, backing vocals
• Gerry "Spookyghost" Leonard: guitar
• Sterling Campbell: drums
• Mike Garson: keyboards, piano
• Catherine Russell: acoustic guitar, percussion, backing vocals

[edit] References

• Get Bowie Down Under: A site containing a large amount of data on Bowie's leg of the tour in Australia
• Little Oogie's David Bowie Site: Complete with tour information