Dumbek's Random Stuff

9/28/87 - David Bowie @ The Capital Centre - Landover, MD

This was the tour supporting Never Let Me Down. I didn't really like this album, but I wasn't going to miss a Bowie show. I had just graduated from college and had only been working for about a month. It felt weird not going back to school in the fall for the first time since I was a toddler. I decided to call my old roommate's ex, Dawn, and see if she wanted to go. She had just arrived in DC for law school, was going through the same sort of PSU-withdrawal I was, so she jumped at the chance to hang out with an old friend. I remember her being slightly pissed that I was late and kept her waiting at the Addison Road Metro stop at the east end of the Blue Line. Can't really blame her for that. She was a huge Bowie fan though. It didn't take her long to get over it.

Not the best Bowie show I've seen, but still a good time. There was a huge spider on top of the lighting rig, with it's legs hanging down the sides of the stage. Lots of theatrics - much of which we couldn't see well, being so far back. Some dude named Peter Frampton playing guitar. Bowie hadn't quite his his I'm-not-playing-the-hits phase yet, but it was obvious it was coming. The "Serious Moonlight" tour supporting Let's Dance was pretty much a greatest hits show. Not the case here. The one song I remember best was "Time" from Aladdin Sane. Bowie was perched atop the giant spider 20-some feet over the stage. Yikes.





9/28/05 - Black Rebel Motorcycle Club @ 9:30

They were touring for Howl. A good album, but very different. Their earlier stuff was more Jesus and Mary Chain-inspired, fuzzy, load and distorted. This record was more of an acoustic, bluesy record. It's very good in it's own right, but kind of an odd juxtaposition of sounds. The show focused heavily on the new stuff. I remember a few people being quite annoyed at that. Dinger and I were a little disappointed that there wasn't more old stuff. We were definitely ready to rock, but we still came away thinking it was a really good show. And now that we're more familiar with the record, I'm sure we'd appreciate the same show much more today.



9/28/07 - Bob Dylan/Elvis Costello @ Merriweather

Old post related to this show here. Elvis opened - completely solo. I thought he was better than Dylan. Dinger disagreed. I just have to be in the right mood to deal with Dylan these days. I tend to either think he's amazing or annoying as hell. This night I thought he was pretty lame. Dylan has a new rarities record coming out very soon. You can stream the whole thing at NPR.