Moonage Daydream David Bowie nonsense

The cover for an unofficial Canadian compilation CD, released on Musique Sabot

Something I found interesting about Moonage Daydream the first (and only time) I watched it, even as uningaging as it was for me, was the difference between Bowie’s connection to the audience in the 70s and the 80s.

In the 70s, watching him sing live, even through a television screen you can feel the energy radiating off of him and into the audience, and especially into the backing band members, specifically Mick Ronsosn. In the 70s, it felt like Bowie was actually talking to you. There was a great deal of charisma involved not only in the Ziggy Stardust character, but the other ones he portrayed as well, even characters as crass as the Thin White Duke. You could tell he really respected and enjoyed the company of Mick Ronson on stage and that Ronson was extremely well suited to being a member of the Spiders from Mars at the time, and at other parts with his work with Bowie.

I mean, if you look up pictures of them together, half of them have them grinding on each other in full view of the paying public, almost like forced voyeurism. Every time I revisit a 70s Bowie performance I can feel it in my soul how much he loved what he was doing, even if it very quickly became hell (as does the industry for every rocker) and poisonous and terrible and exhausting. 

Now you get to the 80s. You see Bowie in his shorter hair and blue suits. There is no chemistry at all between him and the backing band–these aren’t named people, these are JUST the backing band. No real connection can be discerned between any of them, even though Peter Frampton joined him for a tour in the 80s. These is also reinstated by that one video on youtube of Peter and David in Madrid looking for beer–the camera man constantly focuses on David’s antics and how many people are coming up asking him for autographs, and David laps it up and is joking just for the camera, for the spectacle. Peter barely gets featured the whole video, and Bowie barely talks to him, he's just a member of the entourage that never exactly leaves his side, not a band member or friend.

There also seemed to be a real disconnect between Bowie’s music and the audience in the 80s–I listen to relatively few Bowie songs in his expansive discography, and even fewer 80s songs. I can at least attest that songs like "Modern Love" have energy. Whatever songs were featured in Moonage Daydream have none of it, like Bowie is just watching himself from the inside and is performing unfeelingly like a robot. There doesn’t seem to be any love anymore for what he was doing, there is no more love for the audience, there is only the husk of the man formerly known as Bowie and the nameless, unknown backing band. And that’s really interesting.