![]() ![]() ![]() I want to be a superhuman’”) to the times he trotted out his own impersonators onstage. But there was plenty of evidence to suggest that Bowie loved his doppelgangers, from his own desire to be larger than life (“I felt very puny as a human,” he once remarked. Tribute acts often deal with the perception that they’re somehow lesser for playing another artist’s back catalogue. “The much larger percentage was coming to our shows to grieve, and to heal.” We’d been doing this act for 15 or so years prior and David Bowie himself was supportive.” Only “a small portion” of fans felt that way, though. I remember the first time we toured Europe, one of the criticisms we got was, ‘This is distasteful, doing a David Bowie tribute so soon after he died.’ They were under the impression that we had just formed this act as a response to him passing. “People are appreciated after they’re gone, sadly, sometimes more than they were at the time. ![]() “When I found out, I was in shock,” Brighton recalls. But suddenly, as his hero passed away from cancer at 69, the gig had changed. At this point he had been making a living as a David Bowie impersonator for over a decade and, thanks to his appearances as the icon in the 2009 film Watchmen and his stage show “ Space Oddity,” was considered one of the best in his line of work. 10, 2016, David Brighton’s phone began ringing as fans began sending the musician consolatory messages. During lesser-known songs, they occasionally lost the crowd (at least the part of crowd I was standing near), but through it all every single band member maintained that late-70s Bowie swagger.On Jan. (He’s best known from his years as a sideman with industrial juggernaut Ministry, and in the decades since he’s established himself as a singer-songwriter.) As a Bowie fan, I’m always excited to see Sons of the Silent Age play from their hearts as Bowie fans themselves. The range of Bowie’s voice isn’t easy to match, but Connelly sounds uncannily like him without just doing a cheap impersonation. ![]() The Berlin trilogy consists of Low, “Heroes”, and Lodger, the second of which features the song “Sons of the Silent Age.” Other than the ubiqitous “Heroes,” a song I’d be sick of by now if I didn’t love it so darn much, songs from these relatively artsy albums have gotten less than their fair share of play in the onslaught of Bowie tributes that have emerged over the past two years.Īnd there’s no one I would’ve rather seen tackle these records than this band. Though Bowie and his wife at the time, Angela, would divorce in early 1980, he’d proved it was possible can get rid of private demons and go on to create innovative and lasting work. It was a period of healing, renewal, and creativity, which not only offers hope to many of the patients honored at the concert and their personal battles with a terrible disease but also suggests that there are ways to survive the upheavals currently happening across so many industries (including the music biz). He roomed with Iggy and collaborated extensively with iconoclastic producer Brian Eno. (The show benefited the NorthShore University HealthSystem’s integrative medicine program.) Everything about the concert-opening act TALsounds, the stories from the cancer patients and survivors who were invited onstage to speak, the dark, electric performance from actor and musician Michael Shannon as Iggy Pop-highlighted just how influential and meaningful Bowie’s work continues to be.īowie had spent years experimenting with drugs (well, “experimenting” is probably too gentle a word for the out-of-control habit that he left Los Angeles to flee-remember the coke spoon from the Museum of Contemporary Art’s “David Bowie Is” exhibit?), but he spent his time in Berlin experimenting with sound. Since debuting five years ago, Chicago-based Bowie tribute band Sons of the Silent Age have been throwing occasional fund-raisers for cancer patients and cancer research, and their efforts feel even more pointed since their inspiration’s death from the disease. Front man Chris Connelly and drummer Matt Walker brought their nine-person group to Metro on Saturday, focusing this time on the Berlin trilogy-that is, the three albums Bowie created after he moved to West Berlin in 1976. Today would’ve been the Starman’s 71st birthday, and Wednesday is the second anniversary of his death. January is a time of celebration and mourning for David Bowie fans. Best of Chicago 2022: Sports & Recreation.Best of Chicago 2022: Music & Nightlife.Get your Best of Chicago tickets! Line-Up Announced > Close ![]()
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