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Most of this is opinion--I was too damn busy last evening enjoying myself to bother collecting facts--and it may not be sane.
The opener was Life on Mars. Bowie walked out alone with his spiral bound notebook of songs, which from our view in the little balcony right above the stage, appeared to have lyrics for most songs, but also the music for some of them. He introduced Mike Garson. They did the song just voice and electric piano, and at the second verse, synthetic strings came in. It might have been a tape, but I'm almost sure that Garson was playing them on a synthesizer or activating a sample somehow. From where I was, I couldn't see how many keyboards he had. (I could see his head and chest, but I couldn't quite see over his setup to see his hands.)
After it was over, they stared at each other and beamed and knew they had nailed it. Bowie's voice shook the rafters. It sounded great stripped down like that.
"Can't Help Thinking 'bout Me," really rocked. Sterling Campbell did a great job on the song. It is so retro, it sounded like it could have been a new song, and I'm sure if he didn't intro it (in which he made fun of the lyrics), many people would have thought it was new.
The version done of "China Girl" was the best I've ever heard. It started out in a slow, piano-accompanied German cabaret dirge. Then it exploded into a roaring punk version of the song. The trademark guitar from the 1983 version didn't appear until the end. IMHO, he finally showed a reason for redoing the original.
"Drive In Saturday" in an odd way reminded me of "Little Wonder" in that by sheer force of Bowie's will, he has made it a crowd pleasing sing along show-ender, like LW a song ill-suited to that spot. The audience really loved this. Everyone around us was asking "where's that from?" "where's that from?" It was a great version. Again, Sterling kicked it and the backup singers added a lot.
His last words of intro to "Word on a Wing"--which came after a story about how the middle 70s were the worst time of his life and in which he admitted his nutty obsessions in a very funny way and acknowledged that he was off his rocker--were serious. He said that the song obviously was a call for help.
General Points
I've never seen Reeves better. Bowie has done with him what he did with Belew and Fripp. Both of them seemed out of control at times, and he had given them great melodies, 12 bars or so to solo in and make their mark, and then great choruses to follow. Last night, similarly, we got screaming Reeves solos that were contained in what sounded like great pop songs. I also thought Reeves was more animated at times than I've ever seen him. Sorry, but in concert, attitude is one thing but I'm never sure whether this guy really likes to be on stage. No question about last night. he had a ball. He kinda acted like an Ed McMahon/Andy Richter, ansering Bowie's questions, mostly with funny nonsequiturs.
More on animation: Everyone in the band was dancing and moving during Drive in Saturday. They knew it was great too.
The band sound is far better now than the band sound in 1997-98. I have a point of comparison in that I saw the Earthling tour play at NBC in the SNL studio. That was cacaphony ...not that I didn't like it. But this sounds far more like real instruments and less like tapes or metallic bashing. Again, I think Cambell's drumming had something to do with that. For the last song, "The Pretty Things..." they put a real cowbell on his drumset, and he beat that thing to a pulp on the song, which is the most Bowie-esque of the new material in its stops and changes in melody and tempo. The others are simpler and milder. [The snippet of Pretty Things on the MTV site is useless in determining what it is like, frankly.] At once point during I Can't Read, it almost sounded like Bowie himself had a loose string. I realized that it was instruments sounding like the musicians playing them, not enhancements. Bowie clearly didn't use any tapes behind his voice. The backup singers sounded great and weren't intrusive.
After the taping, the executive producer said that the stuff that would be played subsequently definitely would NOT be on the air. He said they wouldn't be allowed to show it. But then the band redid Thursday's Child, and the taping continued throughout. Bowie then gave a speech before "I Can't Read" about how the youngest generations often think it isn't cool to learn and how scary that is. It was pretty pretentious, and then Bowie said that it was pretty out there, and you can see why that speech wouldn't be on TV, which got a good laugh. He then intro'd the song by saying in a joking manner that it was the one Tin Machine song that the band still did, but that they would be pulling out more in the future. Then he joked in an odd, old guy's voice, "they'll be back!!!" He wasn't referring to the band, but to the songs, and even though he was joking, my take is that he wasn't, and that he really will play TM songs again, as he said it, someday. Given this setlist, anything could happen.
He mentioned Iggy (long anecdote about him before "China Girl"; BTW, an excellent article about Iggy and his new album--glowing--in the new "Paper" magazine, not yet up at the mag's site); Steve Marriott (I might have misheard this but I don't think I did because of the association, which is the punchline so I won't give it up here); Carlos Alomar (in the context of a backup singer who lived in Carlos's building, before Bowie lived in her building out in LA, and that he had known her a long time and was glad to finally work with her professionally), and an excellent Marc Bolan story that audience member Tony Visconti himself laughed out loud at, as did everyone else. At one point, he asked all the band members (except he forgot Sterling) where they were from and joked with them.
Anything else? As you can tell, I'm hesistant to tell the actual stories, except for the post-taping stuff, since you'll see them yourselves, full of Bowie's charm and self -deprecating humor. The music overshadowed the stories for me, but my wife, not having heard them, loved them, as did everyone else. The chats were very entertaining.
This appearance, bizarrely, was a very understated Bowie. He can be very emphatic in interviews when he gets a laugh on a talk show. Here, he kept the modulation very low.
OK, the appearance: With the very long hair--he made a joke about it comparing himself to Mike Garson's pate after LOM--you often can't see his whole face. We both agreed that if he walked past us downtown carrying his big notebook like he walked into the Hammerstein Ballroom's sound stage last night, that we would never notice him.
My wife noted that even though he is well over 50, he is way too skinny and still smokes way too much. By comparison, the video of the MSG birthday show makes him look fat. ;-)
Anything else? Well, if Bowie can look back all the time, so can I: I guess almost 24 hours later, if forced to compare, I'd have to say that My Death and Moonage Daydream at the GQ awards were the two most memorable performances I'd seen in person up to this point, with the entire Supper Club show the overall best Bowie concert experience. I'd guess now, the novelty of hearing "Word on a Wing" live for the first time and the way he nailed "Life on Mars" would have to rank with those, with Drive In Saturday, never a song that I put on mix tapes or had any real affection for, very very close. As the exec producer of the show said afterward, they'll never be a better Storytellers. (I think he was sincere, too.)
