When Bowie announced his forthcoming Glass Spider tour, If I remember correctly, he said that the show would tell a "story" or have a theme running through it.

I was listening to the Montreal show the other day and decided to listen to the "spoken" bits between the songs -and try to work out what they saying/telling.

Here is my transcript of the spoken bits:

They get cluster - Instantagious
Four Teenagers in a car
They fixed hose pipes from the exhaust into the windows – did you hear me
Right there in a cluster
You’re just not good enough
You’re just not educated and cooperative
and you’re not allowed to talk about nothing
cause you’re made from the wrong stuff
wrong stuff (chanted)
…Up the Hill Backwards

She says real friends don’t walk over real friends
She (can’t make it out)
I will be back when you get it together
I don’t intend to fall – it will be an accident
You mean you don’t live like that?
No
You’re not a friend?
Yes
We can’t have rock stars cross breeding with normal people
…Absolute Beginners

Ugly Time
Like falling on a knive
Ugly Time
Friends taking their life
Ugly Time
Like Government men
Beating on the door like a new future plan
Then there’s Thor son of Odin, undergod, heir of the realm eternal, the mightiest warrior in the nine worlds
…Fashion

I want to punch a whole in the sky
(foreign translation)
I want to touch the future
(foreign translation)
It’s chicken and feathers
(foreign translation)
It’s Rock n Roll
It’s like kissing a blow torch
(foreign translation)
It’s Rock n Roll
She doesn’t take lovers she takes hostages
(foreign translation)
It’s Rock n Roll
It’s madness
… All the Madmen


end of Big Brother…
Operators are standing by
(I can’t make out the next few lines)
… Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family)

Can any one help me with the missing bits?
And can anyone help explain them??

PS I notice that by Canada, Bowie was getting tired of the "pantomime" and that there were less spoken pieces between songs, Big Brother was the last and that was only half way through the show. Does anyone know what was removed?



Tell them they can laugh at me

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She says real friends don’t walk over real friends
She (can’t make it out)

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Haven't heard the concert for years, but I think the line is something like:

She be your prize for being coolest.

This narrative came after Bang bang, which was a great performance.

During Bang bang, Bowie picks a girl "at random" from the audience to dance with him. The way she acted when she reached the stage would have led most of the crowd to have assumed she had never met Bowie before. She ends up dancing like a professional by the end of the song.

The narrative explains that it was all a trick and Bowie wouldn't have danced/lived with an ordinary member of the audience, hence "We can’t have rock stars cross breeding with normal people".

bye tr

trendy's trainpage is at http://www.geocities.com/trendy_rechauffe

"No peachy prayers, no trendy rechauffé
I'm with you so I can't go on"

G.B.A.

..and wasn't the dancer Melissa Hurley who Bowie dated before remembering his own line "We can’t have rock stars cross breeding with normal people"

Tell them they can laugh at me

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PS I notice that by Canada, Bowie was getting tired of the "pantomime" and that there were less spoken pieces between songs, Big Brother was the last and that was only half way through the show. Does anyone know what was removed?

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Even more were removed during the course of the tour. By Australia, where the Glass Spider Video was filmed. By that time, the last two dialogues had been dropped, and All The Madmen, Big Brother and Chant Of The Ever Circling Skeletal Family (at least) had been dropped.


Zane, Zane, Zane,
Mange le chien

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By that time, the last two dialogues had been dropped, and All The Madmen, Big Brother and Chant Of The Ever Circling Skeletal Family (at least) had been dropped.

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Those songs were played at the Sydney show I saw which was just before or after the one filmed for the video. I'd say the video just had them edited out.

bye tr

trendy's trainpage is at http://www.geocities.com/trendy_rechauffe

"No peachy prayers, no trendy rechauffé
I'm with you so I can't go on"

G.B.A.

Wonder who the idiot woman singing along in all the songs on the Glass Spider live video is. She spools most of the entertainment. Wasn't it possible to edit her out?

I was always looking left and right!

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Wonder who the idiot woman singing along in all the songs on the Glass Spider live video is. She spools most of the entertainment. Wasn't it possible to edit her out?

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I've wondered that myself. She's just sooooooooooo annoying. And they seemed to have been filming especially her. I wonder who she is. I'd be ashamed.


Bowie-Eno is Finnish for Uncle Bowie

this won't add much to the discussion, but

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Ugly Time
Like Government men
Beating on the door like a new future plan

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still makes me laugh like nothing else in the world

oh by jingo

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You’re just not educated and cooperative

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You're just not educated proper

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She (can’t make it out)

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She'd be your prize for being coolest.

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You’re not a friend?

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edit: I just remembered the exhange. Melissa inquires, "It's all a trick?"

"Yes!" Bowie replies.

Then the group intones: "We can't have rock stars cross-breeding with normal people."

So Bowie marries Iman.

I think I'll make a point to repeat all this nonsense on my deathbed, just to mix it up a little.

"What were poppa's last words?"

"Um, 'It's chicken and feathers! It's rock and roll! It's like kissing a blowtorch! It's rock and roll!'"

"Oh. Where's the will?"

____
Kid, you've paid your dues...dues and dues. ~J. Tweedy

Edited by power2charm on 05/05/07 11:14 AM (server time).

The best I can come up with is that the dialogue loosely follows the plight of teenagers that have grown up on the wrong side of town and whom were possibly orphans.

The opening track 'Glass Spider' is about maternal abandonment. The second track 'Day in Day Out' also suggests this (she was born in a handbag.....love left on a doorstep) before tracing her trajectory as she grows older.

Some of the more coherant text.....

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You’re just not good enough
You’re just not educated properly
and you’re not allowed to talk about nothing
cause you’re made from the wrong stuff

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....describes how their upbringing (poor education, percieved lower class) comes back to stunt them. The song that follows describes their struggle (Up The Hill Backwards) as does some of 'Day In Day Out' which describes the difficulties faced by the central female character.

Some of her friends, it appears are about to commit suicide (four teenagers in a car.....they fixed hose pipes from the exhaust into the windows) - and later again (Ugly Time, Friends taking their life).

The reference to "Government men beating on the door" could be the same authorities in 'Day In Day Out' (in the video, the police and army arrive at her home).


_________________________________________________________

ADAM VS BOWIE MASH UP PROJECT - | - BOWIE DOWNUNDER

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jonasf:
Wonder who the idiot woman singing along in all the songs on the Glass Spider live video is.

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K:
I've wondered that myself.

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This came up on the BDU discussion group several years ago. Here was verdict from one of our members:

I know the very woman you are talking about. I got to know her quite well since I was standing next to her most nights. Her name was Sarah and she was from America. She is a real die hard fan. She saw every show of the Glass Spider tour (America and Europe). David got to know her so well that when he found out she was going to follow the tour to Australia he gave her an "All Access Pass" for all the Oz shows. That is why she could just walk out and stand in the front, centre position each night. It pissed me off at first because that was my position she was standing in god damn it ;-) But after a while she grew on me and she told us some incredible back stage stories. Don't ask, I'm not repeating them. Let's just say that Coco hated her to death.

She did know all the words to every song (put me to shame). She even did that that weird arm dance that David and the transvestite dancer (can't remember his name) did during Absolute Beginners. She was a little bit weird but. She showed us pictures of just her standing alone and insisted that David was standing next to her, he just didn't show up in the pictures when she got them developed.

P.S. She was only a legal secretary. Don't ask me how she afforded all this.


_________________________________________________________

ADAM VS BOWIE MASH UP PROJECT - | - BOWIE DOWNUNDER

I wonder what she's doing now?

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She showed us pictures of just her standing alone and insisted that David was standing next to her, he just didn't show up in the pictures when she got them developed.

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That just screams "fruit loop" to me. Perhaps she changed her name after seeing Labyrinth too.

Pain is hearing Bowie and Mickey Rourke trading rap lines on 'Shining Star (Making My Love)'. Yes, the actor Mickey Rourke makes an appearance on a David Bowie album credited as "rapper".

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I wonder what she's doing now?

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Like many older fans, she was probably suceptible to the ebb and flow of Bowie's work (Tin Machine followed).

I am not sure what it is (maybe it's sex driven) but from observation, I've noticed that females in particular get very drawn into the concert experience.....but the fandom fades after that experience is over.

_________________________________________________________

ADAM VS BOWIE MASH UP PROJECT - | - BOWIE DOWNUNDER

It's the whole rock star thing isn't it? They're not so transfixed when the whole charisma and presence isn't within grasping distance.

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Like many older fans, she was probably suceptible to the ebb and flow of Bowie's work (Tin Machine followed).

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You know, I've always thought that Tin Machine was a good yardstick for seperating the Bowie tragics from the mere fans. If you can find something of worth in Tin Machine, it's clear you're obviously a pretty fucken dedicated Bowie tragic. That said, Tin Machine get a pretty unfair wrap.


Pain is hearing Bowie and Mickey Rourke trading rap lines on 'Shining Star (Making My Love)'. Yes, the actor Mickey Rourke makes an appearance on a David Bowie album credited as "rapper".

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The best I can come up with is that the dialogue loosely follows the plight of teenagers that have grown up on the wrong side of town and whom were possibly orphans.

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One wonders what sort of time investment db made to compose the spoken bits. Was there ever a moment where he thought what he had written was good?

Speaking from my experience watching that tour in a football arena, I couldn't make out most of what was being said due to the distortion from the amplifiers and the noise underneath the spoken words.

____
Kid, you've paid your dues...dues and dues. ~J. Tweedy