Howard Stern Birthday Party

I just came from the show. The show began promptly at 7:00 and Bowie came out about 9:00. The entire band was there. He did 3 songs: Fame, Hallo Spaceboy, and IAOA. He looked incredible. His hair was cropped and crew-cut-ish, in a medium shade of brown hair (looked like the natural color to me). His suit was gorgeous, most likely black but could have been dark charcoal gray, with very wide leg trousers, black shirt & tie, and a red hankie, and sunglasses. The only time he took the sunglasses off was for a moment in Hallo Spaceboy. The sound was pretty lousy, but the band seemed really on. Reeves looked great, he looks like he shed some weight, and his hair was really flattering, darker and slightly longer.

They powered through the songs pretty fast, and Bowie did not do some of the trademark gestures I have come to associate with these songs from the Earthling tour, although he did do the hand gesture at the beginning of IAOA. He did reach out to the audience (the audience at the level of the stage was all VIPs and Howard's wack pack people), but not as much as usual. Howard came and spoke to him in between Hallo Spaceboy & IAOA, mostly about the stock deal. All in all, it was brief but powerful. It was difficult for me to not be looking at David, but during Fame and IAOA I foreced myself to take a look at Howard and he was really rocking out, he seemed really into it. The Howard fans were digging it too, I heard several of them saying how good they thought he was when we were walking out. Bowie and the band were not into making eye contact and waving to the fans up in the balconies.

We had lousy seats (all the radio contest winners were exiled to the highest balcony) but a security guard and a sound man took pity on us and let us sneak down to a small side balcony one level below our seats so we could see better. So that was a total plus.