Let's hear it for Mr. Pavarotti on spoons.....

February 22nd – I think we can agree, without fear of retribution, that to be a rock performer of any note you have to have an ego the size of Kent; what we euphemistically call ‘attitude’ these days…you know, where someone from the rock world beats their partner to an unrecognisable pulp or sets fire to the front row of fans and then the press talk about ‘their attitude’. Well, out of that ‘attitude’ leaks a far less pleasant idiosyncrasy; for all you fans on stupid-watch there’s a double-trick following. 
Now, Mr D. Bowie has made a couple of previous appearances in these musings (see Jan 6th & Feb 3rd) and it may seem as though I’m heading up a whinge-posse, so I’d like to state right here and now that I’m not. You know I raved about the ‘Ziggy Stardust’ tour and ‘The Man Who Sold the World’ album. But, as I've also written before, stupidity in all its forms should,

a) be noted and highlighted whenever it is found and,

b) is in the eye of the beholder.

So what do you think was going through Mr. Bowie’s mind when he joined T-Rex on tour on this day in 1969, not to sing a duet with the desirable Mr. Bolan but to perform…a mime!?

That’s like having Beethoven in your house and saying, “Don’t play the piano, Ludwig, just turn the radio on and make us some toast, will y’? …I SAID MAKE US SOME TOAST!!”

Don’t know about you but one of my favourite scenes in ‘Tootsie’ is where Dustin Hoffman walks through the park and pushes the white-face mime guy off’f the kerb, and that’s because I’m not a mime artist fan; why? Because even after this guy has been pushed over he still wants to live in this silent creation of his own ego… Even then the self-absorbed arse can’t fall over like a normal guy. He has to make a BIG THING out of the fall, like he’s at the top of a skyscraper. And then he exaggerates the stand up and brush down to a degree that just makes you want to throw a bucket of cold sick over him…and even then he’d probably go through a mime of scraping his finger through it, tasting it and finding an imaginary plate to scrape the rest onto before shaking out an invisible napkin, sitting in an imaginary chair and tucking in…I mean; DILLIGAF? Arse.

1969 was a time when Bowie was, seemingly, at his most productive, his most dangerous, his most creative. Given the platform of a T-Rex concert, all the beautiful people in the audience and his reputation for stretching the sexual and spiritual boundaries, what does he do for them? He does ‘a mime’… Thanks, David…arse.