Lets Stay Out Tonight

Not since Little Richard had anyone flipped the Rock and Roll script like David Bowie.
For a fellow set as firmly in the customary Rock and Roll script as myself, Bowie was, to say the least, upsetting. He crashed into my world like the Mystery Grandfather and his two brindle hounds, Whiskey, and Bad Cocaine.
And not the good Mystery Grandfather, either. Not the Mystery Grandfather who roamed the sky before the dreamtime, back when the earth was still a human being.
No, this was the dangerous Mystery Grandfather, the one who counted coup on Rabbit Woman. The one who loosed the Shore People. The one who set free Windigo to make the spring season equal parts hope and dread.

But that's the nature of visions, isn't it? Terrifying and seductive. Repellent and irresistible. Breathless and asphyxiating. Furious and soothing.
If we are open to the visions Mystery Grandfather sends us, we know life is a gift from one minute to the next. Nothing is for sure. There's more danger than safety. There's more danger than we realize. Everything is a risk. Its possible to defer risk. Its not possible to escape it. Well, maybe there is a way to escape but that's not living.
Anyway, that's why I found David Bowie upsetting. Little Richard had been upsetting too, of course. I mean, that lipstick, the eye shadow, the bouffant hair. The flamboyant mannerisms. The screaming. Very disturbing to a nice Irish boy who wanted to play like Mud.
But even if Little Richard was hollering about Tutti Frutti, he always sang about his gal, named Sue, who knew just what to do.
Mr Bowie, on the other hand; man I didn't know what he was singing about. OK, I knew what he was singing about but who was he singing about? Who was he singing to? He flipped the script. Got your mother in a whirl? Not sure if you're a boy or a girl? Of course I loved the Hot Tramp with the cue line and a handful of ludes. But I didn't like the uncertain identity of the adored object. How could they know? Looky here, now, I got to know.
To a guitar player, though, his riffs were from heaven. Listen to two bars of any Bowie tune, and you know exactly what song it is. Hell, listen to two notes and you know.
And they weren't terribly complicated. Listen to this. Its just an open D followed by an open E, the third and fourth strings held down by the same finger, stumbling at the first then run through the humbucker with the gain turned up halfway. And its got to be one of the most instantly recognizable riffs in all of Rock and Rolldom.
The only time I ever saw Bowie perform was in Dublin on the Reality tour. Hadn't even planned to go. Tickets were a ghastly price, enough to rent a house on the beach at Youhgal for a week.
I'm not sure how my brother got a hold of them, probably better not to know. Don't know what we ended up paying but it was worth it.
He did all his classics and flipped the script again. Each one was pared down to its basic structure and performed in an austere manner, the way Dexter Gordon might have done on the first run through. The audience filled in the crashing riffs out of their own memories, like in this one. Again, one of the most powerful riffs in Rock and Roll, surgically removed and then tacked on like a vestigial tail.
So, I've learned its good to break out of the script. If we like dancing and we look divine, then the Mystery Grandfather teaches us that nothing else really matters.
Still need a good riff, though.