I Miss David Bowie

   David Bowie went into a sort of unofficial retirement after suffering a heart attack in 2006, aged fifty-nine, and so the cultural scene lost one of its most elegant and brilliant musicians and artists. (He lives quietly with his wife, the former model Iman, in New York.)
   In 2002 Bowie recorded the album Toy, left unreleased in favor of Heathen, which hit the market that same year. The latter carried the track "Slip Away," a melancholy remembrance of an obscure New York children's TV show Bowie and friends used to watch and giggle over. The opening track on Toy is "Uncle Floyd," a slightly different version of the same song. Both are gorgeous.
   Below, for the purposes of comparing and contrasting, are audio of "Uncle Floyd" and "Slip Away," followed by a gorgeous rendition from a 2002 TV show (the video quality is less than perfect, but the performance is stellar) and one from his "Reality Tour," during the European leg of which he sadly suffered the heart attack that appears to have sent him into hiding.
   (I saw Bowie at the Berkeley Community Theater on the American leg of the "Reality Tour." He performed "Slip Away/Uncle Floyd" backed by opening act The Polyphonic Spree, for lack of better description a rock and roll gospel choir. It would understate things to say the version burned down the house.)