PART 1: An Evening With(out) David Bowie

(7:30pm) Part 1 The Early Years: From Davy Jones to the Thin White Duke

Join us for an entertaining, in-depth presentation featuring rare video clips, needle drops, obscure cuts, and recently surfaced details of arguably the most influential artist of our time. Acclaimed Bowiephile Thomas Mulready (Performance Art Festival, Ingenuity Fest, CoolCleveland) unearths rare gems, elucidating Bowie’s lifelong themes (alienation, space, death, androgyny) and tracing the unlikely twists in the life of our era’s most inscrutable musician, actor, producer, technologist and trend setter. Cleveland glam-punk superstars Vanity Crash close out the show with a short live music set of originals and Bowie classics.

Part 1 opens with a 9-year-old David Jones inspired by the film Don’t Knock The Rock, claiming, “That was my ambition, to be in a band playing saxophone behind Little Richard.” Following formal art school tutelage under the father of future megastar Peter Frampton, and a half dozen failed singles, bands, record labels and stage looks, he finally hits with the sci-fi folk rock novelty “Space Oddity.” It would be three more years before his Ziggy Stardust character takes off, triggering a manic run of hit singles, bracing concept albums, and bizarre personas, each one diametrically opposed to the last. After exploding worldwide with Young Americans, Bowie hits rock bottom, as the excesses of mid-1970’s stardom threaten to engulf him.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PART 2: An Evening With(out) David Bowie

(9:30pm) Part 2 Mid- to Late-Period: From Berlin to Blackstar ★ and Beyond

Join us for an entertaining, in-depth presentation featuring rare video clips, needle drops,obscure cuts, and recently surfaced details of arguably the most influential artist of our time. Bowie aficionado Thomas Mulready (Performance Art Festival, Ingenuity Fest, CoolCleveland) unearths rare gems, elucidating Bowie’s lifelong themes (alienation, space, death, androgyny) and tracing the unlikely twists in the life of our era’s most inscrutable musician, actor, producer, technologist and trend setter. Cleveland glam-punk superstars Vanity Crash close out the show with a short live music set of originals and Bowie classics.

Part 2 begins with the artist living like a king, having achieved stardom far beyond imagination, but strung out on cocaine and subsisting on warm milk. He flees his near-death existence in LA for the arid Krautrock beat of Berlin, accompanied by the most unlikely of sidekicks, Iggy Pop. Commencing with three acclaimed LPs known as “The Berlin Trilogy” in collaboration with Brian Eno, this session takes us through Bowie’s arena-sized celebrity with Let’s Dance, and his not-always successful, but perpetually rewarding experiments in the 1980‘s and 1990’s, all the way through his mysteriously choreographed death following the symbol-laden albums The Next Day and Blackstar, and includes a review of the recently released soundtrack to his New York stage production, Lazarus, his newly released box sets and his final recordings.

• $15 Sat 01.14.17 for 7:30PM show: Part 1
• $15 Sat 01.14.17 for 9:30PM show: Part 2
• $25 Sat 01.14.17 for 7:30 & 9:30PM shows together: Parts 1 & 2