Best Thing You Ever Saw Live

I saw two grizzly bears get in a fight at the Riverbanks Zoo once. It was incredible! So strong and yet so graceful.

My family couldn't stop staring until the whole thing was over. I'm not sure which bear "won" but they both took a beating.

I would never fight a bear!

When I was in high school, I worked for a catering company (unofficially, I was like 15 so I couldn't really work, but I knew the head chef, so I snuck in there). We had the contract for the Meadows, the large outdoor amphitheater in Hartford, CT, where we prepared all the food for the bands, their crews and staff, etc. It was a pretty cool gig, I got to be backstage and interact with some interesting artists, all of whom were usually fond of me since I was the only "kid" anywhere near the kitchen and I was a pretty big fan of most of these bands.

In any case, during the winter they'd close off the pavillion, and host smaller shows there (maybe 5,000 or so capacity). Anyway, in early January 1997 we had a booking there, but we weren't told who it was. It wasn't a concert - somebody had rented it out as practice space. We get there, and - holy shit - it's David Bowie. He was hosting a concert at Madison Square Garden to celebrate his 50th birthday, and he rented out the Meadows to use as practice space. I'm not sure why; maybe MSG was booked on the nights leading up to the show, maybe it was too costly, maybe he just didn't want anyone getting a preview of what was going to happen. In any event, we were catering a private David Bowie concert - he and his band, the lighting guys, the crew, the sound engineers, etc. - were all going to run through his setlist for his birthday show, make sure they had the timing right, the staging, whatever.

Now, usually when we catered a show we could catch some of it from the side of the stage. We usually started 4 hours before a show so that the bands had time to eat beforehand, then we prepped a bunch of food for after the show. We were generally done with active prep by the time the show started, and could go watch most of the performance.

However, since David Bowie was playing in a completely empty arena, his stage manager and head sound guy invited us to COME SIT IN THE FUCKING AUDIENCE. They actually thought that it might be cool to have some feedback from people sitting in the seats, to have untrained/"fan" ears listen and see how it sounds. So we wander out, grab seats on the left, about 25 rows back, and chill out as Bowie and his band started running through the set.

The 50th Birthday Party wasn't any regular show, though. Bowie was bringing out tons of special guests - Lou Reed, Frank Black, Dave Grohl, Billy Corgan, Robert Smith...so sure enough, a couple songs in, Frank Black comes wandering in to practice "Scary Monsters." He was the only one though.

In any event, here's a setlist from the 50th birthday show; he didn't play all of these in rehearsal (I don't recall any of the songs that were supposed to feature Billy Corgan, and the only one he played that was a Lou Reed collabo was White Light White Heat), but most of them got at least one full run through.

Little Wonder
The Hearts Filthy Lesson
Scary Monsters - with Frank Black
Fashion - with Frank Black
Telling Lies
Hallo Spaceboy - with The Foofighters
Seven Years In Tibet - with Dave Grohl
The Man Who Sold The World
The Last Thing You Should Do - with Robert Smith
Quicksand - with Robert Smith
Battle For Britain
The Voyeur Of Utter Destruction
I'm Afraid Of Americans - with Sonic Youth
Looking For Satellites
Under Pressure
Heroes
Queen biznatch - with Lou Reed
I'm Waiting For The Man - with Lou Reed
Dirty Boulevard - with Lou Reed
White Light White Heat - with Lou Reed
Moonage Daydream
Happy Birthday To Bowie
All The Young Dudes - with Billy Corgan
The Jean Genie - with Billy Corgan
Space Oddity

So I sat there, at 15 years old, listening to David Bowie run through a laundry list of his classics, in a completely empty arena (which was really awesome, acoustically), and in between some of the songs he'd ask his crew things about timing/staging/sound, and the guys at the soundboard would ask us if it sounded good from where we were.

Afterward, David Bowie was eating in the dining room backstage. I dropped a stack of plates - not much, just a few inches. They didn't break, just slammed loudly on the service table with that loud porcelain "crack." I kept my head down and walked away, embarrassed. The other guys in the kitchen were dying laughing - apparently when I dropped the plates, Bowie jumped about 4 feet into the air.