Pop Music: Bowie Puts on Lavish Show at Garden

David Bowie (or just Bowie, as he prefers to be known now) has been attacked with an uncommon, even hysterical fervor in certain sections of the rock press for his latest album, “Diamond Dogs.” Because I hardly found the disk all that offensive, and because one purpose of rock ‘n’ roll is to outrage, there was every reason to approach his live show Friday night at Madison Square Garden with whetted expectations.

And those expectations weren't entirely unfulfilled. The most disappointing thing, however, was not that Mr. Bowie was perverting rock ‘n’ roll or falling short of his own earlier standards, but that he hadn't yet begun to realize his own potential as a man of the theater.

Mr. Bowie's first records, back in the mid‐nineteen‐sixties, showed a hesitant rocker indeed. His real roots seemed to lie in the British music hall and the Continental cabaret song, with a strong twist of Marcel Marceau mime thrown into the balance.

By the late sixties, however, Mr. Bowie had emerged as a real rock ‘n’ roll star, albeit a rather extraterrestrial one. Ever since his hit, “Space Oddity,” he has stuck close to the themes of science‐fantasy as a metaphor for teen‐age rock alienation and the drug experience. It is an evocative set of themes, if you respond to them at all, and Mr. Bowie's songs—both words and music—have a real potency to them, even the maligned surrealisticnihilistic “Diamond Dogs” LP.

But Mr. Bowie has always been much more than a freaky android rock star. He is best known, of course, as a self‐professed bisexual glitter‐theater wizard.

Glitter and rock theatrics are by no means identical, of course. But in recent years they have become inextricably entwined. Glitter, on the one hand, is the principal fashion and (fantasy?) life‐style of a large minority of young people mostly in such centers as London, New York and Los Angeles. You don't have to be homosexual or bisexual to be a glitterer, although it may help. Sparkling platform shoes, eccentric make‐up, lots of feathers are today's answer to the rebellious black leather jackets of yesteryear.

Theatrics is simpler to understand, and marginally less controversial. More and more rock hands have lost interest in the more bovine kind of concert, wherein bands stand in stoned stolidity and just play.

Glitter is either a portent

of the future sexual norm, an overhyped fad or a moral scourge, depending on where you sit. Theatrics is either the wave of the rock future or a pretentious distortion of rock's musical basics and an admission of musical failure, depending on how you hear. in combining the two, so assertively, Mr. Bowie has assured himself a prominent place in our attentions.

His place isn't prominent enough to be a super superstar, however, at least not quite yet, “Diamond Dogs” was No. 5 with a bullet on the Billboard chart last Monday, but it is hardly an automatic, long‐lasting No. 1. And Madison Square Garden wasn't quite sold out Friday (the second show, last night, had been announced first and was reportedly a sellout)—even after a barrage of advertisements.

Those who came got a pretty lavish show. Mr. Bowie has a good band behind him, including two agile dancer‐chorus members, and he sounded in remarkably good voice, considering the rigors of a tour. His repertory was built around the new album, but dipped freely back into his past reposiof

Mr. Bowie himself looked very good and moved very well indeed. He is modishly emaciated, and his dyed orange‐red, shagged hair frames a face quite perfect as either a man's or a woman's. He has a dancer's body and a fashion model's way with clothes.

The set and lighting, too, were craftily planned, full of elevator platforms, scaffoldings and extending booms, and holding a variety of movable props. The 100minute production was tightly executed and reasonably well‐paced, and if spontaneity was in short supply, professionalism and energetic precision almost made up for it.

But there was one problem, and it was a big one. For all his theatricality, Mr. Bowie failed quite completely to build his show toward a big finale. For all the momentary appeal of the effects and the short‐range success of the pacing, there was little coherence to the evening. A routine would end, a special effect would unfurl, and then tension would snag and snap.

When Mr. Bowie can offer us an evening‐long rocktheatrical entity to match his technical expertise and his conceptual ambitions, we may really have something. Until then, for all the striking incident and over‐all aura, he is just fussing around, however gaudily.