Holy Holy played The Wilbur – 1/21
Last Thursday, as I had the previous Thursday, I gathered with a group of mourning music fans for a David Bowie tribute show. In contrast to Out of the Blue’s rapidly assembled survey of our weird and wonderful local acts, however, Holy Holy’s stop at The Wilbur featured some key players who actually had a hand in much of Bowie’s iconic discography.
Even before the Starman’s untimely passing, Holy Holy was about as close to the real thing in concert as any of us were likely to get in 2016. Health problems aside, Bowie had long since disavowed the touring grind. In his absence, a band like Holy Holy filled a tiny bit of the void. Assembled and directed by drummer Woody Woodmansey, now the last surviving member of Bowie’s original Spiders From Mars band from the early 70s, Holy Holy brings his celebrated glam era back to the stage. Tony Visconti, who acted as producer and performer on many a Bowie album (his farewell statement Blackstar included), also factors into this iteration of the band. Both Woodmansey and Visconti worked on 1970’s The Man Who Sold The World, and that’s the record they planned this winter trek around.
The dates were booked and the tour begun before anyone could’ve conceived of Bowie’s departure from this planet, but the group chose to proceed anyway after hearing the news. As Visconti said in an address to the crowd before the set began, healing is best done through music. And so Holy Holy took the stage for the final show of their unexpectedly mournful voyage, running through a lively rendition of The Man Who Sold The World front to back along with a number of classic Ziggy Stardust, Hunky Dory and Aladdin Sane tracks. Vocalist Glenn Gregory had the tendency to overreach in his role as frontman, but his enthusiasm in filling those impossible-to-really-fill shoes was admirable, and the group as a whole exhibited reverence and vitality in its renditions.
There was certainly sadness in the air, but if the night had something more in common with the misfit revery of the week prior, it was the collective celebration of an extraordinary body of music. Visconti and Woodmansey were quick to remind us that they were not a tribute band, because they were in fact the real thing, but it was Bowie they were playing for, not themselves.