I haven’t really written about David Bowie yet on this site. When it comes to my favorite artists I need time to really think about how I want to frame their work and its impact on me. Of how my understanding of them change and grow over time, sometimes making them loom larger, sometimes smaller. He’s one who over time has become larger and larger in my life, and his death in 2016 was a galvanizing moment for me. So I’ll get to Bowie proper eventually; for now though we’ll use the opportunity of Bootleg Week to discuss this document from his Serious Moonlight Tour, Olympic Stadium Montreal 1983.

Bowie’s 80s period, from Let’s Dance to Never Let Me Down is for me the cloudiest, most unknown period of his career. Although I knew the hits like “Let’s Dance” and “Modern Love” from radio and MTV and was familiar with his 70s classics, I came to Bowie really in the 90s with Outside and his more industrial, experimental rock phase. There’s an early memory of seeing his Glass Spiders tour on television. And of course watching Labyrinth half a dozen times as a kid.

Now in my 50s I’ve gone back and forth throughout his entire career – but still skipping over this decade (except for Scary Monsters, which is so great and odd I consider it the extension of his Berlin period). So hearing his pop-sheen and horns-forward 80s take on so many songs I’ve come to love on Olympic Stadium Montreal 1983 is a bit of a revelation. In interviews Bowie referred to the tour and his career resurgence as his “Phil Collins period” but while you could draw a line between Collins’s massive pop hits and Bowie’s aforementioned radio hits, the line shatters when you hear the souped up version of “Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)” or Bowie taking a mad run at the Velvet Underground’s “White Light/White Heat.”

With a trio of saxophones and Earl Slick and Carlos Alomar joining Bowie on guitar, tracks like “Rebel Rebel” and “Breaking Glass” are transformed away from their roots into slick powerhouse tunes that stand outside of their eras. Bowie himself sounds fantastic, changing his voice to suit the songs to perfection. He’s pretty full-throated and joyous throughout the first half the show until he suddenly switches to a breathy, whisper of a voice for “Life On Mars” and then explodes during the massive choruses. It’s always been one of my favorite songs, and rather than update it for the times he resolutely keeps it in its place, and it’s a marvel of a performance. Similarly beautiful is his cover of “Sorrow” that follows it, maintaining the 60s pop vibe that Bowie used when he covered it for his PinUps collections, but the horns and crowd give it a vibrancy the studio version never had.

Further putting to rest any notion this was his “Phil Collins period” is the entirety of the second disc, which kicks off with “Station to Station” and really doesn’t let up. Sure there are enough big hits like “Fame”, “Space Oddity” and “Modern Love” which closes out the show. But then you also have “Cracked Actor” and “Stay” and a cover of “I Can’t Explain” slowed down and horned up for true Maximum R&B (sorry, Pete Townshend). “Cat People (Putting Out the Fire)” is one of the oddest “singles” ever, and it’s a treat to hear the crowd respond to Bowie on the deeper cuts just as much a s the hits.

If Olympic Stadium Montreal 1983 does anything for me (besides reinforce just how vital a performer Bowie was) it’s that I think I finally need to clear some time and dig into those 80s albums. This is a fantastic show and another heart squeezing reminder that when Bowie left the impact still reverberates almost a decade later. I suspect it will continue to for some time.