January is a time of celebration and mourning for David Bowie fans. Today would’ve been the Starman’s 71st birthday, and Wednesday is the second anniversary of his death. Since debuting five years ago, Chicago-based Bowie tribute band Sons of the Silent Age have been throwing occasional fund-raisers for cancer patients and cancer research, and their efforts feel even more pointed since their inspiration’s death from the disease. Front man Chris Connelly and drummer Matt Walker brought their nine-person group to Metro on Saturday, focusing this time on the Berlin trilogy—that is, the three albums Bowie created after he moved to West Berlin in 1976. (The show benefited the NorthShore University HealthSystem’s integrative medicine program.) Everything about the concert—opening act TALsounds, the stories from the cancer patients and survivors who were invited onstage to speak, the dark, electric performance from actor and musician Michael Shannon as Iggy Pop—highlighted just how influential and meaningful Bowie’s work continues to be.
Bowie’s friendship and collaboration with Iggy Pop played a huge role in the creation of the Berlin trilogy, and with all due respect to my hero (and to the talents of the Sons of the Silent Age), that role really stole the show on Saturday. I’ve never thought that I’d want to see Michael Shannon playing Iggy in a biopic or writhing around onstage, but the second a shirtless Shannon started “Lust for Life,” I realized it was all I needed to feel complete. Even though he was up there as Iggy, not Bowie, Shannon embodied everything Bowie is about: showmanship, pushing boundaries, and complete transformation.
