By Terry Sweeney
“Where other bands have toured Bowie’s songs extensively since his passing, these songs haven’t been performed the way they were meant to be. The D.A.M. Trilogy remains rock and roll’s best kept secret”.
Carlos Alomar and George Murray, who together with the late drummer Dennis Davis, formed the rhythm section on the celebrated ‘Berlin Trilogy’ of David Bowie albums are on tour for the first time since 1979. Davis, Alomar and Murray, as The D.A.M. Trilogy, played a crucial role in shaping Bowie’s music. Alomar was with Bowie from ‘Fame’, through the Berlin trilogy of albums, up to ‘Reality’ in 2003,
They are celebrating the three iconic albums ‘Low’, ‘Heroes’ and ‘Lodger’, cut in Berlin in the 1970so, and are using the tour to commemorate the lives and music of Dennis Davis and David Bowie.
The tour covers 16 dates, and started, fittingly, in Berlin on November 7th and finishes in Dublin on December 1st.
Alomar. the son of a Puerto Rican minister who grew up in New York, was a teenage guitar prodigy who joined the house band at Harlem’s Apollo Theatre and became their youngest ever guitarist at 17. He played with legends such as James Brown and soon became a go-to session guitarist for RCA studios in New York. It was at RCA that Alomar met Bowie in 1974 and worked with Bowie on the Young American sessions. He co-wrote Bowie’s ‘Fame’, with Bowie and John Lennon, and worked with Bowie from ‘Young Americans’ through the Berlin Trilogy up to2003 on ‘Reality’. He was recruited by Bowie for the ‘Diamond Dogs’ tour and his ability to play R&B, Philly soul, hard rock and ambient music made him invaluable to Bowie because he could change with Bowie’s chameleon’-like moves from one musical genre to another.
Dennis Davis played on ten Bowie albums, including six successive studio albums, and George Murray was with Bowie for 5 years. The trio’s final performance with Bowie was on Saturday Night Live in 1979.
The D.A.M. Trilogy also backed Iggy Pop during the recording of ‘The Idiot’ in Berlin.
Alomar was last seen on these shores in ‘The Meaning of Funk’ documentary on BBC TV this year and played Liverpool for the first time since he appeared at the David Bowie Convention in 2024.
The set list includes blockbuster performances of crowd pleasers like ‘Heroes’, ‘Ashes to Ashes’, ‘Boys Keep Swinging’. ‘D.J.’, ‘Golden Years’, ‘Sound and Vision’, and ‘Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)’, as well as other lesser-known tracks like ‘Red Money’ and ‘the Secret Life of Arabia’.
From the opening number ‘Joe the Lion’ the band. with singer and charismatic lead singer Cunio, prowling and prancing around the stage in his impossibly high stiletto boots, and Kevin Armstrong supplying blistering lead guitar, had the audience pinned back with the power of the performance. They love to play Liverpool. The band, and their predominantly scouse crew, had been together for a month of rehearsal in Berlin before the first gig earlier this month, and the tightness of the performance testifies to the that.
From the opener to the final song,’ Scream Like a Baby’, the band wowed the crowd and had the audience dancing in the aisles until the final notes rang out.
‘Put on your red shoes, and dance the blues:’
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