Ashes to Ashes - David Bowie - Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) - 1980

For the record, my own St. Patrick's Day celebration went quite swimmingly and I woke up relatively hang over free...though I was hungry as a mofo.

So anyway, to get back to the trip (I can't believe this shit has taken me nearly a month to write, but hey...I got other things going on too...and I'm almost finished...and honestly, the end is the best part, so stick with me...if you're still here). We woke up the next day fairly late, as this was one of the few days that we didn't have to travel. By the time we were all cleaned up and ready to roll it was nearly 1PM.

Incidentally, it was also my birthday...despite my protestations that the trip itself was my birthday party and that as my birthday was on a Monday, no special treatment was required, the guys had already started throwing shots at me the night before. They insisted on "celebrating" my birthday from midnight Scotland time through to midnight of the following day NYC time...so I essentially had 29 hours of birthday shots. Ugh.

We took the day to do some touristy site seeing. We started off by heading up Buchannan St. which appears to be their mini-version of NYC's Broadway, or Grafton St. in Dublin...basically just a long street with lots of clothing stores and restaurants. We were there for coffee.

After getting appropriately caffeinated we headed over to Glasgow Cathedral and The Necropolis. As I stated earlier, I'm a history nerd and love old shit. The Cathedral was especially interesting for being a Roman Catholic church that had survived the pretty thorough reformation of Scotland. As such the basement level had at one point actually been converted into two protestant church until the late 19th century, leading to a large cathedral with two small churches in the basement.

The Necropolis was the real site though, a giant old cemetery built spiraling upwards on a tall hill. The highest grave at the top of the hill was reserved for the monument to the man who had brought the reformation to Scotland. From that high point you could see most of the city before you. It was one of the most touching sites I saw on the whole trip, and probably my favorite thing I saw that was not in Berlin.

Scary Monsters and Super Creeps more less marks the rather radical change between late 1970's ultra-arty, Berlin and Eno-loving Bowie and the white suited pop dork we all know and love from the "Dancing in the Streets" video. I will always have the utmost respect for Bowie, and I like the way he's managed to retain some dignity with age that his "Dancing in the Streets" co-star has not...but the 80's pretty much end my interest in his music.