Local musician/Bowieologist Thomas Mulready says WMMS helped introduced him to the Thin White Duke way back in the 1970s.
"[Former WMMS programmers] Billy Bass and Denny Sanders tell the story of how an RCA exec brought a blank green label LP to the station, and Sanders listens to 'Changes' and 'Oh! You Pretty Things' and thinks, 'What the fuck is this?' He loved it," says Mulready one afternoon from the Root, a café near his Lakewood home. "He took it to Billy, who was so fed up with Southern rock. It was exactly what he was looking for, and they played the hell out of it. When the first Bowie show came to Cleveland, all the stars aligned. Belkin Productions brought the show in, Record Revolution was stocking the album."
Mulready didn't see that first show in 1972 or the second one that came at the end of the tour. He did, however, see Bowie play Public Hall in 1974.
"That was a disappointment on some levels," he says when asked about the concert. "He didn't have the Spiders from Mars with him. The band was studio musicians who were hidden in the corner. He's got this stage with a bridge that goes up and down and the arm that comes out for 'Space Oddity.' I wanted to see the band. The show wasn't a total disappointment. It was a shock. He continually shocked his audiences in that same way."
Mulready says that he then had "the prototypical Bowie experience of catching up" to what Bowie was doing and then being thrown for a loop by his next release.
In 2013, Mulready began to chronicle Bowie's career in a multi-media presentation that has evolved into the program he now presents on a regular basis at rock clubs around Northeast Ohio with glam rockers Vanity Crash. The Bowie shows evolve, and Mulready and Vanity Crash present new shows on new topics each year. And they've even presented in Chicago and on a rock 'n' roll Caribbean cruise.
Coming up, Mulready and Vanity Crash will present their latest program at 8 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 10, at the Bop Stop. For that show, local musicians Meganne Stepka and Kate Hart of Moon Echo Garden will join him. Mulready and Vanity Crash will then present the program at 8 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 11, at Jilly's Music Room in Akron. Chrissy Strong will join them at that show. And at 8 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 12, they'll collaborate with Nate Pazzo Bocchicchio and Ruby Rose Weston of the Cowboy Princess Brigade at the Beachland Tavern.
Over the years, Mulready has added to his program and interviewed a number of musicians who played with Bowie. His first interview was with Bowie's drummer Woody Wodmansey after a show at the Odeon.
"I got to interview Woody and that may have been the first real interview I did for the program," says Mulready, who adds that he's done about a dozen interviews in addition to extensive research.
"I have everything Bowie ever released," he says. "I have every bootleg that I know about. My hard drives are packed full. I have documentaries. I probably have two dozen of those. There are primary sources and secondary sources, and I use whatever is available. I'm not writing a book. I'm putting on a show, so I use videos. We have audio of the first time he played 'Drive-In Saturday' live at his second show at Public Hall. It's a beautiful recording. When you can tell a story and have something to look at and listen to, there is nothing like that."
In addition, local photographer and writer Anastasia Pantsios will present an exhibition and sale of her Bowie prints from that very first show, plus his other appearances in Cleveland.
"We have a lot of new material in this show," says Mulready. "I talked to [guitarist] Mick Ronson's biographers in England who have written a book about him and do a show that's a little like ours each year. What I try to do is spit all this information out so fast. We can pack in so much on video. It's not a lecture. You can see people are stunned. We then cut to a live cathartic song and people wanna get up and dance. I want people to be entertained while being educated. You're out for a good time and all of a sudden, this guy who knows Bowie inside and out is spouting. You will get deeper than you've ever been. And we'll play some great rock 'n' roll. I make sure everyone in the audience is connecting on some level."
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