As a prelude to tonight's particularly goosefleshy rendition of "Not Even Stevie Nicks...", Calexico frontman Joey Burns gets to tell his Glen Campbell story. "Scottsdale, Arizona, is a very strange place," he begins. "We have friends who've been to his house there. As you enter the driveway, electric bells start playing 'Rhinestone Cowboy', then barking dogs drown out the chorus." Burns stops fingering the chords of the buckskin balladeer's biggest hit and pauses, senses a certain bafflement in the audience.
Diamond Dogs is often cited as the beginning of Bowie's cocaine psychosis period. In fact, it was recorded before he started giving Hitler salutes at railway stations and aggravating Eastern European customs officers with the books on Goebbels he carried in his rucksack, and now presents something of a field day for hindsight-lovers.
There was genuine suspense and intelligence in Michael Winner's original 1974 thriller, which addressed some of the same debates about rising crime and liberal impotence as Dirty Harry and Straw Dogs. But this 1982 sequel, relocating Charles Bronson's wounded architect to LA and forcing him to endure another double rape/murder episode, veers dangerously close to shabby exploitation.
