five years...

Bowie's draft lyrics for "Five Years" off the Ziggy LP. Note where he scribbled out "fa" and wrote "queer" instead.

I snuck the above blurry photo from the David Bowie Is... exhibit at the MCA when the security person had briefly stepped out of the room. The exhibit is pretty amazing, very detailed, sprawling, and full of outfits and explanations. When I wasn't fantasizing about murdering 80% of the attendees, I mostly tried to look at the bits in Bowie's own handwriting, to see the songwriting process in action, where he did things like scribble out lines, etc.

While the outfits and pictures were rad, and assuming the lyrics ("Fame", "Ziggy Stardust", "Heroes", "Five Years", et al) and notes are clearly the most interesting things there, the best actual physical objects were:

• The coke spoon from the Diamond Dogs sessions.
• The 12-string guitar he plays on "Space Oddity".
• His acetate copy of The Velvet Underground & Nico, acquired before the album was released, and which he subsequently began performing songs from in England.
• An original deck of Oblique Strategies cards, co-created by Brian Eno (at this nascent stage, it appears they were literally made by hand with a typewriter), and given to Bowie as a gift during the Berlin period.
• The fascinating EMS VCS synthesizer Eno played on Heroes, which, again, Eno gave to Bowie in 1999.

Not bad, right? This Chicago exhibition of the show -- all of it taken from Bowie's personal archive, but without his direction or participation whatsoever -- is the only U.S. location, after it debuted in London, then traveled to Toronto, Berlin, and Sao Paolo. It next goes to Paris, Melbourne, and the Netherlands.