Cover of the Week: Andrea Prodan and Bowie Remembered perform “Fantastic Voyage”
This week’s featured Bowie cover is “Fantastic Voyage” performed by Andrea Prodan and Bowie Remembered at Sofar Buenos Aires. Sofar Sounds describes itself as a worldwide community that brings artists and audiences together for intimate performances in distinctive venues.
This video has all the features I like. First and foremost, the performance is excellent and just different enough from Bowie’s as to have a value-added feel. I liked listening to it. Whoever arranged the song made some subtle lyrical changes that are hardly noticeable, especially if “Fantastic Voyage” isn’t a song you hear often, but to my ears nudge the song in the direction of having more contemporary meaning. I’ll come back to that.
As for other elements of this video I like, I am certainly attracted to a song like this that isn’t often covered. For whatever reason, Lodger sometimes gets short-shrift, like it’s the runt of the Berlin Trilogy. Other songs like “Boys Keep Swinging” and “D.J.” tend to get more attention than “Fantastic Voyage,” but “Fantastic Voyage” is a pretty solid song (and Lodger is a pretty solid album).
On top of all that, this is a professionally shot video. I enjoy watching something like this so much more than a shaky fan-held camera video taken from a concert, or a guy-in-his-basement-with-a-guitar’s fixed iPhone video. So, I’d say this is the complete package.
As for the lyrical changes, the first and possibly most noticeable might also be the most meaningless: the “dignity” and “loyalty” lines switch places. I’m not sure that changes the song’s emphasis or meaning. However, less noticeable changes do. The collective “We’ll get by” becomes the more individual “I’ll get by.” Later, Bowie’s “They wipe out an entire race” becomes “They wipe out our entire race.” I have always taken Bowie’s concerns to be less about abstract concepts like dignity and loyalty and more about things like staying alive. So, this song is a critique of national (or nationalist) motives that can lead to war. The lyric changes in this version bring the threat a little closer to home—fewer people are getting by, while our (human) race, not a race, is under threat.
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According to online sources, Andrea Prodan is an Italian-born musician, composer and actor who has spent much of his career in Argentina and is the younger brother of Sumo frontman Luca Prodan. Bowie Remembered is a musical project Prodan formed with Argentine musicians in 2019 to perform material from across Bowie’s career, conceived as an expression of their enthusiasm for and appreciation of Bowie rather than an attempt to impersonate him.
I didn’t know anything about Sofar Sounds before finding this video. According to its Wikipedia page, it is a music-events company founded in London in 2009 that organizes small concerts in unconventional or intimate venues and now operates in hundreds of cities worldwide. Its events typically feature several performers without a designated headliner, with artist lineups withheld in part to encourage audiences to attend for musical discovery rather than a particular performer and to give lesser-known artists the same attention as established acts. Locations are also sometimes withheld until shortly before a performance, a practice that originated as a way to protect the privacy of hosts when concerts were held in private homes and became part of the events’ element of surprise. I went to Wikipedia because its own website is more of an interactive portal than an explanation of Sofar’s concept and history, but if you want to check it out, the website is: https://www.sofarsounds.com/