I came across this video of the Bowie cover band, Holy Holy performing “Width of a Circle,” one of the early heavy metal-style songs from The Man Who Sold the World. The video identifies the band as “Woody Woodsmansey’s Holy Holy.” Woody was the drummer for the Spiders from Mars, and that’s Bowie’s longtime producer, Tony Visconti on bass.

I have never seen the band and probably never will have the chance. It formed while Bowie was still alive, in 2014 if not earlier. Woodsmansey was essentially kicked out in 2022 when he refused to get a COVID vaccine. So, at the risk of changing topics, good for the rest of the band.

COVID is STILL WITH US. Many people are getting sick and many are dying. I saw a headline today that seemed encouraging: “ Start off the end? Covid death rates lowest since 2020, case rates have plummeted.” Great, except after the good news about lower rates, replete with caveats that amount to how we’ve more or less stopped really tracking rates, “experts” warned about talking the types of precautions that really should be the headline: “I think we have to do what we can to mitigate risk, not just for ourselves, but also we live in a community,” said Dr. Krutika Kuppalli, an infectious disease physician who still tests herself before going to events. ‘I don’t know if the person next to me is immunocompromised, and I don’t want to give them Covid.’”

Elsewhere, the article mentioned, almost as an afterthought, “while the numbers are headed in the right direction, roughly 100,000 Americans are still being infected with Covid-19 every week, and more than 150 are dying from the infection every day.” Imagine if 150 Americans were dying of plague every day, or even the flu? Would we be celebrating that as good news and going about our business like there was no widespread, highly contagious, deadly disease. I am reminded by the mind-blowing stat that 151 people died of SARS in all of Canada in 2003– that caused enough of a disruption that, once it was beat (thanks to government action), Toronto hosed a benefit concert that I attended along with nearly half a million others.

Bowie didn’t play SARSstock and neither did Holy Holy, but this is a good video.