Apparently, this was "Life On Mars?" week and no one bothered to tell us: David Bowie was the recipient of three (equally pretty good!) tributes this week with three covers of his classic Hunky Dory song showing up on TV. That included Jimmy Fallon busting out his best Bowie vocal impression (thankfully, he didn't bother with trying to dress up like the man) for an unadorned cover with Chris Martin on piano (and Roots guitarist Captain Kirk Douglas performing Mick Ronson's beautiful solo). Check it out below.
Sunday night on HBO also turned into an unofficial Bowie tribute with both Vinyl and Girls including covers of "Life On Mars?" to end their episodes. Girls enlisted Aurora for a very minimalist performance, accompanied by what sounds like an electric rhodes, which played over the lovely end credits (which featured Shoshanna walking down a very lonely street in Japan).
For the least memorable of the three covers (it's not bad, but not as strong as those two), Vinyl got Trey Songz to perform the song at Ray Romano's daughter's Bat Mitzvah. Of course, Vinyl did one better than that by also having actor Noah Bean actually play Bowie on the show (in full Ziggy gear). In terms of Vinyl cameos from '70s rock star impersonators, it was much better than their Robert Plant stand-in and a hair better than fake Alice Cooper.
Or to put it in more Bowie-ish terms: the cameo wasn't a saddening bore, but it also wasn't the freakiest show.
