What happened was I was driving down some street and I drove past a big piece of plywood leaning against a tree in front of a house. It was turned on its side and sloppily spraypainted on it in black were the words "Pray for Donald Trump" and for whatever reason what flashed in my head was "This is the West get used to it. Put a swastika over the door. Under the god"

Back when it came out I used to listen to that record a lot. I know when he wrote it, he was talking about the UK, but funny, or not so funny, it just works so well for us now. White trash picking up Nazi flags, indeed. Racism is back in rule. The art doesn't change, our circumstance does and it just becomes more relevant.

I was surprised when that popped into my head because I had not heard that song in a long time and nobody, or at least not that I have encountered, talks about when Bowie went off and did the Tin Machine thing. 

It just seemed a sort of forgotten part of his resume. I saw him when he toured with Tin Machine and there were two really cool things about that. One was he toured smaller venues so it was a chance to see him in a better setting than a big hockey rink or a stadium. Second, he seemed really motivated. I mean he was really letting it out on that tour. 

Also I was really curious about Reeves Gabrels at the time. He seemed a really interesting guitar player. I lost track of what he was doing when he stopped playing with Bowie but I liked his guitar playing. 

Under the God sort of sounds like a Sex Pistols song when it opens but I thought the way it changes as it plays out was pretty cool. Live, Bowie really snarls through it. I think he may have been spending a bunch of time with Iggy Pop back then. There is a sense of defiance to the song, which I like. 

Here they are doing it live, they pick-up the tempo on it a bit, Bowie seems to really feel some rage delivering it, and I love the way he casually ducks whatever is thrown at him without missing a beat. Gabrels looks humorously bored delivering his guitar parts, like his hands and face are just not on the same page. The Sales brother that is playing drums though, he kind of comes across like Stewart Copeland on a meth bender, which works. Plus, kind of funny that those are Soupy Sales' kids, and nobody but us old guys know who Soupy was.