Driving with David

I was driving down to Manhattan yesterday to give a talk and meet with a few editors. After the three plus hours in the car, I was on the Henry Hudson and tuned into Fordham's station, which provided a surreal experience: David Bowie singing a cover version of Paul Simon's America and sounding for all the world like Anthony Newley every time he came around to the chorus. And it just dawned on me that Newley must have been the English male's answer to Ethel Merman, with that cross between vibrato and waver.

I make it sound worse than it was. Actually, there orchestration sounded like something out of a circus or carnival, and Bowie had a great cross between naive hope and utter dissolution borne of experience. But I had to tip my hat to the announcer, who managed to sound perfectly bland when explaining that the program was underwritten by Kaopectate. How do you say that with a straight face?