Arcade Fire and the Preservation Hall Band will team up this Saturday to honor David Bowie with a memorial parade, “Pretty Things: A Second Line for Bowie”, in New Orleans. The parade concept was launched on a Facebook event page. The page gives details on the parade’s route, times and tells people to wear their “best Bowie outfit or something more strange.” The page appropriately quotes Bowie, “The truth is of course is that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same time.”
One of Bowie‘s last live performances was with Arcade Fire back in September 2005. On September 8, 2005 Bowie and Arcade Fire recorded a Live EP. Bowie and Arcade Fire performed Bowie’s “Five Years” and then Arcade Fire’s “Wake Up” together at a Fashion Rocks concert in New York.
Before their performances together, Bowie admired Arcade Fire and talked about them to Rolling Stone, “There’s a certain uninhibited passion in the Arcade Fire‘s huge, dense recording sound. I bought a huge stack of the Funeral CD last September and gave them to all my friends. I made so many converts.”
After Bowie’s death on Sunday, the band released a statement saying, “David Bowie was one of the band’s earliest supporters and champions. He not only created the world that made it possible for our band to exist, he welcomed us into it with grace and warmth. A true artist even in his passing, the world is more bright and mysterious because of him, and we will continue to shout prayers into the atmosphere he created.”