Suicide, Trash, London <br></br>David Bowie, Hammersmith Apollo, London

Easy listening? Not exactly

Alan Vega wears a beret, like Saddam Hussein, Frank Spencer, and the French. He wears sunglasses on a rope, like Dame Edna. He wears leather gloves on a clenched fist, like Smith and Carlos at the Mexico Olympics.

Martin Rev wears oversized shades, tucked into his receding jewfro, like a frizzy Withnail. He occasionally breaks decorum by hugging his singer. But mostly, he just stands there impassive behind a synthesiser, because he's Martin Rev, and that's what keyboardists in synth duos do. And Suicide were, arguably, the original synth duo. They are a band more frequently namedropped than they are listened to. Although they've long been the stuff of legend, they were prophets without honour in the punk era.

Suicide were bottled by impatient Clash fans when they supported them on a UK tour. The crowd at Trash is somewhat kinder. After successive generations of bands – Soft Cell, Sigue Sigue Sputnik, Nine Inch Nails, Peaches – have hailed Vega and Rev as inspirational, to not dig Suicide is a faux pas. Making the latest comeback in a fitful career, they're a bizarre spectacle in 2002. Vega issues mumbled threats and insults off-mic, like Saddam Hussein impersonating Frank Spencer in French. He scowls with disgust, like someone's farted in a lift. He bellows "I AM!", like he's the big I-am.

They only do four songs, but that's punk rock (or rather, it isn't). One of them, "Ghost Rider", is a classic. The other three are new: the opening "Death Machine", the Prince/Otis/Wu-sampling "Wrong Decisions" (which gets some bodies moving), and "Misery Train", which contains harrowing lines like "I buried my brother today".

The imminent album, their first in 10 years, is called American Supreme, and it sounds like a record made in the shadow of 9/11, with lyrics like "It's been done, it's been done, it's been done/ The ultimate tragedy/ The ultimate finality". It's really rather good, the sound of slinky electro funk and urban psychosis. It sounds like the nightmares you might have if you slept on Hackney Road with the windows open. If its creators had been a younger and sexier band – The Rapture, say; in other words someone who'd discovered Suicide last year – they'd be causing spontaneous hype ejaculations the length and stench of Shoreditch. But they're not. They're old men in berets, like Saddam Hussein, Frank Spencer, and the French.

"I... I can remember... standing by the wall..." And I'll never forget either. Five years old and calling on one of my friends to come out to play, I saw some graffiti in the porch, written by his older, teenaged sister: "DAVID BOWIE". The "David" bit I could deal with. I knew who David Essex was, after all. It was the "Bowie" which frightened me. The violent, angular spikes of the letter "w", the dynamism of the syllables, the hint of the forbidden and the arcane.

This would have been around 1973, the same time that David Bowie last played Hammersmith. Tonight, that word is spelt out in giant 400-watt bulbs, like a menorah the size of the Chicago skyline. But I'm not afraid anymore.

It's tube strike day, so I miss "Life On Mars". As I walk in, "Look Back In Anger" is drawing to a close and Bowie – the name still makes me shiver – promises "an interesting selection of songs tonight". He isn't kidding.

Any Bowie show is populated with ghosts, but tonight, he's decided to dance with them. It isn't just that the Hammersmith Carling Riverdance Labatt's Odeon Apollo (or whatever it's called) is any fine old venue. It's the place where, 29 years and a couple of months ago, David Bowie killed of the Ziggy Stardust character for good.

So, while he may be wearing a purple two-tone suit, the mind's eye cannot help but superimpose a one-legged leotard, shaven eyebrows, a ginger cockerel cut. He knows this. At the end of "Moonage Daydream" he thinks of his former guitarist Ronson, smiles to the heavens and says "Alright, Mick?" When someone throws him a black tinsel tiara, he puts it on, quipping "I remember this. I left it under a seat last time I played here". Oh, and you don't need me to tell you what the last song was.

But, unlike his early Nineties Sounds & Vision tour, this is no straightforward greatest hits package. The Bowiephiles, of course, know his catalogue better than he does. He's corrected when he says a 1977 song is from 1976, and from then on, coughs "This one's from 1970 bleurgh" and jokes "I was nine when I wrote this, 14 when I performed it here, now I'm 38". (He looks so good, of course, that you can almost believe it).

Naturally, he plays plenty of tracks from his latest, Heathen. "Afraid" contains the line "If I could smile a crooked smile". If only. His new teeth make his voice slightly whistly, and far more seriously, have ruined one of the most iconic mouths in rock. That's literally my only complaint. At two and a half hours and 32 songs, this show is so phenomenal that you fear it may be a farewell. "This is the last time I'll ever play..." he says, with a teasing pause, "on a day when there's a tube strike". He'll be back next year, he promises.

The unexpected highlight is a soaring version of "Absolute Beginners", seen by some as his last great single. "I've nothing much to offer", he begins. Then he breaks into a grin. Because he knows it's a lie.

s.price@independent.co.uk