David Bowie, who has balked before at replicating his hits on tour like a human juke-box, feels no compunction about trying to please himself as he entertains others.

"I'm not going to trot out the old chestnuts just for the sake of it," says Bowie, 57. "I don't think I owe my audience anything but a good, interesting time. That said, I think we do show them a really good, really interesting time. People can tell when we're having fun up there challenging ourselves, and it's infectious.

"So, although we dropped `Let's Dance' from the set early on, we play `Rebel Rebel' -- but in a new version," Bowie adds. "And we just added a couple more obscure numbers, `Diamond Dogs' and `The Bewlay Brothers,' which should be great to play. That makes 59 in the well of songs we have on tap, from a few radio hits to deep album tracks."

In an interview just before his 2004 Memorial Day weekend stand at Atlantic City's Borgata Ballroom, Bowie was characteristically candid and hyper-articulate, as well as enthusiastic despite the constant tour rigmarole. The Borgata shows were numbers 99 and 100 on his Reality Tour, with the trek scheduled through early August.

"I never enjoyed touring much before, to be truthful," Bowie says. "The pressure of mounting those theatrically oriented shows in the past was a lot of work and worry. These days, it's about interpreting the songs in a loose, informal, direct way, and the more we've done it over the past few years, the more we've gotten into a groove. And I have to tell you, this band is just so damn good that I actually enjoy the hell out of it.

"The challenge with my catalog for both the audience and musicians is that it's very eclectic," Bowie adds. "We'll be doing something in an ambient trip-hop vein one song, then something ultra-pop or really hard the next. The band, though, is super-compatible in all these styles and without sounding like a simulacrum. They're 100% in the idiom of each song."

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