Month: August 2001

…just want a little more…

To celebrate the release of the ‘Christiane F.’ soundtrack CD on Monday (6th August) we have ten promos and ten stock copies to give away.

Firstly decide whether you would prefer the stock copy or the promo. It’s probably worth remembering that copies of the promo have been spotted on auction sites for $60 plus and are obviously more collectable. But, as with ‘All Saints’, the promo doesn’t contain the excellent booklet that can be found in the stock release. This CD issue of ‘Christiane F.’ has several stills of David from the film and extensive liner notes relating to both the film itself and the music contained upon the CD, written by Sylvie Simmons and Mark Adams respectively.

The choice is yours, but you may only enter ONE of the following two competitions. Both are open until this time next week, which gives you a whole week to find the answers. As ever, you must post your entry from a BowieNet address.

‘Christiane F.’ promo competition

Name the song that appears on ‘Christiane F.’ (albeit in a completely different form) that was released as a French promotional single in 1976, after it was edited to almost a third of its original length? Send your answer to me at MrTotalBlamBlam@AOL.Com with a subject heading of: ‘Christiane F.’ promo competition.

‘Christiane F.’ stock copy competition

Name two tracks that appear on ‘Christiane F.’ that were later re-released by David as completely new re-recordings. Send your answer to me at MrTotalBlamBlam@AOL.Com with a subject heading of: ‘Christiane F.’ stock copy competition. Good luck.

Don’t recognize anyone…

Not going to prolong the agony any further on this one, here are the answers to the competition we set more than a month ago. (06/29/01 NEWS: WIN ALL SAINTS ULTRA-RARITY) All you had to do was give me the titles of the nine albums I have taken the letters from in the image above. In order, starting from the first ‘a’ on the left, hundreds of you guessed:

…and you were quite right! The two randomly-selected BowieNetters that have suddenly become the envy of thousands are:

ikehatabin@davidbowie.com, who wins the signed-personally-by-David-Bowie copy of the ultra-rare original ‘All Saints’, and conquit1@davidbowie.com who wins an unsigned sealed copy of same. If you could both contact me at MrTotalBlamBlam@AOL.Com with your real name and address, and a subject heading of: Original ‘All Saints’ CD winner, we will have your booty to you as soon as we possibly can.

Well done to you both, and comiserations to the rest of you. See below for a new competition to take your minds off not winning!

Jimmy’s guitar sound jealousies scream…

The summer 2001 edition of Total Guitar (no relation) has a Bowie front cover and a sixteen page special on “the amazing guitarists of David Bowie”, including loads of pictures and twelve pages of transcribed music, not to mention five Bowie tracks dissected on the cover-mounted CD…phew!

The piece looks at many of the bigger name guitarists that have recorded with David, from Jimmy Page to Reeves Gabrels (wot, no Mark Plati?!…shurely shome mishtake?) and a cast of loads (eleven) in-between. The songs on the CD that get the under-the-microscope treatment are: ‘China Girl’, ‘The Jean Genie’, ‘Sound And Vision’, ‘Scary Monsters’ and ‘Survive’. All five songs are tabulated within the magazine.

Even the chord of the month is called “The Nile Rodgers Chord”! Employed on ‘Let’s Dance’, the B flat minor seven sus 4 must be among everyone’s very favourite chords. Anyway, I digress, this is what TG says about David’s inspired choice of axemen:

“When it comes to choosing guitar players, David Bowie combines the management skills of Alex Ferguson with the dynamics of Spielberg.”

Oh, alright then, here’s that complete list of guitarists the magazine chose to highlight:

Jimmy Page, Marc Bolan, Mick Ronson, Earl Slick, Carlos Alomar, John Lennon, Robert Fripp, Adrian Belew, Pete Townshend, Nile Rodgers, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Peter Frampton and Reeves Gabrels.

And here’s a list of people off the top of my head (yeah, right) who have contributed guitar to David Bowie recordings since ‘Space Oddity’, that didn’t make the TG list (I apologise in advance to those I’ve surely missed):

Tim Renwick, Keith Christmas, Mick Wayne, Mark Carr Prichard, Jeff Beck, Ron Wood, Alan Parker, Brian Eno (treatments), Ricky Gardener, Tony Visconti, Chuck Hammer, Derek Bramble, Lenny Kravitz, Tom Frish, Kevin Armstrong, Mark Plati, Chris Haskett, Page Hamilton, Gerry Leonard, Moby and David Bowie.

“Never in the field of rock guitar was so much owed by so many to so few.”

Many thanx to StarWoman for the pointer (have fun in Europe Pip), and to Susans for nipping out to the newsagents in the rain! };-)

White light makes me sound like Lou Reed…

Two recent releases on the nmc label may be of interest to many of you reading this. The first is an excellent 1972 live recording of Lou Reed called ‘American Poet‘, which captures a refreshingly buoyant Lou with backing band The Tots live at the Hampstead Theatre on Boxing Day 1972, during the ‘Transformer’ tour. The recording was originally broadcast on US radio, and has since been a favourite among fans as a bootleg.

The show features material spanning Lou’s career up to that point including songs from the Velvet Underground, Lou’s first album and the then recently released ‘Transformer’. There is also a priceless interview with him about working with David and Mick Ronson during the recording of ‘Transformer’, and his thoughts on the Velvet Underground’s continued career without him, ‘Vicious’ indeed!

The CD booklet contains comprehensive notes relating to Lou’s post-Velvet’s career up to the release of ‘Transformer’, and many beautiful unpublished Mick Rock photos from the ‘Transformer’ cover session taken at the Scala Cinema in Kings Cross. Great stuff.

The other CD is a re-mastered re-issue of the Mick Ronson Memorial Concert from the Hammersmith Apollo (formerly Odeon) recorded in April 1994, exactly one year after Mick’s death. The artists featured on this newly enhanced 3-CD set are too numerous to mention here, suffice it to say that this is the show that the pre-Cybernauts Spiders From Mars debuted. Apart from the usual suspects, the band was joined by original touring Spider, Nicky Graham, on piano and Bill Nelson on guitar.

The third disc of the set (Enhanced Video Disc bonus limited to 5000 copies) features live footage from the show of Roger Taylor performing ‘It’s A Kind Of Magic’ and the entire cast performing a rousing rendition of ‘All The Young Dudes’. Go here for a full breakdown.

When I Live My Dream…

The erm…mercurial rise of Mercury Rev continues with the imminent release of ‘All Is Dream’, the astonishing follow up to the brilliant ‘Deserter’s Songs’. David is a fan of the band, and anyone who enjoyed ‘Deserter’s Songs’ will be equally impressed by the new album.

A wonderfully pleasant surprise to me is the employment of Tony Visconti as arranger on the album. The band’s frontman Jonathan Donahue mentions Tony’s contribution in this week’s NME:

“Someone mentioned his name and we realised he lived just near us, so we decided to call him,” explains Donahue. “We sent him the record and in what seemed like only 20 minutes he called back to say, ‘I’m in’. I think he did an amazing job.”

That he certainly did, ‘All Is Dream’ will no doubt top the best album-of-the-year charts in every publication with good taste. Hear a sample of what you can expect at the NME website.

Rock ‘N’ Roll Suicide : NME : 07/27/01 Black Box Recorder confirmed details of a new compilation titled ‘The Worst Of Black Box Recorder’. The album, released on September 10 contains B-sides, rarities, covers and remixes as well as the four videos the band have made in their career. The covers on the album include David Bowie’s ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll Suicide’. This is what the band had to say about the cover when it was released as a B side last year. “It’s the best song ever written. It’s one of Sarah’s favourite Bowie tracks and the chord sequence at the end is a right old challenge. Sarah though she was going to do a Bowie belter but decided to do it completely deadpan.”

Bowie on MTV : The Guardian : 07/22/01 From an article about the 20th anniversary of MTV. When I were a lad, I heard Marc Bolan or David Bowie on my tiny transistor radio and occasionally saw pictures of them in magazines. Once a week, if I was lucky, I saw these exotic androgynes on Top of the Pops and – until my mother came in and snapped the TV off – felt the authentic thrill of der verboten . Now my kid flips between 10 different music channels that pump out vids round the clock. A veritable shopping arcade of sounds and styles (riffs, clothes, hairstyles, attitudes, gestures) is accessible to him in a way that would have been unimaginable to a T. Rex fan in 1971.(Barney Hoskyns)

and from a review of the 20 year highlights, same article. 1982 : The channel start their famous ‘I want my MTV’ ad campaign. Mick Jagger is the first star to utter the words, followed by Pete Townsend, David Bowie and Pat Benatar.

You’ve Got a Habit of Leaving : Sunday Times : 07/22/01 As Blammo mentioned (08/01/01 NEWS: ALL SAINTS AND MORE IN RECORD COLLECTOR) this track is featured on ‘Nuggets II’, the 4 CD box set currently on release. This set was also featured as Record Of The Week in last week’s Sunday Times, and David’s track was chosen as one of the highlights.

Bowie/Bolan Style : The Guardian : 07/27/01 From a summary of the nominees for this year’s Mercury Prize. Turin Brakes : ….However, beneath their traditional radio-friendly chimings, a spikiness lurks and Future Boy (“My friends are all junkies, but they’re still my friends”) even hints at a Bowie/Bolan-style futurist realism.

“David and Mick” : Q : Summer 2001 Check out page 86 of the current edition of Q magazine, for U2’s take on “that” famous photograph.

(contributors : pozie, spaceface)

:))

The story of this new collaboration has caught the attention of a whole string of music news sites around the world. It also seems to have been an excuse for the new media journalists to concoct some terrible puns…

Dotmusic : P Ziggy – “I wanted to make sure it helped out with the movie,” Puffy explained. “Cause right now when people do soundtracks I just think at times it’s a bunch of records, nobody is making a record in mind for the soundtrack like it used to be.”

Bowie said: “We’re doing live vocals. It’s not really so much like a sampling kind of affair.”

RadioUndercover : P. Diddy and Z. Iggy are remixing Bowie’s ‘This Is Not America’ for the soundtrack to the new Denzal Washington / Ethan Hawke movie Training Day.

NME : Captioned their picture of David, smoking a cigarette – “David Bowie – ‘No, this isn’t what I meant by having a Puff’ “

Some sites did manage to restrain themselves and actually provide some additional information…

Sonicnet : “I’m in the studio recording with Sean,” Bowie said, backing up his collaborator. “We’re doing live vocals. It’s not really so much like a sampling kind of affair. The first time we did it we had a lot fun, it was kind of cool, but we might as well have phoned in our performances, because it was done 2,000, 3,000 miles apart. This time, really, it’s like a nice thing.” and

“This version’s definitely got a menace,” Bowie said of “This Is Not America.” “The beats will be very interesting because it’s definitely moved on from what you’d expect. There’s a fast techno flavor to it. It’s got an aggression to it that really reflects the movie, which I think is a good thing.”

Stories also at Manhunt and Billboard which include the film release date and the full soundtrack listing.

Click on the names to see the complete stories.

(contributors : susans, pozie, spaceface)

:))

Strange divine…

The August edition of Record Collector has a few mentions of last week’s ‘All Saints’ CD release. In its regular round-up of promos and collectibles, Information Station, the promo of the album is listed at £40 (approx. $56) a price reflected by recent sales on eBay of this much sought after item. Don’t be confused by the fact that the magazine has actually illustrated the promo with the original cover, they are aware of the fact and are most likely showing off…well wouldn’t you if you had a copy?

The page after Information Station boasts a half-page ad for both the ‘All Saints’ and ‘Christiane F.’ releases, under the banner “UNMISSABLE BOWIE”, a theory upheld by Daryl Easlea in the review section. Describing David as “ambassador of the strange” Daryl had this to say about ‘All Saints’:

“…a superior collection that seeks to re-affirm Bowie as our leading art-rocker (as if there could be another). As the whole damn world seems to have gone ‘chill-out’ crazy of late, All Saints rightly deserves to be a brand leader, while, of course, adding a degree of disquiet to that over-subscribed genre.”

Elsewhere in the mag there is a three page spread on the four CD box set ‘Nuggets II: Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-69’. Of the 109 tracks that make up this collection of “international garage rock” one is by a little known British teenager who went by the name of Davy Jones. Represented here with his own composition, ‘You’ve Got A Habit Of Leaving’, Davy was destined for bigger and better things, and an end to the sort of problems that inspired him to pen this catchy little ditty. };-)

He’s in the best selling show…

If you’re in the location of Edinburgh right now, don’t forget that tonight is the first night of a month long run of Adrian Berry’s brilliant study of one man’s obsession with David Bowie, ‘From Ibiza To The Norfolk Broads’. The play is already selling fast, no doubt helped by the fact that it has been nominated in this week’s Time Out as one of the Top 50 ‘Must Sees’. Not bad when you consider that there are over 2,000 shows at the Fringe.

The show runs every night from 1st-26th August at 11.00pm for 26 performances at: C (Venue 34), Adam House, Chambers Street, Edinburgh. Tickets priced £7.50 / £5.50 conc – Box Office: 0131 225 5105. The first four nights are previews as the festival proper doesn’t start until the 5th. If you do go, please let us know what you thought of the play.

Images ©Total Blam Blam 2000