The Stars Come Out For David Bowie

Somebody plays my song in tune…

Several of those crazy rock star folk have recently chosen to record their own versions of David Bowie tunes. So, dear member, if you’re interested in that type of thing…please do keep reading…

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You love bands when they’re playing hard…

Lead singer of Def Leppard, and good friend of BowieNet, Joe Elliot, recently informed me that the band have a cover of ‘Rebel Rebel’ as a bonus track on CD2 of their current single, ‘Now’. It’s a cracking version, which will be no surprise to those of you familiar with the many Bowie tunes Joe has already covered as a member of Cybernauts.

If you aren’t familiar with the name Cybernauts, then you must be new here. Go check out the following items about the most famous Bowie cover band on Earth, that also boasts two original Spiders among its ranks… (11/21/00 NEWS: CYBERNAUTS ARE COMING ? 01/16/01 NEWS: CYBERNAUTS LIVE CD OUT NOW ? 07/09/01 NEWS: EXCLUSIVE – JOE ELLIOTT SPEAKS TO BOWIENET ? 07/11/01 SNIPPET: CYBERNAUTS IN CLASSIC ROCK MAG)

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Someone passed some bliss among the crowd…

1 Giant Leap have recorded a curious new folk/rap hybrid, all-star version, of ‘Memory Of A Free Festival’. The track was recorded at Glastonbury as a tribute to the origins of the festival. The band decided to record the song as a “tribute to the distant beginnings of the Glastonbury phenomenon.”

Jamie Catto of the band explains further in his online Glastonbury diary:

“I guess I should tell you the Mission we had in mind: Having specially prepared a backing track of David Bowie?s ?Memory of a Free Festival? we decided to make a short film about Glastonbury based on the song including images and bits of interview from the madness there and, in typical 1GL style, grab as many of the best artists playing there to sing or play on the track.

The plan was to have the film and song recorded, edited, mixed and laid down in 3 days and somehow get them to screen it on the big screens by the Main Stage on Sunday night. We set up the laptop studio and the editing laptops in two vans in the Greenpeace Field, all powered by Solar Power believe it or not, and set about trying to beg, borrow and steal backstage passes to all the stages so we could grab the artists.

We ran around like madmen. I had a mobile phone on each ear for most of the festival, repeatedly calling managers, agents and sometimes the artists themselves who all had more important things on their minds.”

1 Giant Leap were successful in achieving their aim, here’s Jamie again:

“On Sunday evening at 7pm (just after Isaac Hayes came off stage) the Main Stage DJ announced what ?those crazy dudes called 1 Giant Leap? had accomplished and screened our little film. The song sounded awesome on those enormous speakers and we were all very emotional as our fantastic collaborators came onto the screen one by one and the forty thousand strong crowd cheered and danced.”

Contributors to the recording in order of appearance were: Susana Baca, Lou (Lamb), Sophie (Zero 7), Maxi Jazz (Faithless), Michael Franti (Spearhead), Damon (Badly Drawn Boy) and Manu Chao.

Click on the shortcuts to experience the fruit of their labour in either Windows Media or RealPlayer formats.

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I never thought I’d need so many people…

That most profound of religious experiences, and one of my own very favourite Meltdown acts, The Polyphonic Spree, have announced details of their first UK tour. Hot on the heels of their recent festival appearances, the eight dates (so far at least) culminate in a show at London’s Shepherd Bush Empire on October the 27th.

The Spree have been performing ‘Five Years’ since their decision to include it in their Meltdown set, and hopefully it’ll remain part of the show for the forthcoming tour.

Their current single, ‘Soldier Girl’, is available in a very limited pressing of 3,000…surely a future collector’s item, so buy it now. And a slightly different version of their wonderful first album ‘The Beginning Stages of…’ will be reissued in the UK on September 23rd on CD and on double gatefold vinyl with different artwork. If you fancy something particularly different from the norm, make sure you catch this band live…you will not be disappointed.

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Like the ragged boy who races with the wind…

While we’re talking Meltdown acts, Danny Goffey of the quite brilliant Supergrass (superb new album due soon) is this week’s compiler of his ultimate 10 track compilation CD in the magazine’s regular Burn It feature. Danny chose a song that first saw the light of day on the Decca album, ‘The World Of David Bowie’, and it was also a song that was among Tony Visconti’s very first productions for David.

Here’s what Danny had to say about ‘In The Heat Of The Morning’:

“It goes (poor Bowie warble), ‘In the heat of the mo-ho-rning-ah!’ and it’s got this mad organ solo. It’s from the 60’s, I think it was on a rarity album, before Ziggy and all that. It’s weird it was never more popular. We tried to cover it, we’re in the process of maybe covering it live.”

While we’re on the subject of NME’s Burn It feature (hasn’t this flowed nicely), the loveable Corey Taylor of Slipknot, again singles out David Bowie for praise. (He chose ‘Scary Monsters’ in a similar feature for another magazine a while back.) It seems that Corey is ignoring the jeers of his hard-rocking friends with his inclusion of ‘Ashes To Ashes’ among several very heavy tunes for his Burn It compilation. Those of you offended by colourful language may want to skip his quote though:

“I don’t give a fuck what anybody else says, David Bowie is fuckin’ awesome. Sure, he’s had his days where you just look at him and go, ‘Dude, what were you thinking?’ But this is just a great song.”

So there you have it. Sorry this has been such a long piece, but it’s Sunday…what else did you have to do? };-)