Month: October 2005

Nothing’s gonna touch you in these golden years…

Next Monday (November 7th) sees the release by EMI of the low-priced triple CD The Platinum Collection which we’ve been telling you about since June. (06.10.2005 NEWS: TRIPLE CD PLATINUM COLLECTION TRACKLISTING & 09.06.2005 NEWS: PLATINUM COLLECTION SAMPLER TRACKLISTING)

As you’d no doubt expect, we have ten copies to give away to an equal number of lucky BowieNetters…and so straight on to the easy peasy contest question.

The Platinum Collection covers the period 1969 to 1987 covered by the sixteen studio albums listed below.

Space Oddity
The Man Who Sold The World
Hunky Dory
The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars
Aladdin Sane
Pin Ups
Diamond Dogs
Young Americans
Station To Station
Low
“Heroes”
Lodger
Scary Monsters…And Super Creeps
Let’s Dance
Tonight
Never Let Me Down

What we want to know, is: which of the original albums above are represented by just one track each on The Platinum Collection?

Don’t concern yourself with single versions, etc. For example, though Ashes To Ashes is the single version on The Platinum Collection it still represents Scary Monsters…And Super Creeps.

Here’s the tracklisting of the three CDs which make up The Platinum Collection to make things a little easier:

The Best Of David Bowie 1969/1974

01 The Jean Genie
02 Space Oddity
03 Starman
04 Ziggy Stardust
05 John, I’m Only Dancing
06 Rebel Rebel
07 Let’s Spend The Night Together
08 Suffragette City
09 Oh! You Pretty Things
10 Velvet Goldmine
11 Drive-in Saturday
12 Diamond Dogs
13 Changes
14 Sorrow
15 The Prettiest Star
16 Life On Mars?
17 Aladdin Sane
18 The Man Who Sold The World
19 Rock ‘N’ Roll Suicide
20 All The Young Dudes

The Best Of David Bowie 1974/1979

01 Sound And Vision
02 Golden Years
03 Fame
04 Young Americans
05 John, I’m Only Dancing (Again)
06 Can You Hear Me
07 Wild Is The Wind
08 Knock On Wood
09 TVC 15
10 1984
11 It’s Hard To Be A Saint In The City
12 Look Back In Anger
13 The Secret Life Of Arabia
14 D.J.
15 Beauty And The Beast
16 Breaking Glass
17 Boys Keep Swinging
18 “Heroes”

The Best Of David Bowie 1980/1987

01 Let’s Dance
02 Ashes To Ashes
03 Under Pressure (Queen with David Bowie)
04 Fashion
05 Modern Love
06 China Girl
07 Scary Monsters
08 Up The Hill Backwards
09 Alabama Song
10 Drowned Girl
11 Cat People (film version)
12 This Is Not America (David Bowie and The Pat Metheny Group)
13 Loving The Alien
14 Absolute Beginners
15 When The Wind Blows
16 Blue Jean
17 Day-In Day-Out
18 Time Will Crawl
19 Underground

Send your answer to me here.

Usual rules apply: Only one entry per BowieNet account. Also, please remember you must enter using your BowieNet e-mail or at least supply your BowieNet user name.

The competition ends at midnight UK time on Sunday November 6th, and we’ll announce the winners on the following Monday morning. Good luck, folx.

Ragged limbed and hungry mama…

Nicely timed for a Halloween release, the complete uncut and uncensored series two of Tony and Ridley Scott‘s The Hunger is released as a 4-disc Region 2 box set tomorrow.

As I’m sure you already know, David Bowie introduces each episode and also stars in Sanctuary, the first instalment of the twenty two episodes. Here’s the full breakdown of each disc…

Disc 1
Sanctuary (Starring David Bowie)
Skin Deep
Dream Sentinel
Wrath Of God
Nunc Dimittis
The Seductress
Brass

Disc 2
Approaching Desdemona
Week Woman
Triangle Of Steel
Falling Man
Night Bloomer

Disc 3
The Suction Method
Dangerous
Replacements
And She Laughed
The Sacred Fire
The Diarist

Disc 4
Double
Bottle Of Smoke
Sin Seer
The Perfect Couple
The Making Of… The hunger inside

If you’ve not already seen Sanctuary, and you like your David Bowie in one piece, I suggest you avoid this release. };-)

You’ve got your mother in a whirl, She’s not sure if you’re a boy or a girl…

For those of you that have missed Spaceface‘s plugs in the BowieNet calendar, BBC2’s four part series, Girls and Boys: Sex and British Pop, focuses on the 1970s this week.

As previewed in last week’s programme, this second episode, called Oh You Pretty Things, will attempt to explain DB’s (among others) contribution to the wonderfully confused ideologies of the Glam Rock era and beyond…during which, according to the BBC2 site, “David Bowie encouraged boys to play with their sisters’ make-up boxes”.

I think you’ll agree that if any one person can be held responsible for the changing sexual attitudes in Britain during that decade, it was without doubt David Bowie.

Last week’s look back at the 1960’s featured a 40-year-old snippet from the BBC TV programme Tonight, (originally broadcast in November 1964) on which the young Davie Jones (see above) put forward his case for The Society For The Prevention Of Cruelty To Long-Haired Men …a full 10 years before the lyric quotation above.

I’m sure you’ve all seen the full Tonight broadcast before, but it’s always a treat to see again. Anyway, Oh You Pretty Things airs at 9:00pm in the UK on Sunday evening, and while I doubt we can expect anything new from it, I’m sure it’s well worth a look.

What kind of magic spell to use?

Those of you in Montréal that enjoy an early start to the Witching Season may want to check out The Diamond Dogs at the Kola Note Bhalloween party on Friday evening.

Here’s the stuff you need to know if you fancy going along and getting spooked to the sound of David Bowie’s music as performed by Diamond Dogs…

The Diamond Dogs in Montreal with David Mollet as David Bowie
Friday October 28th 7:30pm
@ Kola Note
5240, Ave. du Parc
Montréal
H2V 4G7

15$ Tickets on sale at www.admission.com or (514) 790-1245 (the name of the event is Bhalloween). Click on the flyer above for a direct link.

However, if you’re in Seattle and you prefer your Halloween on the more traditional date of October 31st, you may want to glide along to Scary Monsters: David Bowie Cover Night at Chop Suey.

If you click on the flyer above, you can read a piece by Adam Lawrence over at nadamucho.com all about the event, including a bit from each band regarding the Bowie song they have chosen to perform and from which this explanation of the evening:

“The event will feature a host of great local bands paying homage to Bowie through songs from all points of his career. And to top it all off, the cover is by donation and all proceeds go to Hurricane Katrina relief.”

$5 Suggested Donation. 8:00pm doors.
Venue: Chop Suey 1325 E. Madison St, Seattle, WA.
Tel: 206-324-8000.

I saw boys, toys, electric irons and TV On The Radio…

As reported in the Daily Star earlier in the week and in today’s Observer in the UK, DB attended the Franz Ferdinand show at New York’s Madison Square Garden Theatre last Monday (October 18th).

TV On The Radio, who were one of the openers for FF, enjoyed a backstage visit from DB as evidenced in the picture above from lastnightsparty.com, where you can view a much larger version of the same shot and another picture of DB with the band and Karen O.

Here’s a bit from today’s Observer piece written by Andy Pemberton who met up with FF on the road in the US…

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It was halfway through Franz Ferdinand’s show last Monday at New York’s Madison Square Garden theatre, that the band noticed a familiar-looking figure in the wings, tapping an expensively shod foot to the glam stomp of the Scottish quartet’s latest single ‘Do You Want To’. Earlier the Glasgow-based quartet had seen him poring over their setlist, expressing delight at some of the songs they intended to play that night.

‘I spoke to him and I asked him if he’d ever been to Harlem,’ recalls Franz Ferdinand’s amiable guitarist Nick McCarthy three days later. ‘He said the first time was, “When I was Ziggy.” I thought, bloody hell, you really are that guy, aren’t you?’

David Bowie, who’s turned up to watch the band the last two times they’ve played in his adopted hometown of New York, is a committed Franz Ferdinand fan.

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Well, as NME said after DB’s visit to a Clap Your Hands Say Yeah show, “…you’re no-one in America these days unless you’ve had David Bowie turn up at one of your shows…” Quite.

Thanx to BowieNetter loisroma for the pointer to the pictures.

Elvis is English…

The current edition of Rolling Stone has a front cover of, and interview with, that ruggedly handsome U2 fella, Bono. It’s a great interview and in it Jann S. Wenner asks Bono: “Was David Bowie a big influence?” – Here’s his reply…

“Gigantic, the English Elvis. Bowie was much more responsible for the aesthetic of punk rock than he’s been given credit for, like, in fact, most interesting things in the Seventies and Eighties. I put his pictures up in my bedroom. We played “Suffragette City” in that first wedding-band phase.”

Great quote…Though I have to say that I personally never tire of giving David Bowie the credit for the “aesthetic of punk rock”, as I have done on these very pages more than once…don’t get me started! Anyway, you can read the whole Bono piece here.

Trent Reznor also has some very cool things to say about DB in an interview with Jonathan Zwickel over at www.newtimesbpb.com…

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Who are your peers today?

That’s kind of an elitist question, but I’m impressed by Zack. I’m impressed by Maynard from Tool. There’s a lot of new stuff out that’s interesting and exciting from the DFA production team, LCD Soundsystem, their work with Rapture, etc. I like Arcade Fire a lot. When I look at people that I would like to feel have been a mentor or an inspiring kind of archetype of what I’d love to see my career eventually be mentioned as a footnote for in the same paragraph, it would be, like, Bowie.

The courage that he’s shown artistically, just to keep trying new things. I remember when I toured with him in 1995, he called up and said, “I want to do a tour, and I think the only band I want to go out with is Nine Inch Nails ? would you be up for it?” And I just got done saying I’m not touring for a long time. Yup, yeah, OK, yes, what time do you want to start?

Playing the message back for people from my machine, [in British accent] “Hi, Trent, it’s David Bowie.” It’s really him, man! But when we met for that tour, he said, “I’m gonna only play stuff off this new album I did. It’s very obscure and obtuse, and it’s probably going to fail, but it’s something I feel like I need to do, and the audience probably isn’t going to like it, but it’s right for right now.” And I thought, you know, either that’s really stupid or, fuck yeah, do what you feel is right.

Anyway, that stuck with me, and after getting to know him and becoming friends with him, it’s been an inspiration not only in his music and his career but also his life. I met him when I was about to bottom out, and it was somebody that had bottomed out, and I saw that there was hope on the other end. Life wasn’t about sitting around AA meetings, smoking cigarettes, reliving the glory days. His life was a shitload better than it was.

Between him, Brian Eno, people like that, who really seem to have always put art first and maintained over a long period of time, doing stuff that’s interesting, you know, failing on occasion but never sitting back and recycling the same crap… I admire that.

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Thanx to BowieNetter Spidey for the pointer to the Trent interview, which you can read in its entirety here.

You gotta act tall, think big, if you wanna make a mark in her book…

No doubt everybody has seen pictures of David and Iman at the party hosted by Naomi Campbell for the launch of Iman’s new book, The Beauty of Color. The event took place at Cipriani at 23rd St in New York City on Tuesday night and I know you’ll agree that they both look quite stunning.

We told you about The Beauty of Color back in July, (07.20.05 NEWS: NEW IMAN BEAUTY GUIDE DUE IN THE AUTUMN) and if you’re in the US and you’ve not got your hands on a copy yet, you may want to try your hand at a contest over at www.i-iman.com. Click on the “Giveaways” link at the top right of Iman’s home page to reach the contest.

Splendid sunrise…

The above lunchbox, painted by Lexi Bowie, that we told you about earlier in the month, (10.09.2005 NEWS: BOWIE FAMILY CONTRIBUTES TO LUNCHBOX AUCTION) is now live on eBay this evening after a week’s delay from the original date we were given.

The auction is a 10-day listing which ends on October 31st at 17:00:00 PST, and the item is inscribed by Lexi (see below) as well as having her dad’s signature on it.

You can reach the auction and read all about the worthy causes that the Celebrity Designed Lunchbox auction is supporting by clicking on either of the above images. The bidding has already reached $811.00 in the first few hours!

Mick Rock has also contributed and you can bid on his Ziggy/Ronno lunchbox here.

Speaking of the Bowie family…

I found the secrets, I found platinum…

BowieNetter Chris Gaffney has been singing the praises of Irish band Aslan to me for some time now…and I have to admit I’ve been slightly resistant, figuring that if we managed to get The Virgin Prunes in England, why had I never heard of this lot? };-)

Well, now having listened to some of their stuff on the EMI Platinum Collection released this week, I find it even more incredible that Aslan are practically unknown this side of the Irish Sea. Add to that the fact that the band sell out The Dublin Point (the very venue where A Reality Tour DVD was filmed) for a Christmas show every year, and it’s even more astonishing that the name Aslan is met with puzzled looks over here.

The Platinum Collection is a great introduction to Aslan and comprises three CDs: Disc 1 – A Sides; Disc 2 – B Sides; Disc 3 – Rarities.

Of interest to most here is the second disc which includes two excellent Bowie covers. First up is a beautiful version of Five Years, complete with strings, that stays respectfully close to the original arrangement, but adds something of its own at the same time. Next is a piano led rendition of Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide, which owes more to the David Live arrangement than the original Ziggy version.

On the band’s website, singer Christy Dignam says that David Bowie is his biggest influence and that supporting Bowie at Slane Castle in July 1987 was his biggest thrill. Two other members of the band list Bowie as their favourite singer too.

Other covers worth a mention on Disc 2 are versions of Working Class Hero, particularly well suited to Christy’s voice which has a flavour of Lennon about it anyway, and a sensitive reworking of Lou Reed‘s Caroline Says (Part 2).

There’s also a cracking live version of Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel‘s Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me) which almost takes on the air of a rebel song (pun unavoidable) particularly with the slight adjustment of the lyric to: “There’s fuck all left, they’ve taken everything”. Great stuff… I’m looking forward to the A sides disc on the strength of these covers alone.

You can view the full tracklisting and order the album by clicking on the signed (thanx Billy) cover above. Thanx again to Chris G for his gentle persistence.

It’s a tough week for Aslan to have chosen to release a CD with a Bowie cover, especially with competition like this…

Cranking up the volume of a Michael Ball song…

“It has been such fun selecting, refining and recording this selection of what are in my opinion some of the finest examples of contemporary music and song.”

So says Michael Ball about the content of his latest release, Music. Michael’s an easy target, and for that reason alone I was hoping to be able to say something positive about this release.

He’s a nice enough chap (at least he seemed to be on the Jonathan Ross radio show last Saturday) and obviously he hits all the right notes, even if the whole thing is far too pedestrian for my taste. If you’re a Michael Ball fan you’ll love Music, which is sure to be another big seller for him.

Here’s what the man says about his version of Life On Mars? on the official Michael Ball website…

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LIFE ON MARS (David Bowie 1971 from Hunky Dory)
I?ve always done ?Life On Mars? in my one man show, Alone Together, when I?m accompanied by piano only so it?s very much about the words and about the character (in Alone Together) breaking down and railing against life and society. This is not a slavish copy of Bowie in any way but we?ve got the orchestra and guitars in there; it?s such a great song to sing, it?s powerful, it?s cynical with its biting lyric and it soars.

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BowieNetter Dukebox also caught last Saturday’s JR show, and he seems to like this version a little more than I do: “I’m not sure that Michael Ball’s recording of “Life On Mars?” has particularly added anything to the original, but it’s a pretty good arrangement and MB can sure belt it out – he has a good set of lungs on him, that bloke!”

If you want to judge for yourself, you can still hear the song via the listen again feature on the Radio 2 Jonathan Ross page page. Forward the player to 2 hours 40 minutes. Life On Mars? starts at 2 hours 43 minutes.

I Feel Free…

Space Oddity, David Brighton’s Tribute To David Bowie will play a free show for any Bowie fans who can make it along to Pala Casino, in California on October 29th.

The 90-minute show starts at 8:00pm at:

The Grand Cabaret
35008 Pala Temecula Road,
Pala, CA 92059 USA
1-877-WIN-PALA (1-877-946-7252)