Month: July 2008

Bones and Oogie on a silver screen…

Here’s the third of our unpublished pieces from David’s fellow musicians that didn’t make it to UNCUT‘s 30 greatest Bowie songs in the UNCUT Bowie special that was published in April. (04.18.2008 NEWS: BOWIE’S 30 GREATEST SONGS IN UNCUT NEXT WEEK & 04.29.2008 REMINDER: BOWIE’S 30 GREATEST SONGS IN UNCUT)

So far we’ve had tributes from Joan Wasser (07.16.08 NEWS: MORE UNCUT CELEBRITY TRIBUTES TO DAVID BOWIE) and J Mascis (07.20.2008 NEWS: J MASCIS UNCUT TRIBUTE TO DAVID BOWIE) and now it’s the turn of DB’s old pal, Moby…

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Moby on Slip Away

It?s almost impossible to pick a favourite Bowie song, but if someone put a gun to my head, I?d have to choose “Slip Away”. He lives across the street from me. At the time he was making Heathen, I was working on an album and we were kind of collaborating on it. So I watched Heathen come together. As far as I can tell, it?s written about him and Iggy Pop, and their very loving friendship of the late ?70s and early ?80s. The thing about Bowie was, he seemed like a wise old man even when he was 23. And “Slip Away” is such a heartbreaking song. A lot of his music is emotional, but it?s often as if he?s taking the part of an objective bystander. But this one seems really autobiographical. It?s a song about lost love, I guess, between him and Iggy. And every time I listen to it, it brings tears to my eyes.

The first time I met him was when he was on tour with Nine Inch Nails. I went to the show and he was playing “The Man Who Sold The World”. The kid sitting next to me said “Oh, how cool! He?s doing a Nirvana song.” I almost strangled him. Then I went to the aftershow party, summoned up some liquid courage, and went over to talk to him. I was so nervous, because he was my favourite musician of all time. Creatively, he was at his peak from Low through to Scary Monsters. Lodger gets a bad press, but I think it?s an amazing record. Songs like “Yassassin” and “Look Back In Anger” are wonderful. So what did we talk about? Real estate! He was in the process of moving back to New York and looking for an apartment, so we were talking about different neighbourhoods. I like to think I had a hand in where he ended up living. I see him occasionally, but it?s so random. I?ll be walking down the street and see him in the deli.

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I have to admit I was surprised to read Moby’s interpretation of the lyric, unless he’s been privy to some insider information, I can’t really see how he arrived at that conclusion about David and Iggy. One thing’s for sure, this is what David said about the song in his journal back on May 25th, 2002…

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Both ‘Slip Away’ and ‘Afraid’ were recorded early last year and as I liked these two so much, I just moved ’em forward to this album. We completely re-recorded ‘Slip Away’, over one of Matt’s great loop parts. Back in the late 70’s, everyone that I knew would rush home at a certain point in the afternoon to catch the Uncle Floyd show. He was on UHF Ch: 68 and the show looked like it was done out of his living room in New Jersey. All his pals were involved and it was a hoot.

It had that Soupy Sales kind of appeal and though ostensibly aimed at kids, I knew so many people of my age who just wouldn’t miss it. We would be on the floor it was so funny. Two of the regulars on the show were Oogie and Bones Boy, ridiculous puppets made out of ping-pong balls or somesuch. They feature in the song. I just loved that show.

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Thanx to Rob Hughes at UNCUT for the Moby piece. Stay tuned for even more.

I keep a photograph, It burns my wall with time…

BowieNetter 051060 has been in touch with details of a Dutch photographic exhibition that has been running for the past few months, but is now extended until September 8th.

Situated in the city of Alkmaar, Yesterday celebrates the work of the late Dutch pop photographer, Nico van der Stam (1925-2000).

There are approximately 200 of van der Stam’s photos on display, including the shot above of David Bowie at the piano taken at a TV show in 1970 when David visited The Netherlands. The shot is available at the exhibition as a postcard and it’s included with a page of text in the exhibition catalogue which is actually a 360-page book.

You may remember we posted a mono shot from the same session back in May, (05.09.2008 NEWS: THE BOWIE COLLECTORS – VISITOR) when we didn’t even have the photographer details.

While we’re still not completely clear about when and where the pictures were taken, Dutch BowieNetter, Bert Slappendel, reckons it could very well be from a Dutch TV show called Dooby Doo, though I have to admit I can’t find a trace of such a show online.

You can read more about the exhibition here and go here for booking details.

In the corner of the morning in the past…

Had a call a little while back from BowieNetter Kenneth Chennells, (he doesn’t want me to use his member name…you’ll soon understand why!) who read a couple of excerpts over the phone to me from a piece in The Observer regarding lost recordings.

Here’s the first bit he read out to me…

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Escaping to Mountain Studios, Switzerland (where Bowie would later to record Let?s Dance) Bowie, May, Taylor, Deacon and Mercury locked themselves in the studio and penned an album that continued the exploration of the pressures and demands of modern life (themes that would also appear in Queens following album ?The Works? with songs like ?It?s a hard life? and ?I want to break free.?) The album makes reference to one of Bowie?s previous alter egos in the title and the collaboration was aptly named ? The Duke & The Queen and was simply titled ?PRESSURE.?

In 1983, Bowie signed an expensive contract with EMI Records and released the huge hit album Let’s Dance. As Queen’s fame and success was also catapulting ever higher, the timing for the release of ?PRESSURE? stalled and it was eventually agreed that the window of opportunity had passed. The album was shelved and the rest is history?.

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But why had I never even had a sniff of this story in the 25 years that had passed since the album was shelved? It all sounded highly unlikely to me. Anyway, it got worse when Ken read this excerpt out too…

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Throughout 1999 and up until 2000, Albarn managed to demo 18 tracks with musicians ranging from Ray Davies, Robert Del Naja (3D from Massive Attack) and Morrissey. He even convinced David Bowie to record a vocal over the telephone. Bowie’s was in the studio, working on an album to be titled ?Toy?, which in the end was never released (but that?s another story!) By the end of the millennium, the result was a collection of duets Albarn entitled ?True Britannia.?

Around about the time he was mixing the soundtrack he had written for the crime comedy Ordinary Decent Criminal, Albarn set up a hideaway in a north London pub, began mixing the True Britannia LP and excitedly started to make plans for a release the following year..

By 2002 though, with Gorilla?s in full effect, Blur ever omnipresent, and New Labour seeming to do a good enough job of incriminating themselves, Damon had grown weary of the idea of attacking a time that had actually made him quite a lot of money and was very much now a footnote in history?With so much else on his plate, it wasn?t hard for him to promptly shelve the project and move on?

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Again, if this were true, surely some news of it would have leaked considering so many other artists were involved with it’s creation?

Having looked further into the story myself, this intro to The Observer piece should have been a bit of a clue to Ken: “Let me make this clear – ‘Lost Masters’, these sleevenotes and their accompanying images: it’s make-believe. It’s a world for music lovers where anything is possible…”

The whole article was actually a piece about a new fantasy website: www.lost-masters.com from where I have lifted the above front cover images of both PRESSURE and True Britannia.

It’s a good fun site that’s worth a look and as they say themselves on the site: “Wouldn’t it be great if this story was true?”

These are your favourite songs…

Following on from the UNCUT readers’ poll that we posted earlier in the month, (07.02.08 NEWS: UNCUT READERS CHOOSE THEIR OWN BOWIE TOP TEN) we thought it would be interesting to contrast their choices against those of the mass market iTunes sales in the USA and the UK, the two main markets for UNCUT.

Here’s how they stand right now…

Current US iTunes Top 20 Bowie

01 Under Pressure 3:57 – David Bowie & Queen – Best of Bowie
02 Let’s Dance 4:10 – Best of Bowie
03 Space Oddity 5:15 – Best of Bowie
04 Changes 3:35 – Best of Bowie
05 Modern Love 4:47 – Best of Bowie
06 Fame 4:17 – Best of Bowie
07 Rebel Rebel 4:31 – Best of Bowie
08 Suffragette City 3:27 – Best of Bowie
09 Ziggy Stardust 3:15 – Best of Bowie
10 Young Americans 3:15 – Best of Bowie
11 Golden Years 3:29 – Best of Bowie
12 China Girl 4:18 – Best of Bowie
13 “Heroes” 6:10 – “Heroes”
14 China Girl 5:32 – Let’s Dance
15 Space Oddity 5:16 – Space Oddity
16 “Heroes” 3:37 – Best of Bowie
17 Peace On Earth / Little Drummer Boy 4:24 – Bing Crosby & David Bowie – Bing Crosby: Christmas Classics
18 Changes 3:23 – Butterfly Boucher & David Bowie – Shrek 2 Soundtrack
19 Dancing In The Street 3:22 – David Bowie & Mick Jagger – Best of Bowie
20 Changes 3:34 – Hunky Dory

Current UK iTunes Top 20 Bowie

01 Life On Mars? 3:50 – Best of Bowie
02 Starman 4:13 – Best of Bowie
03 Space Oddity 5:14 – Best of Bowie
04 Ashes to Ashes 4:24 – Scary Monsters
05 Under Pressure 3:57 – Best of Bowie
06 Let’s Dance (Single Version) 4:09 – Best of Bowie
07 “Heroes” 6:08 – “Heroes”
08 Changes 3:34 – Best of Bowie
09 Under Pressure 3:56 – Queen & David Bowie – Queen’s Greatest Hits II
10 “Heroes” (Single Version) 3:37 – Best of Bowie
11 Let’s Dance 4:10 – The Singles Collection
12 Rebel Rebel 4:29 – Best of Bowie
13 The Jean Genie 4:06 – Best of Bowie
14 Medley: Peace On Earth / Little Drummer Boy 4:24 – Bing Crosby & David Bowie – Bing Crosby: Christmas Classics
15 Life On Mars? 3:49 – Hunky Dory
16 Life On Mars? (Live at Fashion Rocks) 4:54 – Arcade Fire & David Bowie – Live EP (Live at Fashion Rocks)
17 China Girl (Single Version) 4:17 – Best of Bowie
18 Ziggy Stardust 3:13 – Best of Bowie
19 The Man Who Sold the World 3:59 – Best of Bowie
20 Queen Bitch 3:13 – Hunky Dory

And for comparison, here’s that UNCUT readers’ poll again…

01 Life On Mars?
02 Five Years
03 Moonage Daydream
04 Station To Station
05 Quicksand
06 Rock ?N? Roll Suicide
07 “Heroes”
08 Lady Grinning Soul
09 Cygnet Committee
10 Queen Bitch

As you can see, Life On Mars? tops both the UNCUT and UK iTunes Top 20, but doesn’t appear in the USA iTunes Top 20 at all. It actually appears three times in the UK top 20!

The only other songs that appear in both the UNCUT and UK iTunes Top 20 are “Heroes” and Queen Bitch with the former being the only song to appear in both the UNCUT and US iTunes Top 20.

These ten songs are common to both the US and the UK iTunes Top 20s in alphabetical order…

01 Changes
02 China Girl
03 “Heroes” (Album Version)
04 “Heroes” (Single Version)
05 Let’s Dance
06 Peace On Earth / Little Drummer Boy
07 Rebel Rebel
08 Space Oddity
09 Under Pressure
10 Ziggy Stardust

It’s easy to understand why both length versions of “Heroes” might be so popular, but I have to admit that seeing Peace On Earth / Little Drummer Boy in there was a bit of a shock, even if it did reach #3 in the UK.

Also, it seems that people consider Under Pressure to be more a Bowie song than a Queen song, as it has sold many more as a download from Best Of Bowie than it has from Queen’s Greatest Hits II.

We’ll probably take another look in six months or so, these charts are very slow moving with only small adjustments from week to week.

There’s a five star man waiting in the sky…

Nice full-page review of David Bowie – Live Santa Monica ’72 by Rob Sheffield in the August issue of Blender magazine. Here’s a heavily edited version of it…

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Bizarrely, David Bowie has been shy about documenting the 1972 Ziggy Stardust Tour that made him the leper messiah for badly adjusted American kids. This long-bootlegged fan fave has never been officially released. But it does for Bowie what How the West Was Won did for Led Zeppelin?finally, a ?70s crowd-killer gets a properly epic live album.

Bowie soars on the energy of the audience, invading Southern California just in time to dance on the remnants of the hippie dream, shouting, ?You?re not alone!? at the lost, scared L.A. children left behind. This was the night Ziggy became the rock star he desperately wanted to be.

October 20?a sold-out Santa Monica Civic Auditorium show broadcast on KMET radio?was the moment America met Bowie and fell in love. You can hear it happen?the star and the crowd get louder and chattier as the show goes on, like a blind date gone horribly right.

The Spiders From Mars were the loudest, sloppiest band he ever had, with pianist Mike Garson and guitar god Mick Ronson taking ?The Width of a Circle? and ?Moonage Daydream? to new levels. When the Spiders speed up the already-hyper ?Hang On to Yourself,? it sounds just like the Sex Pistols? ?God Save the Queen? will five years later.

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You can read the full thing here.

Station To Station…

BowieNetter lordofthethings pointed me in the direction of an article in The Guardian yesterday by ex-music journalist Tim Lott.

Entitled No fun at the Ministry of Drugs, here’s the paper’s description of the article: “Being a music journalist in the 70s was seen as a ticket to debauched glory. But, Tim Lott recalls, the bands were morons, the Stranglers tried to kidnap him, and Kate Bush wouldn’t take him up on a date.”.

However, it seems music journalism didn’t come naturally to Tim, as he explains: “Truth was, like many apparent extroverts, I was somewhat shy. I was nervous of the people I interviewed anyway, even when they were friendly, inoffensive characters such as Nick Lowe or Jonathan Richman. I was scared when they were superstars like David Bowie, Freddie Mercury or Bryan Ferry. And I was terrified when faced with buccaneers like the Stranglers, the Clash, the Pistols and the Jam, who treated the music press – when it suited them – as deadly enemies.”.

Tim goes on to talk about the interview he managed to grab with DB on a Euston-bound train from Manchester, following the taping of the Marc show. And, though he claims he was working for Sounds, I remember the interview was published by Record Mirror. Indeed the scans on this page are from that original article dated September 24th, 1977.

The Bowie interview was such a coup for the publication that it became the cover story in favour of the Marc Bolan retrospective following the 29-year-old’s untimely death the previous week, on the 16th of September.

Here are a couple of excerpts from the Guardian piece…

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My sweetest memory was getting the first interview for three years with David Bowie in his Thin White Duke days. I had been covering Eddie and the Hot Rods, who were appearing on the Marc Bolan show, on which Bowie was also a guest. I took the train back to London with them and Bowie invited us all to join him in first class for the journey back. He thought I was a member of the band, and I didn’t disabuse him of that notion. In the meantime, I noted down everything he said on a paper plate hidden under the table. Bingo – my first ever world exclusive.

I remember thinking that Bowie had a few of his pages stuck together. He talked of meeting the astronaut John Glenn, who had told him that he had seen something on the moon that he wouldn’t ever tell anyone about. And Bowie seemed convinced that Nasa kept a cosmic black hole confined in a small metal box in the midwest, which, if it escaped, would swallow the whole universe. But other than that, he was extremely engaging.

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Having the original article to refer to, it’s clear that a couple of points have been lost in translation to some small degree. I know I’m being pedantic here, but in the Guardian piece Lott recalls that Bowie told him that John Glenn “had seen something on the moon”. However, in the original piece Bowie’s quotation was that Glenn had told him: “I saw more up there than I care to talk about. Earth is not alone.”

Also, in the Guardian version Lott says that he, along with Eddie and the Hot Rods, joined Bowie in first class. In the original Record Mirror item Bowie apparently joined them in second class…OK, so I have too much time on my hands!

You can read the full Guardian piece here.

And when she smiles, the ice forgets to melt away…

It’s Iman‘s 53rd birthday today, and I’m sure everybody reading this would like to join us here at BowieNet to celebrate the fact by wishing the wonderful lady many happy returns of the day.

BowieNet members can do so directly by adding to the message board thread started here by Spaceface.

Under the spotlight, the serious spotlight…

BowieNetter MrHoppy posted this YouTube link on the MBs following Barack Obama‘s speech at the Tiergarten in Berlin, Germany, earlier today.

It seems that David Bowie’s Let’s Dance was the music of choice to get the crowd in the right mood for Obama moments before he took to the podium.

However, as you can see from the YouTube clip, Susan Rice, Obama’s Foreign Policy Adviser, may not be familiar with the song’s lyric when she commented: “This is actually going to be a very serious speech, despite the background music.”

Despite her misgivings, it seems the music did the trick and is it just me, or does Obama’s most recent publicity shot, above, seem somewhat familiar?

If I did casually mention tonight…

Marc Riley has a very special guest in the shape of Daniel Johnston on his BBC 6 Music show this evening. In fact, the guest isn’t just in the shape of Daniel Johnston, it’s actually him!

Daniel, who David has championed on these pages several times over the years, was a guest at both Bowie’s Meltdown festival in 2002 and at last year’s High Line festival, where he performed on both occasions on the same bill as The Legendary Stardust Cowboy.

Indeed, they are the only two artists that played at both festivals off the top of my head…oh and The Polyphonic Spree…and anyone else you lot think of!

For tonight’s broadcast Daniel performs two songs with the aid of a supergroup of sorts, (see below) and he has a chat with Marc on the likes of The Beatles and David Bowie.

Above is the band (assembled for Daniel’s most recent shows) outside the BBC in Manchester yesterday. They include, from left to right: Jad Fair on percussion; Marc Riley on drugs; Kristian Goddard on drums and stilts; Daniel Johnston vocals and keyboard; Scout Niblett guitar and vocals; James McNew of Yo La Tengo on bass; Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse on guitar.

If this item was too short notice for you, there is always the BBC listen again feature on Marc’s home page to fall back on.

Twenty six winners in my hand…

With the release of David Bowie – Live Santa Monica ’72 in the USA today, I thought it a good time to announce the winners of our five part SM 72 contest. If this one passed you by, check out this news item: 07.06.2008 NEWS: LIVE SANTA MONICA ?72 CONTEST DECISION TIME

OK, I know you’ve been itching for these results, so here are the 26 winners!

OPTION 1: Signed SM ’72 limited edition CD = five prizes

lemoninabag
pabsjl
pollyk
sailer
TheMadman

OPTION 2: David Bowie Live Ziggy Toon poster (unsigned) = one prize

flamingredhair

OPTION 3: SM ’72 limited edition T-shirt = ten prizes

BrittaRuth
dhmoore
Dowser
paulk
pymander
sarahv
secondparrot
shammy
shashkova
Spacehogg

OPTION 4: SM ’72 limited edition CD (unsigned) = five prizes

blueblue
Debaser
diabolicalmind
geraldcraig
ramoana

OPTION 5: Signed David Bowie Live Ziggy Toon poster (signed by David Bowie and George Underwood) = five prizes

allansoj
ladystardust94
peterjw
stevedscott
strangeronthetown

If you’re one of the above, send me your name and address and we’ll have your prize to you as soon as we are able.

We are very sorry for the slack prize fulfilment recently, from this point on we intend to have all prizes despatched within 28 days of receiving your postal details…And we intend to tackle the backlog with a similar zeal.

Having said that, the T-shirts will be despatched by the folk over at the BowieStore so I wouldn’t like to make promises on their behalf. We’re also waiting for the posters to be signed, though that shouldn’t create too much of a delay.

If you won a T-shirt please don’t forget to stipulate your size.

Stay tuned for yet more David Bowie – Live Santa Monica ’72 contests shortly.