Month: October 2008

I heard telephones, opera house, favourite melodies…

With October 14th being the date of the North American release of iSELECTBOWIE, all the territories that we mentioned in a news piece last month (09.25.2008 NEWS: LINK TO iSELECTBOWIE TRANSLATIONS) should now be able to get their hands on this fine compilation, which, as you know, was hand-picked by David Bowie himself…assuming you can hand-pick music. I prefer to think that he ear-picked them, but that’s just me.

And so, could there be a better time to announce the winners of our recent contest? (10.01.2008 NEWS: WIN iSELECTBOWIE CD HERE NOW) Probably, but here goes anyway.

The anagram of iSELECTBOWIE that wasn’t, was Ole Bi Sweetie. The vast majority of you got that one right, but only the five BowieNetters below were favoured by The Random Generator….

avogadro
babzzarella
changes1
djekki
yaneyla

If those of you that haven’t already done so could please furnish us with your name and address, we will have your CD to you pronto.

I like the tee shirts…

An impressive new set of six limited edition Mick Rock/David Bowie T -shirts has been produced by Blood & Glitter Vintage Denim.

It’s a beautifully made range with each of the six designs presented in a special limited edition gold embossed box (front and back pictured above) with a print of the original shot annotated with a few words from Mick Rock.

One of the shirts is the very photo used for the Melody Maker “Hey, Hey. Can’t thank you enough…really!” advert that we reproduced in yesterday’s Sorrow news item.

All of the images will be familiar to you, and unless you can afford the set, it’s going to be very hard to choose between them.

Here’s the blurb from the official site…

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Mick Rock Limited Edition T-Shirts

“A time so long ago now it seems like a dream, but it wasn’t and I have the pictures to prove it. Long live the angels of our destiny…”

Mick Rock is “The Man Who Shot the 70’s” the man behind the lens of the images that shaped a generation.

He launched his career in 1969 with his legendary sessions with post-Pink Floyd Syd Barrett.

In 1972 he met a little known David Bowie and for two years documented the rise of his alter ego Ziggy Stardust to worldwide fame.

His career expanded as he produced his now iconic images of cutting edge 70s rockers Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Queen, Bryan Ferry, Johnny Rotton, Debbie Harry, Talking Heads and the Ramones.

He continues to produce in the new millennium with memorable images of The Killers, The Scissor Sisters, The Yeah Yeah Yeah’s, Flamming Lips, Kate Moss, Snow Patrol, Queens of the Stone Age and more.

Blood & Glitter are proud to present this collection of exclusive Limited Edition T-Shirts, Featuring the images that continue to inspire us.

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The images here don’t really do the range any justice, check out the Blood & Glitter site for more details, bigger photos and purchasing information.

It’s worth remembering that a percentage of the profit from these shirts goes to War Child too.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes…

To mark today’s release of the standard jewel case version of David Bowie – Live Santa Monica ’72, (08.29.2008 NEWS: JEWEL CASE VERSION OF SM 72 DUE IN OCTOBER) EMI has kindly donated five copies for BowieNetters to win.

We’ve not done this for a while, so I thought it was time for a spot the difference contest…they seem popular enough with you lot.

I think it’s pretty obvious what’s required of you…there are ten or eleven or so differences between the tickets…can’t give an exact figure as some of the changes you may consider to be two alterations as opposed to one.

The point is, find as many as you can and the five randomly picked members with the greatest amount of correct answers each win a copy of the CD.

All the changes are pretty obvious, there is no need to worry about subtle colour fluctuations or specs of dust that have changed…they are all more obvious than that.

When you have exhausted all possibilities of any more changes, send the details to me, either as an image with the alterations highlighted or just as words describing the changes if you’re not good with image manipulation programmes.

Send your answer to me here before midnight NY time on Monday October 20th.

Usual BowieNet rules apply: Only one entry per BowieNet account per week, and please remember you must enter using your BowieNet e-mail or at least supply your BowieNet user name. If you do neither of these things you won’t be eligible to enter.

Good luck all.

Then I got the small red box…

OK, I was going to let this one go, but the inner turmoil was becoming too much to bear as I hit the post button for yesterday’s Life On Mars news piece that mentioned a Hunky Dory 8-track cartridge. And so, the train-spotter in me wins again. Here goes…

I’m not sure that the US Hunky Dory 8-track shown in the episode mentioned (see pic above) would have been made of red plastic.

Naturally, I have a large collection of Bowie 8-tracks, all the way back to the Mercury cartoon TMWSTW and the Decca curly-haired The World Of David Bowie, via Images on London, through the majority of the RCA years, right up to the EMI America 8-tracks of the 1980s, which I believe were the last to be made.

Anyway, credentials out of the way, I have to say I have not seen an American red RCA Bowie 8-track before now. I’m not saying such a thing doesn’t exist, but all of the USA RCA 8-tracks I have are white plastic in a red and white outer RCA cover…see example below.

I have a suspicion that it may be the loose cannon that is Canada that’s responsible for this red rogue anomaly. I have seen black and brown plastic Canadian Ziggy Stardust 8-tracks, so who knows what other maverick ideas they had? And they do seem to have a penchant for red plastic…Lodger anyone?

You may ask why I collect 8-track cartridges in the first place…and I might answer, “why not?”. Admittedly I can’t actually play them and they are about the worst format ever invented. But, so what…they look nice all stacked up together.

Also, if I ever get around to transferring them to CD it will be interesting to note the differences between these and more sensible formats.

One of the disadvantages of 8-track technology was that the tape had to have four sides of equal length to attain the continuos musical loop effect that was one of the supposed attractions of the thing.

At least the running order on Hunky Dory was the only thing altered for the full 8-track listening experience. Here it is…

Hunky Dory programs

1. Changes – Life On Mars? – Kooks

2. The Bewlay Brothers – Quicksand

3. Fill Your Heart – Andy Warhol – Queen Bitch

4. Song For Bob Dylan – Oh! You Pretty Things – Eight Line Poem

OK, so it may not be ideal to end the album with Eight Line Poem, but at least all the tracks are seemingly complete.

Spare a thought then for the listener of the Station To Station 8-track cartridge for example, who not only had to endure the title track in two parts, but would be lost in the astonishing beauty of Wild Is The Wind only to be rudely brought back to earth as the track fades half way through and then gives way to a clunk and a whirr as the machine lined up the heads for the next section? Here’s the Station To Station tracklisting…

Station To Station programs

1. Station To Station (Part 1)

2. Station To Station (Conclusion) – Word On A Wing – Wild Is The Wind (Part 1)

3. Wild Is The Wind (Conclusion) – Stay

4. TWC 15 (sic) – Golden Years

How did this format ever get off the ground? Well, it was one of the most popular formats of the early 70s, so somebody was buying these things in vast quantities.

As I say, there were sometimes differences between the content of an 8-track compared to the vinyl or cassette versions released at the same time. Lou Reed‘s Berlin is a great example of this.

Normally the album kicks off with Berlin and goes straight into Lady Day. But, in an attempt to get four sides of equal length, the 8-track version has a beautiful guitar and piano interlude lasting just one minute between Berlin and Lady Day. There’s no mention of this sweet surprise anywhere on the packaging.

No such problem with Metal Machine Music, which was an album comprised of four sides of exact equal length anyway.

To anybody still reading this drivel, do I need help?

You’re out there playing your high class games of sorrow…

Thirty five years ago this week, David Bowie was riding high on a wave of overwhelming public affection with the publication of various music polls that placed him fairly and squarely where he belonged…at the top.

Coming first in several categories of the Melody Maker poll, the above advert was printed in the popular music weekly to express Bowie’s gratitude to the voters.

The following week’s music papers had adverts for the new Bowie single, Sorrow, which was released on October 12th, (not September 28th as widely reported) after having been put back a couple of weeks.

Apparently this decision was made by RCA to prevent a chart battle with a little old man in scarlet and grey who had charted mid September. In the end, Sorrow won the race, reaching #3 in the UK singles chart, while the giggly little bloke only reached #6.

The advert above was our first glimpse of the iconic Justin de Vileneuve photograph that was to become the Pin-Ups album sleeve.

Originally shot as a Vogue cover, Bowie nabbed the image for his album while the magazine dithered over wether they could have a man on the cover or not…even if he was accompanied by one of the world’s most famous models, Twiggy…or Twig The Wonderkid as she was known to Bowie fans.

You can read more regarding this session at Justin de Vileneuve’s website.

If I recall correctly, the MM ad at the top of this piece was the first glimpse of that Mick Rock session which would also become associated with Pin-Ups.

Sorrow was a taster for the forthcoming Pin-Ups, an album of cover versions of Bowie’s favourite tunes from the late sixties. He pretty well made the song his own, and to this day there are people surprised to learn that Sorrow is not a Bowie original.

Same goes for the exclusive B-side too, in that Bowie really made it his own. The song was Jacques Brel‘s Amsterdam and Bowie had a couple of tough acts to follow with both Brel’s and Scott Walker‘s own versions of the song.having been recorded previously.

To these ears, Bowie pulled it off and it not only remains my favourite version to this day, but it’s also one of my very favourite Bowie vocal performances of all time too.

We’ll talk a little more about the undervalued Pin-Ups album when we celebrate the 35th anniversary of its release next week.

For the non-English speaking of those among you who have purchased the CD already, here’s a link to our page for the translated versions of David Bowie’s iSELECTBOWIE song-by-song notes. We’ll hopefully have a permalink from the front page shortly.

See our previous story for the iSELECTBOWIE release schedule: 09.25.2008 NEWS: LINK TO iSELECTBOWIE TRANSLATIONS

As I ask you to focus on…

Back in around 2002/2003, Sweden’s Televison 2 showed a 24 minute documentary on the making of David Bowie’s 1971 classic, Life On Mars?

Featuring insightful interviews with Ken Scott, Mick Rock, Rick Wakeman, and David Bowie himself, it is a fascinating glimpse in to the construction of both the song and Mick Rock’s 1973 video.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure it didn’t get shown outside of Sweden, but now some bright spark has posted it on YouTube for everybody to enjoy.

If you haven’t seen it yet, you’re in for a treat. It’s in three parts and you can find it here.

It’s on Amerika’s tortured brow…

It seems the US version of Life On Mars that we told you about back in May (05.13.2008 NEWS: JASON O’MARA FOR US REMAKE OF LIFE ON MARS) has gone down well with viewers.

The first episode has aired in the US but having only seen the, admittedly impressive, first five minutes, I can’t really give an opinion…though it is good to see such a great cast.

You can view the opening scenes courtesy of BowieNetter aucourant here on the MBs.

Practically the whole of Life On Mars? is played in the sequence in which the character Sam Tyler experiences his switch from present to past.

During this scene there’s a clever juxtaposition of a close-up of Tyler’s iPod playing Hunky Dory in 2008 with a close-up of an 8-track cartridge of Hunky Dory being played in his 1973 vehicle. (See image above)

Life On Mars airs on Thursdays at 9:00 on abc, but if you’re in the US you can view it online on abc’s excellent Life On Mars mini-site anyway.

Speaking of Life On Mars?

They’ve all gone to look for iTunes America…

The young Americans among you may be pleased to learn that iTunes USA has a new section devoted to DB called The World Of David Bowie.

Aside from all the normal selections you would expect to find on iTunes, this new feature allows you to download compilations of related tracks by other artists too, all collected into the relevant groups below.

There’s some good stuff in there and you can buy single tracks as opposed to whole collections if you so desire.

The iTunes introduction to this new section is worth a read too, see below also.

Good stuff, eh? Check out some of those compilations, there are some good things in there and it saves you trying to hunt them all down individually.

Thanx to BowieNetter subquetaneous for the pointer.

Share my life…

This one slipped past me on the day, it was a full-page published in last week’s Financial Times magazine and if you can’t read the captions in the scan above, you can here.

While we’re looking at the FT, in regard to my recent mention of Keane‘s apparent appropriation of bits of the Bowie sound, (10.03.2008 NEWS: BOWIE HOME OWNERS PESTERED BY PESKY FANS) Richard Clayton of the FT went a little further with the theory in his recent review of Keane at The Forum in London.

Here’s a bit from the review, but if you are either Keane or a Keane fan, perhaps you should look away now…

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?If in doubt, listen to David Bowie,? is the motto for any band seeking to change their sound, and Keane have clearly been listening intently. ?The Lovers Are Losing? cribs the propulsive drone from the start of ?Heroes?, while ?Better Than This? echoes to those shrill, stabbing synth-tones that act like depth-charges in ?Ashes to Ashes?. I?m not complaining, because this is the most exciting music Keane have made ? and judging from the elastic way Tim Rice-Oxley jiggled on his piano stool, their songwriter knows it, too.

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However, Clayton does go on to suggest that the band’s latest, Perfect Symmetry, “isn?t their Kid A, but it could be their Achtung Baby.”

I’m keeping an open mind. They made a jolly good fist of Under Pressure and Bedshaped was a pretty good single with a damn fine middle eight, imho.