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Now she’s worth more than one and a half K, yeah…
The March issue of
The only adjustment Record Collector made to the boys’ suggestions was a 25% reduction for the Low sampler 45 from £2,000 down to £1,500. Which is fair enough, considering the wildly varying prices it has sold for…though, in Chas and Paul’s defence, it has gone for up to £2,250.
I’ll leave you with the top ten as listed in the magazine.
I’ve been writing just for you…
We first told you about this one when it kicked off in Sheffield in the UK back in April of last year. (04.03.2010 NEWS: DB IN NPG’s WRITERS OF INFLUENCE EXHIBITION)
As we pointed out back then, it’s now in Sunderland on the last of four legs, having previously visited Sheffield, Southampton and Plymouth. That’s the exhibition I’m talking about, not the above celebrated pooch in the Terry O’Neil shot from 1974.
The pointer to the original story from last year was sent in by Spaceface and now this free exhibition has reached her home town, she has been along for a visit. She kindly sent in the snap below of the guff accompanying aforementioned O’Neil shot of Bowie…
If you’re in Sunderland, you have a whole month (until March 27th) to catch the show.
Without you, What would I do?
George, who has been enjoying some success via a guest vocal on Mark Ronson‘s splendid Somebody To Love Me, has been at it again, this time in an interview by Shirley Halperin with
In the interview, George talks about the forthcoming Culture Club reunion and he also discusses fellow showmen from past and present…and you-know-who obviously features in it.
You can read the full thing
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THR: If you were starting out today, would you try out for a show like The X-Factor or American Idol?
George: I wouldn’t survive on X-Factor. I’m not someone who can sing anything? And my favorite singers aren’t people whose voice you would say is amazing. I’m a big Bob Dylan fan, a huge David Bowie fan… none of those people have orthodox, cabaret voices. These are people where what they?re singing about is just as important as how they?re singing it. I can’t imagine what Simon Cowell would have said to Ziggy Stardust. ?Honey, lose the cape??
THR: Since Idol, Adam [Lambert] has been pretty open about his sexuality, do you wish you could have been more up front about yours at the height of your career?
George: I think you do things in your own time. My family knew I was gay when I was 15, long before I got famous. But it’s a very different thing coming out to your family and coming out to the universe. That’s a big step. Maybe without me, there wouldn’t be Adam Lambert. Without Bowie, there wouldn’t be me. Without Quentin Crisp, there wouldn’t have been Bowie. So everything is part of a big daisy chain. A lot of people come up to me all the time and say thank you for helping me be who I am. So my thing wasn’t just about sexuality. It was about anyone who felt different; anyone who felt out of place. Being gay was one part of it.
THR: How do you think you would?ve handled the internet in your younger years?
George: As a kid, I would’ve loved to get a tweet from David Bowie or Joan Rivers or Tom Cruise. It’s great that you can communicate with people and it’s instant. But there are aspects to the internet that are very grimy and dark. Whenever there’s an interview with me, I might read it, but I don’t read the comments because they’re so hateful sometimes. When someone writes something nasty, I just think, “If that’s your contribution to my day, I really don’t need your impoliteness.” I’m lucky that people are very cool with me and I get a lot of love. I appreciate that.
Bang Bang, I’ve got you babe…
I’m sure you’re all more than familiar with the performance of I Got You Babe by David Bowie and Marianne Faithfull at the Marquee in London in October 1973.
Marianne recalls the event along with other key moments in her career in the regular photographic retrospective (entitled CH-CH-CH-CH-Changes) in the April issue of
Good to see that she is also on the list of those wanting to work with DB.
I’m an absolute beginner…
Who could have foreseen the answer the flame-haired, make-up-wearing singer of My Chemical Romance would give when he was asked what musician from history he would like to collaborate with?
Ben Jones of Absolute Radio posed the question to Gerard Way in an interview/fan Q&A last week…the exchange went something like this…
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Ben Jones: If you could collaborate with any musician from history who would it be and why? We’re giving you the whole of history.
Gerard Way: I know, it’s hard, dude. David Bowie. He’s awesome.
BJ: Why David Bowie? I think I probably know why David Bowie.
GW: Right. I think because he’s a true artist, he’s completely always done what he wanted, he’s changed so much record to record, and I completely look up to him. I definitely think he’s a genius, I think nothing really ever seemed to get in the way of him making his art and that’s admirable.
BJ: He had this amazing way of having the image, but the image not detracting from what the music was doing. And actually he could have just been wearing brown trousers with a side parting and it would have been just as entertaining as what he was doing.
GW: I think so.
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“He could have just been wearing brown trousers with a side parting”…the very thought!
Anyway, you can watch the whole interview over on
Speaking of pop people who wouldn’t mind working with our man…
Baby Doll, Baby Doll…
I’m sure you all know about this one by now…Earl Slick has joined the New York Dolls for a
It’s great news for both Bowie fans needing an Earl Slick fix and Dolls’ fans needing somebody with enough credibility to authentically recreate those classic Johnny Thunders‘ licks.
I spoke to Slicky at his home during a day off from rehearsals and it was clear that he was very much looking forward to these shows.
Growing up in the New York City borough of Staten Island, (as did David Johansen) naturally Slick was an earlier follower of the Dolls…he even remembers Johansen’s pre-Dolls band Vagabond Missionaries.
It’s also highly likely that Slick would have been at the shows that Bowie attended in 1972.
Local fans of the band will be pleased to learn that there will be a New York Dolls’ signing session at Best Buy in Union Square in New York on March 15th. (Details
If you can’t make the session, you can pre-order a signed copy of Dancing Backward In High Heels via
I’ll leave you with the tour break down as it stands right now, commencing, as it does, with two shows at the Bowery Ballroom in NYC, the day after the signing session…
Well, it’s all very exciting, and I for one can’t wait to see them in the confines of the tiny Old Vic Tunnels in London.
Yes I’ve read tomorrow morning’s papers…
I’m sure everybody reading this will have had the good sense to answer “no” to the question posed by this BowieNet news item’s headline…Particularly if they caught the debut of the OK! TV show on Channel 5 in the UK early this evening.
X Factor judge Louis Walsh was one of the guests on the show and he happened to mention that the dream judges he would like to work alongside, should there even be any vacant seats in the next series, would be someone like David Bowie, Paul McCartney or Lenny Kravitz.
In fact the boy-band champion wasn’t even certain of his own position on the show, let alone who might join him if he were to remain one of the judges.
However, tomorrow’s
We can’t speak for Mr McCartney but the above suggestion of Bowie’s involvement has earned the Daily Star the BowieNet Tosh Of The Month Award.
She had an horror of rooms she was tired…
Thanks to the generosity of BowieNetter Leah Kardos (girlstardust), I’ve had the privilege to see this wonderful project blossom from humble beginnings over the last year or so.
If you want to get straight to it and see and hear what
While you’re there you can also check out photographic Valentine’s Day messages for David among all the other things to savour on the site.
If you want to read a bit (quite a bit actually) regarding the genesis of the project and how it developed, keep reading, as BowieNetter Liz Tray (LizT) has kindly told the story from start to finish from the viewpoint of her own close involvement.
Over to you Liz…
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This cast of characters, and the miraculous tale that follows, starts with a gent called Phil (aka Bnetter iforgot). Last February he asked Leah (girlstardust) to play a set of Bowie covers at his 40th birthday party. Being a singer, composer (not to mention full-time Music Technology lecturer and PhD student), and all-round good sport, she said yes. A year later she has, inexplicably, delivered what is, I think, the best collection of Bowie covers ever created, with an accompanying
Covers are, as the football saying goes, on a hiding to nothing. If the originals, as in this case, are perfection, what?s the point in redoing them? They could end up as faintly embarrassing fan karaoke or slavish note-for-note recreations of the original that end up on a compilation album. Covers are, most often, at best, expressions of devotion or, at worst, painful on the ear; and the compilation album culprits offer nothing more than shameless self-promotion. Then there are the covers that ditch the music, or change the lyrics, and are so desperate to be different from the original they come off as pretentious and lose the magic that the song put out there in the first place. Are they trying to make you remember how you felt when you first heard them? Or are they trying to challenge your memories?
It?s rare that the outcome provides a new experience that reaches out to you, catching your attention, and even making you smile. Even more rare is witnessing an outcome that makes the performer feel an increased appreciation of the original material, test how far creative boundaries can be pushed, learn about the working process and bend the perceptions of these much-loved songs. And, finally, even if its original purpose was just to have a laugh, it?s remarkable that the finished product is also able to genuinely illuminate the gifts that the performer/creator has and wants to convey to the listener. Well, she?s achieved all of it. These songs are passionate, cheeky, heartfelt, original, dark, light and filled with inspiration.
When Phil asked Leah to perform at his birthday she put together a package of songs to try and please a roomful of Bnetters who, at playing time, would be slightly, well, merry from the drink. It would have been easy to initiate some kind of singalong, play it safe. But that?s not her. If you?re a true artist you follow your heart, you do something that excites you and, if other people like it, great. If they’re horrified, at least that?s a reaction. Indifference is the enemy and, believe me, you will not be indifferent when you hear these songs.
On the day of the party she stood in my flat, plugged her Mac into my speakers, with the rudimentary backings already created in her
I remember sitting at the desk, in the dimly lit room, pictures of icons (musical, not religious) all around, with her in the booth next door, thinking, my god, this sounds fantastic, as the Logic patterns unfolded in front of me. Three songs were done on the first night, three on the second, all with whisky as an accompaniment. Good for the voice you know. After the second set was done, as it was getting light outside, we went downstairs and watched the Glass Spider DVD. It was, at that point, supposed to be a little project that would produce a few tunes, just for fans. The week after the recording, her artist friend,
Then, at the end of August, I had a bit of a crazy idea. The songs, even in demo form, were turning out so well I wanted to bump it all up a bit. The project deserved it, she deserved it: so I popped off an email to my mate Rex Ray (you know, that guy who?s keeping the MBs alive), a shot in the dark, asking him to do the artwork: cover, booklet and all. He?s a busy boy so I made it cheeky and crossed my fingers. I didn’t tell Leah I was doing this, by the way. If he said yes, I wanted it to be a surprise. To my extreme shock, he emailed back saying he was game! Good lad. Having almost fallen off my chair, I called her immediately and we squealed like the fangirls we are. Now this was getting serious.
It had to retain the bedroom DIY feel but become polished and perfect at the same time, quite the feat. Once Rex said yes, it pushed the project up to a completely different level. Lovely Blam would put it in the news and, though it was too exciting even to contemplate, HE would hear it. It was time to rethink and take as much time as needed. In her meagre spare time she started to build the songs up. I started getting new versions, each better than the last. A couple in September, then a gap while real life intruded, since the school holidays were over, then a new set of mixes at Xmas.
Finally, a month ago, she decided on the Valentine?s Day deadline, as the songs became honed into a project to be proud of. Two vocals were re-recorded, which needed doing (oops, lyric flub etc), and she kept on adding and subtracting and rethinking and refining. Now we were getting to the sharp end: the frequency of mixes increased, she built the website, the magnificent Rex artwork arrived (cue more fangirl squealing), the accompanying videos were submitted, the credits were compiled, the running order was decided, and so on.
That brings us to today, where You Can?t Hide Beat stands as the most ambitious and audacious set of Bowie covers you?ll ever hear. Go. Download. Play at maximum volume.
Liz Tray – February 2011
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I have to agree with Liz, this is definitely one of the very best Bowie covers projects I’ve ever heard too and I’m sure you will also agree once you’ve heard it. Well done to Leah and all involved.
As ugly as a teenage millionaire…
Due in April is the remake of the 30-year-old comedy, Arthur, which originally starred Dudley Moore, Liza Minnelli and John Gielgud.
This new version stars Russell Brand as the fun-loving, work-shy billionaire, Arthur, along with Helen Mirren, Jennifer Garner and Greta Gerwig.
The trailer features both Rebel Rebel and Under Pressure but I’m not sure what Bowie music features in the film proper or on the soundtrack CD, if there’s to be one.
Hopefully we’ll have these details for you next week. Meanwhile, check out the trailer on the official Arthur website,
It’s happening now… (Well, within the next couple of hours or so)
For those of you that haven’t been keeping an eye on Spaceface‘s TV & Radio diary page (see Bowie Calendar tab above) here’s a quick reminder regarding the above…which is about to start as I post this.
The BEEB obviously like this particular show, this is at least the third broadcast of it…and why wouldn’t they? It’s a cracker!
I should point out that this intimate ten-song performance to BowieNetters was originally recorded in September 2002, not March as reported on the
See Spaceface’s entry for a link to the original news item with complete setlist, etc.
NB: The Bowie segment commences shortly after 21:00