Month: November 2002

Don’t let it Slip Away…

The limited edition version of Heathen includes:

-Digi-pak with full length Heathen CD plus a 2nd bonus disc which features:
-Air remix of “A Better Future”
-Moby remix of “Sunday”
-An alternative take of “Panic In Detroit”
-The rare track, “Conversation Piece” from the never released Toy album.

Order the limited edition version of “Heathen” and you`ll get a FREE 30 day trial to BowieNet!

BowieNet is the premier online fan club for Bowie fans. As a BowieNet member you`ll have exclusive access to all things Bowie: his online journal, exclusive ticketing, Members only chats and events and much more!

Order Heathen now and you`ll get a FREE 30 day trial to BowieNET!
Details will arrive with your order.

Click here for more info

No mistake here… If you know what to do, good luck. If you don’t, you need to look around!

Got to keep searching and searching…

The Best of Bowie went straight into the UK album chart today. The compilation has entered the chart at number 11 in its first week of release. To celebrate the fact, we’ve got a bunch of goodies to give away, including:

5 copies of the UK Best of Bowie double CD

5 copies of the UK Best of Bowie five-track promo CD

5 UK Best of Bowie posters that utilise the image above

1 ultra rare UK withdrawn Best of Bowie poster

All self-explanatory, apart from the last prize, which I’ll tell you about now. This withdrawn poster features the album cover and release date information, which is wrong! The album’s release date was put back after posters were produced, and all but a handful of these collectibles were destroyed.

This competition couldn’t be easier to enter, you simply e-mail me telling me which of the items you would prefer to win. There is one catch… you can only enter to win one of the items. You must also supply your BowieNet user name, or you will be disqualified.

So once you’ve decided which of the four items you fancy your chances with, just click on the relevant shortcut above, type your BowieNet user name and click send. It’s really that easy…no questions or complicated tasks, just enter. I’ll announce the winners around this time next week

Don’t forget the Best of Bowie two DVD set is out tomorrow, and it’s quite brilliant. I’ve been watching it all week and it’s so good to finally have all this stuff in this sort of quality…Right, I’m off to the BowieNet party in Soho…see ya there! };-)

Got to keep searching and searching…

Over the last few weeks, I’ve received numerous enquiries regarding the fate of David Bowie’s Jackalope. The creature first made an unidentified appearance as far back as August (08/11/02 SNIPPET: ON THE ROAD) when it was pictured acting the erm… goat with Mr Earl Slick. It then enjoyed even more of the limelight when I posted a beautiful photographic portrait of the potentially dangerous animal, taken during rehearsals at Hammersmith. (09/17/02 NEWS: BLAMMO REPORTS FROM BOWIE REHEARSALS)

The beast could clearly be seen during the next day’s Radio 2 performance at Maida Vale on September 18th, and indeed it became a regular favourite with fans right up until that fateful day on Friday the 27th in Bonn. It transpires that some mean-spirited sort decided this particular Jackalope should be liberated.

Once the alarm had been raised, the road crew and members of the band (and possibly even David, perhaps) hunted high and low until the early hours, but alas, their efforts were in vain. It was looking like the remainder of the shows on the prophetically named ‘Searching For Jackalopes Tour’ would be played Jackalope-less.

And then, as mysteriously as it had vanished, the funny-faced little thing was back again, as evidenced in our Philly rehearsal shot supplied by Mark Plati. (10/25/02 NEWS: BOSTON PIX AND REVIEW ROUND UP) I asked Mr Plati if he could explain, and this is what he told me: “Andrew Burns, the bass/guitar tech, went to the trouble of having another Jackalope flown in from Wyoming.” So now you know. (Click on the image above to take you to the Wyoming based jackalopejunction.com)

The casual observer could be forgiven for thinking they had witnessed the return of the original article, (After all, the two Jackalopes were identical twins) but the sad truth is that the thief is still at large, and who knows what cruelty the original Bowie Jackalope is being subjected to. Obviously there is a substantial reward on offer for information leading to the return of this most unusual and much-missed mammal. };-)

I, I *should* be King..

Dot music interviewed David Grohl of the Foo Fighters recently, about the making of their new album ‘One By One’. David was asked about his predilection for working with other artists, notably Queens Of The Stone Age and our hero. He had some fascinating gossip to offer about his recent work on ‘Heathen’ which is very much worth repeating here for you:-

Q: You recently played guitar for David Bowie’s ‘Heathen’ album; was that years ago?

DG: “No, that was recently, that was maybe five or six months ago; he just called and asked if I’d play guitar on a song. And I said, yes sure; he sent me the copy of the songs, I played guitar and sent it back. I mean, I went and bought the album last week and it sounds pretty good.

“I recorded something for Reeves Gabriel’s (Bowie’s guitarist who formed part of metal-experimental Tin Machine) solo record and it was Reeves, Charles from the Pixies, Frank Black, David Bowie and me, we did one song, called ‘My Face’. That was a trip, that was pretty amazing, just to be in the studio with Bowie for that.

TH: Didn’t he let you have his lyrics?

DG: “No, he left. He came in to write lyrics, he sat down on the floor and spread postcards and pictures of things, all over the floor.”

TH: “Very Bowie”

DG: “And sat down and started writing down lyrics and the song was called ‘My Face’ and it says ‘I’m nothing without my face’. So, he wrote the lyrics on a notebook paper, and then on the bottom he did a self-portrait of himself. We recorded the songs and by, like, 2 o’clock in the morning everyone was leaving and I looked on the ground and the lyric sheet was just sort of lying there. It was an almost like that last pork-chop on a boat of starving people, everyone was standing there starring at this f**king lyric sheet on the ground, like – who’s gonna get it? who’s gonna grab it? and I f**king grabbed it and I gave it to my sister, she is a huge David Bowie fan; so, she has it framed in her house. It’s f**king cool.”

CS: “That’s f**king unbelievable.”

DG: “It’s pretty awesome. But, he is a great guy, I mean, he is the consummate gentlemen and he seems like he should be f**king King, and not a rock star. So, he is very nice. The fact that it was a Neil Young cover (‘I’ve Been Waiting For You’) on the (‘Heathen’) album, made it more, even more inviting.”

You can read the whole thing online, here.

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Who knows? Not me

David Grohl is also very much involved in the Nov 11th (UK) release of the new ‘Best Of Nirvana’ album, which includes their 1993 ‘MTV Unplugged’ cover of one of David’s best loved songs ‘The Man Who Sold The World’

NME has a special Nirvana issue this week, which is an excellent read and includes what they describe as ‘an impeccably cool list of the band’s Top 50 albums of all time’. And of course, the album ‘The Man Who Sold The World’ features on the list. Sort of questions Paul Du Noyer’s hotly debated ranking of db’s output (11/06/02 NEWS: Q GOES BOWIE BONKERS FOR DECEMBER), don’t it? 😉

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Footnote: BowieNetter MickQ was quick to spot the *deliberate* mistake in the original ‘What’s New’ description for this item. The song ‘My Face’ was in fact re-named ‘Jewel’ and released by Reeves Gabrels on ‘Ulysses (Della Notte)’, his second solo album. You can check out the lyric at MickQ’s message board post, here.

:))

She got everything

Talking of last week’s Sunday Times (11/04/02 NEWS: UK BOB IS RELEASED TODAY ); as well as the ‘Outstanding’, three star accolade for BoB, Mrs Bowie was the subject of a three page feature in the Style section. This included a couple of gorgeous new photographs, one of which is on show above, and also a recent and very quotable interview. The magazine describes her as:-

IMAN. Model, mother, business woman, rock-star wife – and purveyor of the perfect British fry-up.

Here are a couple of snippets from the interview:-

“The most exciting thing at the VH1 Fashion Awards was meeting our heroines, Venus and Serena Williams. God, they are tall! David was so thrilled, he had our pictures taken with them.”

“We enjoy eating in, and I?m a great cook. It amazes me that David doesn?t get fat. He loves things like shepherd?s pie, and insists I cook him a fry-up on Sunday, so he can eat it while reading the British newspapers. He still gets them all.”

“My home is wherever David is. He is my soul mate and we are amazingly alike. And, of course, I still fancy him! Who wouldn?t?”

You can read the whole thing online, here.

:))

David’s “Metro Mix” of Everyone Says ‘Hi’ is being used in the upcomnmg Spring 2003 release of FREQUENCY 2, A music based video game for the Sony Playstation 2.

The player tries to recreate the original mix of a song using elements from the original mix. Upon recreating the mix, the player can utilize “jam mode” and create a new mix that they can take on line to battle other players.

David is one among many artists who’s music has been incorporated into this interactice game.

You can read more about Frequency 2 HERE

Watch this space for a possible contest to win a copy of Frequency2 and more….

Q is out of sight and out of sounds…

The current edition of Q magazine (December 2002) goes far beyond it’s usual gratutious reproduction of a Bowie picture, by instead using no less than… bloody loads of pix! There are loads of reasons for the Bowie fan to check out this edition, and I’ve tried to break them down below, with excerpts when relevant…

Cover mounted CD: The Best Tracks From The Best Albums From 2002

The title is a clue to the content here. Of course, the whole world knows ‘Heathen’ was among the very best albums of 2002, and Q have confirmed this fact by including ‘A Better Future’ on this CD.

Page 5 – Blurb about aforementioned CD with ‘Heathen’ cover session shot

The bit about ‘A Better Future’ and ‘Heathen’, which applauds this latest work as “proper Bowie”, ends with the line: Want more? You’ll be wanting the “all good” album, Heathen.

Page 10 – Contents with early Ziggy photograph

A teaser for page 136 uses a colour version of one of those beautiful Michael Putland shots from that very early Ziggy session… you’ve seen it before, but it’s always worth another look.

Page 19 – Moby Cash for Questions

Moby sings David’s praises in this regular Q feature. When asked about a possible Morrissey colaboration, Moby replied: …I would love to collaborate with him, but I don’t have the time. The only person I continually make exceptions for is David Bowie, because he’s my favourite musician of all time.

Appropriately enough, the very next question, (posed by Karen Kegel) asks: Any Moby/Bowie collaborations slated for the near future? Moby responded: However busy I am, if David Bowie asks me to do something, I have to say yes. I’ve done two remixes for him, and I played guitar and piano on some tracks he’s recorded and I played guitar with him at Carnegie Hall [Tibet benefit]. So we’ve collaborated a lot already.

Page 39 – Harman/Kardon advert

This full-page ad for Harman/Kardon hi-fi and audio-visual seperates uses a small live Bowie shot as part of a montage.

Page 48 – Album charts

This feature highlights the top 40 album chart for the week ending 6th October 2002. Three albums are singled out for analysis, Elvis Presley’s ‘Elvis – 30 #1 Hits’, Suede’s ‘A New Morning’ and David Bowie’s ‘Heathen’. At number 1 in this particular chart, ‘Elvis – 30 #1 Hits’ is further proof of the King’s enduring popularity, while ‘A New Morning’ is evidence of the sad fact that Sude’s fortunes are most definitely on the wain…the album didn’t even make the Top 20 here.

With a headline of “Golden Year” and using a recent live shot to illustrate the piece, ‘Heathen’, on the other hand, is praised by the magazine thus:

Showing the way forward for established acts with new albums, David Bowie has managed to reverse his own commercial decline. His tactics were simple ? make a decent record and work hard at promoting it. Bowie’s last few albums have charted high in the first week and then fallen rapidly, but this time he’s managed to keep Heathen in the charts for four months thanks to a promo schedule as intense as any he’s ever previously attempted.

Aside from his Mercury Music Prize nomination, Bowie’s recorded sessions for Radio 2 and Later With Jools Holland, appeared on TV shows hosted by Jonathan Ross and Parkinson; curated the Meltdown Festival and chatted on just about every major radio station. He even did an in-store signing at HMV’s London store. How keen is that?

Page 64 & 65 – The 50 best albums of 2002

There are two Bowie pictures on the first two pages of this six page listing, and a brief appreciation of ‘Heathen’ that ends with the observation: He’s still ever so good, isn’t he?

Page 95 – First page of Review section

Another plug for that feature on page 136 uses a ‘Rebel Rebel’ pirate shot.

Page 120 – Q Review Re-Releases

A five-star review of the Best of Bowie brings the total of Bowie pictures used in the magazine so far up to eight… and we’re not even at Page 136 yet!

Page 136 – Q Review Buyer’s Guide

A three-page guide to the Bowie back catalogue. Paul Du Noyer points the uninitiated in the direction of Bowie’s best work, even if it is a futile excercise. How could we all possibly agree on the opinion of one mere mortal. Whatever, Paul’s choices are bound to start some heated debate on the MBs. Many of the albums have a couple of paragraphs written about them, and though there’s not room enough to tell you much more than that, (you still awake in the back?) here follows the gospel according to Paul Du Noyer:

Indispensable. Truly exceptional

Ziggy Stardust, Low, Hunky Dory, Aladdin Sane, Best of Bowie

Excellent. Must buy

TMWSTW, Diamond Dogs, Station To Station, “Heroes”, Lodger

Good. Not for everyone

Tin Machine, Heathen, Young Americans, Scary Monsters, Let’s Dance, ‘hours…’

Approach With Caution. Please be careful

1.Outside, David Bowie (Deram) Space Oddity, Pin-Ups, Santa Monica ’72, Tonight, Black Tie White Noise, The Buddha Of Suburbia

Poor. For collectors only

Never Let Me Down, Tin Machine ll, Tin Machine Live: Oy Vey, Baby, David Live, Stage, Ziggy Stardust The Motion Picture, Earthling.

So there you have it, how much of that do you agree with? I have to say it was refreshing to read Mr Du Noyer’s appreciation of the first Tin Machine album, when he said of the release: That it’s the most derided of Bowie albums says more about the pack mentality of rock opinion than the record’s true merits. Hear! Hear! Well said sir…I feel the same way about ‘Earthling’, as I’m sure David does about ‘The Buddha Of Suburbia’…over to you lot!