“Turn to the left, Turn to the right”
We continue our delve into the David Bowie – Who Can I Be Now? (1974 – 1976) box set this week with David Live.
The first official live Bowie album, David Live, is the document of The Year Of The Diamond Dogs Tour of Canada and North America in 1974.
The album was compiled from shows at the Tower Theatre, Philadelphia, in July and was released in October that year. Our montage shows the rather grainy original sleeve with a reversed image that really didn’t do the Dagmar photo justice. The other cover is the 2016 version with picture restored to its rightful quality and orientation.
The Who Can I Be Now? box includes both the David Live original mix, remastered double album (2 CD), and the David Live 2005 mix, remastered triple vinyl album (2 CD).
Before the Diamond Dogs tour morphed into the Philly Dogs tour later in the year, the show had a particularly theatrical bent, with a lavish stage production which some thought might overshadow Bowie’s actual performance. In the event, they needn’t have worried. Bowie’s stagecraft and experience won through, as evidenced by this excerpt from a Rolling Stone review by Richard Cromalin…
“The props were spectacular and effective. But the real moments, the screams and the hysterical assaults of the stage, were powered by Bowie himself and his mercurial parade of personalities – the empty, pretty-boy movie star, the playful, lascivious bar crawler singing the legend of “The Jean Genie,” and especially the unadorned, spontaneous David Bowie-as-entertainer with his audience in the palm of his hand.”
Listen to some of that magic captured on David Live.
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