Diamond Gods Cd Competition

Diamond Gods are poachers and they hide behind trees…

Those lovely folx over at Ncompass have generously donated five copies of the recently released ‘Diamond Gods – Interpretations of Bowie’. The 14-track CD contains a mixture of hard-to-find previously released tracks, (Brix Smith, Nico and Blondie) mixed with new songs recorded exclusively for this compilation (The excellent Tim Bowness and Samuel Smiles version of ‘I Can’t Read’, Iva Davies and Icehouse’s ‘Loving The Alien’ and a scarily menacing techno version of ‘The Laughing Gnome’ by Buster Bloodvessel!).

Officially out last Monday, this is one of the better Bowie covers compilations released in recent years…and there have been quite a few. Here’s the track-listing for ‘Diamond Gods’:

01. Iva Davies and Icehouse: ‘Loving The Alien’
02. EN: ‘Life On Mars?’
03. Brix Smith: ‘Space Oddity’
04. Blondie: “Heroes” (Live)
05. Bellatrix: ‘God Knows I’m Good’
06. Tacye: ‘The Man Who Sold The World’
07. Tim Bowness and Samuel Smiles: ‘I Can’t Read’
08. Buster Bloodvessel: ‘The Laughing Gnome’
09. The Aries Parallel: ‘Panic In Detroit’
10. Hazel O’Connor: ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide’
11. Dead Eye Dolls: ‘Real Cool World’
12. Nico: “Heroes”
13. The Nine: ‘Loving The Alien’
14. David Fisher: ‘Memory Of A Free Festival’

One of the more interesting recording’s made especially for this CD is by a woman who once cut David Bowie’s hair. Her name is Hazel O’Connor, and the Bowie connection doesn’t end with a haircut. Hazel’s more famous recordings were produced by Tony Visconti, she used the artist Edward Bell to design one of her album sleeves (He designed ‘Scary Monsters’ and its associated single sleeves) and she released a Bowie cover in the Eighties.

The song she performs on ‘Diamond Gods’ is ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide’ accompanied only by harp and voice, and sounding like Marianne Faithfull, with a hint of Lulu, backed by The Swingle Singers! But what I want to know is the title of the aforementioned song she released as a 12″ only bonus track back in the early Eighties? A clue is that I wouldn’t exist without this particular song. There, I’ve gone and made it far too easy.

Answers by this time next week from a BowieNet e-mail account only (as always) to MrTotalBlamBlam@AOL.Com with a subject line of “Hazel’s Bowie cover”. We’ll announce the winner on the Eighth Day…rather contrived pun definitely intended. };-)

While we’re on the subject of odd women singing Bowie songs…