David Bowie

[Zenith]

I think this is a magnificent live performance of the song - one of the best i've heard if not the best. Bowie's slight raspy voice and the sax playing in the background work really well together and give it an additional jazzy, soul feel. Sublime.

[starmandb]

Can we have suffragette city live from Santa Monica as today's track please
Another fine piece of work painstakingly put together by mister Sussex
He has taken various performances from 1972 and added the audio from the fm broadcast
It was his 1st radio broadcast in America from the civic auditorium
A venue that had hosted many from Ella fitzgerald to bob dylan.
The show that aired live was on Friday the 20 th October 72( he also played there the following night)
As much as I gave praise to david live yesterday this is probably the finest capture of him live.
Part of the reason was because at the time he was considered a bit of a cult in America
It captures him finding his feet as a star and with a band at the top of their game.
I had it on a bootleg( it was far superior in quality to some of the other boots I had)
It took until 1994 before it was given a release officially
He messes up the 1st verse but it matters not a jot
It has real energy

[Zenith]

[starmandb]

Thanks zenith
Can we have lightning frightening as today's track please
It was 1st thought to have been an outtake from the man who sold the world but bowie authority Nicholas Pegg ( he is an actor who has also appeared as a dalek in many episodes of doctor who)shed some new light on it.
He brought up the fact that it is a blatant rip off of a song that appeared on crazy horse debut album which came out in feb 1971.
It seems more likely then that it was recorded during the arnold corns sessions march /April 1971
These were the sessions where it was thought bowie would no longer be a performer but a songwriter/ puppet master.
Bowie had been a huge fan of neil young who had worked with crazy horse but the song it's believed to have lifted from was called dirty dirty written by danny whitten ( who wrote I don't want to talk about it made famous by rod Stewart)
Whitten was a rocknroll casualty dying of an overdose in 1972
The track also boasted some of the cream of American guitarests ry cooder and a 19 year old nils lofgren who would go on to be a member of bruce springsteens e street band.
However it's a chugger that doesn't really go anywhere
Bowies lightning frightening doesn't travel much further but it's not without interest
It may have even worked better as an instrumental
The lyrics are so bland
Bowie plays sax, harmonica and slide guitar on the track
It sounds like a studio jam really
It didn't surface until appearing on a bootleg called shadow man in 1984 but I didn't come across it until 1989 when it appeared on a boot called the shadow man apparently the 1st boot quality was terrible .
An interesting curio but not good enough to appear on any of his albums of the time

[Zenith]

[starmandb]

Thanks zenith
Can we have shadow man as today's track please
Following yesterday's out take I thought we should explore this song
As I said I had it on a bootleg at the end of the 80's
What I was not aware of was that it was part of a planned album between the releases of hunky dory and ziggy stardust( god did this man ever leave the studio? )
I assumed that it was a ziggy outtake as it was recorded at trident
But the theory on when is open to conjecture I have seen april sept and november stated
I know that some of ziggy had been worked on pre hunky dory so who knows?
It would seem the messianic type character in the song ended up as ziggy
He hadn't fully formed ziggy as a concept yet
It does rather plod
It's another example of him being in thrall of neil young at the time
It was rerecorded in 2000 for the unreleased toy album but did eventually land up on the bonus disc of the special edition of heathen
This is far more polished( in fact I think it's quite beautiful )
It might be worth posting both versions mate to draw comparison
Apparently there are still a couple of songs from those trident sessions that have not seen the light of day.
It would be interesting to know what happened to them?

[Zenith]

An alluring hidden gem for sure.

[starmandb]

Thanks zenith
Can we have I pray ole as today's track please
Said to be a lodger outtake it shares a chord sequence with look back in anger but was dropped from the album as anger is vastly superior.
It came out on the cd reissue of lodger in 1991 as a bonus track
It's believed he may have mixed it as late as 1990
Which sounds feasible as it uses overdubs and the playing sounds much more like tin machine.
Bit of a nothing song really
Could be the preverbial camel
It was worked on over such a period of time
It lost any spark it had

[Zenith]

[starmandb]

Thanks zenith
Can we have killing a little time as today's track please
One of the three tracks released a couple of months ago as precursor to the Lazarus soundtrack being released
The bowie version is available on vimeo
It's been blocked on you tube
Michael c hall sings it in the show and does a pretty good job sounding like 70's bowie
But the raw emotion that bowie conveys in the song cannot be matched
Dark edgy Brilliant

[Zenith]

[starmandb]

Thanks zenith
Can we have heroes from french tv as today's track please
Another remaster that nacho posted last week
He appeared on a show called le rendezvous du dimanche on 16 th October 1977
I don't know anything about this show except it run from 1975 to 1980
I don't know if it was a music show or a general magazine show
Modern technology has meant nacho has been able to enhance something that was far to quiet on the original broadcast.
I know I have requested heroes a few times of late
But his incredible vocal performance makes this worthwhile
Not sure about his boots though
I believe they are the same ones he wore on the bolan show so he must have been taken by them

[Zenith]

[starmandb]

Thanks zenith
Can we have the informer as today's track please
It featured on the next day extra which came out with 5 bonus tracks
It had started as an instrumental called the plan which appeared on the deluxe edition of the album(I know!wasnt life a lot less complicated when an album was an album.?)
He takes on the role of a hitman whose feeling remorse for his actions
It's another conversation with god with bowie more bitter and guarded than ever

[Zenith]