david bowie

Wow, that’s beautiful. The original mix had that “newly stereo” quality of severe hard-panning that also is heard on Oddysee and Oracle. Centring things as is done on this mix glues everything together— superior treatment of the Mellotron, too. I heard the famous Stylophone on this song for the first time, having never before been able to identify it.

I want a remix of Oddysee and Oracle (sorry if I’m spelling it wrong)

Mono mix of Odessey is awesome btw

Is modern love a rewrite of young Americans?

It's in the same key, with similar tempo and harmonic movements, it's possible he conceived it as a rewrite.

Ascending chords as well. He got to the V chord in the verses a lot faster in 1974…seems to have slowed down on modern love and only gets to the IV

I'm so obsessed with 'Jump They Say', these days, even the ridiculous Robert Longo referencing video, the song is really heart-breaking in some undefinable way.

he said
JUMP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqKz_L_yUtg

Damn you YouTube user 0tapir0

Lots of good Bowie talk over here too (incl. Tarfumes and Alfred getting me to finally check out the awes 2016 Parlophone[Rhino dist.] Young Americans) Christgau's Consumer Guide Grade List: A+

Bowie's global publishing catalog is now sold for $250 million:
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/david-bowie-estate-sells-music-143220254.html

Whole lotta lawyer talk. But perfectly happy for Iman, Duncan and Alexandria, honestly.

I love them both but I love Bowie's catalog twice as much as Bruce's, not the other way around, financially speaking.

Beautiful track from Toy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1WLw9bNBas

The rest of the album doesn't do much for me, but at least Bowie recognized that this was too good to keep on the shelf - it was a B-side for some Heathen singles (as well as a bonus track on the deluxe edition), and he released it again on Nothing Has Changed.

Gail Ann Dorsey did a lovely version of it this past Saturday on the Mike Garson-organized Bowie livestream tribute.

Found a snippet!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_OAe_ziiJk

Also on Toy it sounds a little different especially in the echo on Bowie's voice, so I guess they remixed it (or simply had different mixes at their disposal):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJWBstZDisI

can I just say I hate the sleeve

LOL, yes. It looks like a David Lynch parody.

They should have put the Phillip Jeffries teapot on the cover

That would've better and awesome.

*been better

I just heard the "Let's Dance" Demo for the first time and I love it.
I like the "original" a lot but this stripped down version is more... funky.
Such a monstruous groove and the guitar parts and bass/drums are fantastic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFAgk61HiyI

That's great

You can hear what the original Bowie 12-string acoustic demo might've sounded like in that live BBC performance from 1999-2000.

I think I'd pick up Toy is there was just a 1xCD option of the album itself, I don't know that I need all the other versions (unless someone can convince me it's worth the whole set).

"Let's Dance" Demo

I seem to recall Nile saying in his book that the true original demo, or at least the song as David played it for him, was barely a song, and he had to be pressured into trusting Bowie's instincts and taking the gig.

I notice this a lot when demos are released officially, that they're already often pretty slick and far along in the process and probably a far cry from their origins. (That "demo" version of "Let's Dance," for example, is already slicker than most completed albums.) Exceptions include the riff tapes on those Metallica sets, and also the fascinating disc Peter Gabriel included with the "So" reissue.

from Christgau's Consumer Guide Grade List: A+
Lots of good Bowie discussion there-- 2026 remaster I refer to is Rhino/Parlophone Young Americans, which Alfred and Tarfumes got me to listen to, finally:
Thanks. Seems like this 2016 version might possibly have been an influence on the new Bowie trib Modern Love, which also has me imagining a 90s Red Hot + Bowie, with cosmopolitan R&B voices x synths gliding through each other--and, right after hearing this remastered original, was esp. struck by the way Khruangbin's cover of "Right" stands on its own (unlike several fairly meh tracks before it).
Contributors seek to bring out the Bo's soul, funk, jazz and gospel traits---this last in the nay-saying, yet "Get me to the church on time" of the title track so gospel not gospel?!
Mostly they go for less-obvious, and often less-well sung originals, a or the major exception on both counts being We Are KING's "Space Oddity," with fun production, but the cool voices keep a lid on excitement, as his herky-jerky fervency def didn't.
Modern jazz development of "Heroes" (centered around also cool but affecting singing of Michael Taveres) is the damndest thing/honors the original (this would be yer Hal Willner 90s track)(Not jazz but also w appropriate and decided difference from orig.:Léa Sen's "Golden Years."
Since I'm in this deep, Ill say that my favorite playlist from this, because cohesively eerie and intense and mobile, is:
2.Sound and Vision – Helado Negro 03:21
7.Right – Khruangbin 05:08
10.Move On – L’Rain 04:00
14.Golden Years – Léa Sen 02:56
15.Fantastic Voyage – Meshell Ndegeocello 03:58
17.Heroes – Matthew Tavares 08:41
Also like these, which can work interspersed with those:
8.Silly Boy Blue – Nia Andrews 02:37
9.Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family – Foxtrott 03:11
11.Modern Love – Jonah Mutono 03:19
12.Where Are We Now – Bullion 03:31
13.Tonght – Eddie Chacon, John Carroll Kirby 03:35
https://bbemusic.bandcamp.com/album/modern-love
Also RIYL Moses Boyd's jazzoid Dark Matter, which suggest some shadings of early Massive Attack and Soul II Soul and maybe Bowie-Eno

Er, 2016, though looking fwd to 2026 edition.

i checked into serius’ 24-7 bowie charnel and immed discovered his cover of “growin up” by the boss from pindowns and that is not my jam.

pindowns
I see what you did there.

I am not subtle tis true. I’ll add the all Bowie is fine. I’d wondered before about “Jean Genie“ about what social type he’s describing, and he said in an interview snip they ran that it was all about his experience in his first time in Detroit, and the character was “an Iggy pop type character.” And I was embarrassed but satisfied because duh, now that I know it’s obvious.

that's the first time anyone's ever wondered about the sociological background of a Bowie character

Wow @ that "Let's Dance" demo, the drum treatment is incredible sounding

and Nile Rodgers -- well.

The Creem reviewer, whom you'd think would pick up on an xpost Iggy Pop-type character, instead said he liked to think of "Jean Genie" re Samuel Delany. Reminds me: what reissue of Aladdin Sane should I listen to? Another renowwwned set I've never heard!

I don't like AS all that much but I think the remaster from the recent box is very good? The Ryko still sounds fine to me as well.

I love Aladdin Sane, possibly more than Ziggy (which is not meant to be a knock on Ziggy at all, far from it). I kept the Ryko CD but it still needs some EQ work. The most recent remaster has some unwanted compression added to it, and you can't undo that.

Aladdin Sane is brilliant, though weighted heavily towards the first half. Ziggy in America.

Debbie Harry has ruined David Bowie for me. I cannot listen to him now without thinking of him, with a snootful of cocaine, randomly whipping out his dick and showing it to her.

the return of the thin white toot

One thing they sort of fixed on the Aladdin Sane CD remasters is bringing up the vocal a little on "Watch That Man", which was accidentally buried on the vinyl master. I have a nice late '70s Canadian press where the track almost sounds like an instrumental!

It wasn't an accident that the vocals were buried, was it? I know that Ken Scott hates the mix now, but it was deliberate enough at the time. It is annoying for sure - so odd.

I didn't know the original outtake (or demo?) for "Shadow Man" had been bootlegged:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk7z8_z8AGY

Good but the re-recording is definitive.

Also found this, totally forgot about it - I think it's only been release from the Sound + Vision box set:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMsnV9keFrQ

GREAT opening, but the rest is missing something. Still, it's a fun track and I wish it had been included on later reissues. Young Americans is the rare Bowie album where I'd like the original album to have some bonus tracks at the end, especially since two good ones were bumped for those two last minute Lennon recordings, much to Visconti's regret. (I love the hit, but the Beatles cover is awful.)

Here's an excerpt from Jeff Rougvie's blog on the Rykodisc reissues, a GREAT read if you have a lot of time to kill:

http://www.jeffrougvie.com/bowie-blog

13. "After Today" (Young Americans outtake)

In 1989 Young Americans was the best-selling non-compilation album in the RCA Bowie catalog ...I was very, very taken with this outtake. The rough mix Northeastern Digital knocked out was only intended as a listening reference, but we used it anyway. I liked the aggressive sax placement and the overall roughness, compared to the rest of YA, which plays the Philly Soul thing largely on the smoother side. I don’t think the track was fully finished (there was no final mix, just the multi-tracks). Because of the aggression, it felt out of place as a bonus track. The guys at Northeastern Digital were somewhat mortified that David & I wanted to use it as is. Northeastern Digital asked us to give them a shot at remixing it to fit the overall sound of YA and we did. I felt the result took the edge off and Bowie did too. If there had been more to work with, the sweeter mix may have worked, but the tracks were just too raw. So we used this version, and the engineer asked his name be taken off the mixing credit, but I love it as is.

I wish we didn't keep bringing up xgau on Bowie. Although he understood, after a while, what Bowie was up to, the album reviews consist of snarkfests that don't do much to explain why Diamond Dogs, say, might be a waste of time.

Also: it's generational. Many in my critical cohort coming of age in the '80s and early '90s are not so hung up on "theatre" and "rock and roll." The point of David Bowie, insofar as he had one, was showing how one could be a polymath in a late 20th century form.

xp also from that blog, this is a really obnoxious way of trying to reach Kurt Loder, even if he didn't know he was in Moscow:

After days of frustrated calling, I devised a plan to get his attention. These were the late 80’s, pre-e-mail and at the height of fax madness. I wrote a letter, made four copies of it, taped them together end-to-end and fed one end into the fax feed, dialing Kurt’s fax # at the MTV offices. After the squeak and squeal signaled the machines had connected, the first sheet in the fax centipede fed into the machine and I taped the end that came out the other end to the one that had yet to enter, creating a giant loop. This was an infinite fax, one that would certainly use up all of MTV’s fax paper and hopefully create an event of enough significance that would Kurt would be motivated to take note and call back. I walked away from the machine and left it to do its work.

Also from the same blog, this is how much Bowie's catalog was undervalued: "After we got the catalog, I saw proposals Bowie’s people had reviewed from other labels. Shockingly low projections filled the pages, but the reissued Changesone (never an updated version) was always the title with the highest numbers. One label with a wildly fucked-up perspective put it’s first year sales at 25,000 copies. When Ryko released Changesbowie, it sold half a million (Gold) in the first year, and eventually went on to sell a million (Platinum)."

xxxpost Xgau awarded Bowie several A-s and B+s, with reviews that seemed respectful enough, though was typically dismissive of the albums he didn't like/get. But the only way he was "brought up" was having his name in the title of the thread I linked, which incl. good discussions of Bowie, to which you contributed.

I'm aware of his reviews, which occasioned some frustration for me as a young queer man: not because of the grades, but because he didn't seem to GET the importance of Bowie's un-rock, quite theatrical bent; that's the POINT of Bowie.

If I want Bowie appreciations, I prefer Nick Kent, Marcello Carlin -- Brits who were there and not even necessarily queer but who weren't raising their noses at a "European" tradition xgau thought antithetical to rock 'n' roll (another point about Bowie: he loved R&B).