We hear an awesome master recording of David Bowie in Cleveland on Nov. 25, 1972 supporting Ziggy Stardust. Mick Ronson and band are in great form and the sound is amazing. A great one. I play Ziggy, Life on Mars & Suffragette City. Not to be missed.
You can download this complete recording here:https://mega.nz/folder/D1VEWRSR#nIvGWpudJ7DHmBRH-H3PsA
We hear the dearly missed David Bowie on his Reality tour, at the Greek Theatre April 22, 2004. He played all the hits and a healthy dose of new stuff, too. Of course this show is amazing.
You can download this complete concert right here: https://mega.nz/folder/Ss1XSK4S#mm7POBKo7DivSxfFaGdL5Q
We are blessed with another Mike Millard recording, courtesy of JEMS. David Bowie August 14, 1983, at the LA Forum. The Let’s Dance tour. Bowie’s first in 5 years. Wonderful sound as we listen to songs from Scary Monsters and Let’s Dance.
You can download the entire show right here: https://mega.nz/folder/rtl1EQBC#0inOd9SvWvhtCQLWmLsIFg
This is an amazingly good concert from Bowie’s Heroes Tour. The Thin White Duke and Mike Millard quality. This is from a first gen (not the master. That one hasn’t been released) and it’s excellent. If you would like to download the complete show, here you are: https://mega.nz/#F!yokmlKqI!fkklO1KwgSNK8M67jRgXVg
My god, this is good. I don’t even like Transformer that much, but it’s undeniably foundational… and it’s great. It’s just not my favorite Lou. GET OFF MY ASS. This is my site. I can like what I want. Remember when I posted that Velvet Underground documentary? You don’t own me. Where’s my whistle?
Ok. Here’s the deal. Transformer is a hugely influential album because (mainly):
The story of how I found a streaming copy of this episode of Classic Albums is wild and the stuff of legend. I had eaten a legal edible cannabis candy (50mg THC) and I was extremely high. Almost too high. Pulling myself together enough to do anything was akin to hugging smoke. However, I had a flash of epiphany and searched on Bing, because if you search for videos on google, you get almost exclusively YouTube results. Is it because Google owns YouTube? I would say so. There was no full version of this episode of Classic Albums on YouTube. A lesser man would have given up, but I went to Bing instead.
Bing provided about a half dozen full versions, on various sites of dubious legality (lots of Russian). Who cares? I found one on a Russian tube site, and watched it. It was a low resolution copy (like watching YouTube on 240) but totally adequate. Luckily I know a little Russian, thanks to Cold War paranoia and high school Russian classes. Using my knowledge of the Cyrillic alphabet I was able to find not only a high resolution version, but a longer version! There’s like an additional half hour of interviews and performances here. Holy Shit.
Anyway. Watch this. It’s absolutely riveting. My favorite part is when Lou is listening to the multitrack of Perfect Day, and he isolates only the strings. It’s perfectly sublime and beautiful, easily as lovely as the strings on Eleanor Rigby (if not as complex), and Lou’s face changes and he freezes. You can tell that he hasn’t heard that in a long time, and he’s moved by the beauty. He then praises Mick Ronson’s arrangement, and it’s touching, and real.
It’s totally worth the hour and half to watch. Or even listen to at work. You can even buy it on DVD like a grown up. You are absolutely free.
I… I wish I could swim
[This was originally posted on another blog of mine, https://halfpastlife.wordpress.com/2016/01/08/david-bowie-heroes-live-2002-incredible/] This performance of Heroes, the classic Bowie song, from the Berlin/Eno years, is just so fucking good! He does some rock star repartee at the beginning that totally works, because he can pull it off, and then just absolutely nail Heroes.
His voice is incredible. The deep bass notes, the flawless falsetto, and so much feeling. Just watch and see a real star. Brilliant.
It’s still weird living in a world without David Bowie. He was so vital and insanely good, that even his terrible stuff is (well its terrible) not awful. He has a few clunkers, but fewer overall (in my opinion) than Neil Young, who’s another 5 decade legend of outstanding quality.
Maybe it’s just part of getting older, hooray, to see the brightest lights flicker and extinguish, one by one. That’s how the night gets even darker. Until human voices wake us, and we drown.
But until that moment, we can be Heroes. For although the eternal footman may snicker, he still holds the door.
I don’t want to end this post on a down note, parroting TS Eliot, so here’s another post from the aforementioned blog, but this one is funny!
I was on tour in the United States back in ’89. And we did a show in Cincinnati. During that show I shouted out, “It’s great to be in Cincinnati. … … “That was a lie.”
David Bowie was a funny man. You can spend a hours on YouTube watching his various talk show appearances, and laughing your ass off. In this clip from when Conan O’Brien (of whom I’ve previously written) was on NBC is from a bit Conan would do called Secrets. He would have celebrities do an intense confessional scene, in which they unload a terrible secret. Bowie’s was my all time favorite.
