We want you, be elusive...

Last month we told you about Record Collector magazine's intention to run a sixteen-page, full-colour Bowie 'rarities and oddities' special in their November issue. (09.11.2007 NEWS: 16-PAGE BOWIE SPECIAL IN NOVEMBER RECORD COLLECTOR)

At the time, I also promised a preview of the article, but there can't be many reading this who haven't by now had some kind of access to the piece.

If you haven't, you should still definitely check it out. As I said before, it's a well-researched, in-depth article, created by BowieNetters: Ruud Altenburg, Maarten Kwant and John Larkin.

The piece throws up a few items that will be unfamiliar to some of you, not least of all the above CD, which seems to have slipped out generally unnoticed. The Record Collector piece has very little detail about the CD, not even listing the tracks...which a few of you have e-mailed in to ask about.

I'm sure you remember the I AM IMAN CD that accompanied the publication of the same name back in 2001. (11.10.2001 NEWS: I AM IMAN...THE CD) The five-track, twenty seven minute CD was compiled by David as a promotional device to be sent out with review copies of Iman's book. Back then it was relatively easy to pick up a copy of the book signed by Iman, complete with the CD signed by David. Indeed, twenty copies of the signed CD were given away in a BowieNet chat with David and Iman.

Well, it seems the same happened a couple of years back with the publication of Iman's The Beauty Of Color...except, this time, we didn't know about it. I personally didn't get to hear about this CD until earlier this year when I noticed it on the list of a private collector who had already sold it for a large sum.

Though she had to scratch around for a copy, Iman very kindly sent me what may have been her very last one (see above) when I explained how life wasn't really worth living until I too owned a copy. (Thanx again, Iman.)

The Beauty Of Color is a proper factory pressed silver CD (the I AM IMAN CD was a CDR) and it's another five track affair with this information on the reverse of its four-page booklet:

This compilation of Bowie tracks was hand selected by David to celebrate Iman's new book The Beauty of Color

FASCINATION
I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU
I'M DERANGED
DON'T LET ME DOWN AND DOWN
ABDULMAJID

I'm sure it's a selection with personal meaning to David and Iman with at least one personal joke. But, it's also a great twenty two minutes of listening pleasure, in the way that these unexpected compilations often are.

The centre pages of the booklet are made up with a few shots of some of the extraordinarily beautiful women that appear in the book itself. I'm guessing this was pressed in even fewer quantities than the I AM IMAN CD and that it was sent out with review copies of the book and perhaps handed out at the Naomi Campbell-hosted launch in New York.

But, as I say, I'm guessing and I'll endeavour to gather more actual facts for the spotters among us...and let's face it, you have to be a bit of a spotter to be interested in a Record Collector article in the first place!

Having said that, congratulations to Ruud, Maarten and John, for a fine piece of work. The November issue is in shops for a couple more weeks and when it's off the shelves, we'll run another piece related to it.

Total Blam Blam - (BowieNet News Editor)