“Life is a pop of the cherry“
To mark the release of the 40th anniversary Boys Keep Swinging (2017 Tony Visconti mix) picture disc today (http://smarturl.it/BKS40PreOrder), here’s another opportunity to view the marriage of the original video to the 2017 Tony Visconti mix, created by the brilliant @TheNachoVideos.
#DBBKS40 #BowieBKS #NachosVideos #BowieVinyl
“And tomorrows of rich surprise”
The David Bowie (with John 'Hutch' Hutchinson) - Clareville Grove Demos 3x7" vinyl singles box set is released today.
The set features the following six demo tracks recorded early in 1969, four of which are previously unreleased.
Space Oddity
Lover To The Dawn
Ching-a-Ling
An Occasional Dream
Let Me Sleep Beside You
Life Is A Circus
if you’ve not already, you can order here.
Read more about the set here.
Photography by Kenneth Pitt © Kenneth Pitt.
#BowieCGD
It should be fairly obvious what this new feature is, but for a full explanation and to participate, check out BOWIE KOOKS, the only Official David Bowie Facebook Fan Group.
#BowieFanFocus
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BOWIE FAN FOCUS – Sara Captain, 48
~ What does David Bowie mean to you?
SC: Everything! The world! Obviously my loved ones, close to me in my own life I mean, are everything to me - but I mean that for Bowie in a different way. Let me explain: Bowie was a man who, for some mysterious reason, was able to touch us fans so personally, and so very deeply - in a way that nobody else could. We often talk about this between us fans, don’t we? There is this real, genuine artistic fire in him, and he has the Muse on his side, so to speak: talent, an open mind and the desire for greatness. All of this gives him the ability to transcend the limits of our finite, puny little lives and to speak a language that is universal. What makes him even more special is that in his work and even in his appearance his soul shines through – and what a beautiful soul that is! He gives so much in performance, and this makes him inimitable. So in a nutshell to me he is the ultimate artist and just a little more than just a human… This is not Bowie mythology. It’s a funny thing maybe, but it is true.
~ When and how did you first become aware of him?
SC: When was around 12 years old I used to watch MTV a lot and one day this...being… this…otherworldly human...thing… appears on the screen. He had a mesmerising, deep voice that came from God knows where - something had never heard before - and it struck at the heart of my very soul. I can safely say I was never the same since! It was the video of ‘China Girl’, so I guess the year was 1983.
~ First item you ever obtained, including music, memorabilia, magazines, etc.?
SC: The Space Oddity album…I stared and stared at the cover, wondering why he didn’t have curly hair on it. Or was it ‘Do they know it’s Christmas?’ in the hope of hearing two milliseconds of that voice on the B side (see above). Does that count?
~ Is there a Bowie holy grail for you that you have yet to track down?
SC: YES!!! The full video of ‘The Elephant Man.’ I would give anything for that, even my painting ‘Sad David’. Maybe!
~ Most valuable Bowie possession you own on an emotional level?
SC: His signature – Not something I ever thought I could ever have. To know it is real is so magical – I can’t explain! Next to that would be my first Space Oddity album, the one that I mentioned above.
~ The best Bowie show you ever attended?
SC: I am ashamed to say, sadly, the only one: the Glass Spider Tour, Turin, 1987. Not allowed to go before and life turned too complicated for gigs after. Any gigs, that is. Regrets? YES! All the ones I missed at either end of that date.
~ The show you wish you had witnessed?
SC: Musikladen, Bremen -May 21, 1978 They seem to be having one hell of a time on stage and I love the fact that Bowie seemed to be taking himself quite seriously (but never too seriously) then as an artist, doing all the Brecht stuff and looking very much the mitteleuropean intellectual. Oh yes! Give me the Time Machine!
~ What would you have said had you met him, or, if you did meet, what did you say?
SC: I think I would have told him how much the song ‘God Knows I am Good’ means to me and how much comfort his music always was. I would have thanked him first and foremost. Oh, and of course I would have slipped in that I can draw, hoping that would get us talking about art. Maybe he would have made it easy for me with a quip or witticism…
~ Favourite album?
SC: If I really have to …it’s got to be LOW
~ Top ten songs?
SC: Heroes, Some Are, Letter to Hermione, Width of a Circle, Space Oddity, A new Career in a new Town, The Man who Sold the World, Word on a Wing, Five Years, the Bewlay Brothers or maybe…. And also…can I include Amsterdam…? Oh, come on man, ten? It’s impossible…!
~ Favourite lyric?
SC: ‘And the guns, shot above our heads/ And we kissed, as though nothing could fall’ – I know that feeling.
~ Favourite film?
SC: The Man Who fell to Earth. I am a bit of a Man Who Fell to Earth freak – I know it by heart, I can analyse each camera angle and each line of the dialogue till the cows come home. Tommy got under my skin, as he obviously did his. He is a great metaphor for alienation be it from the inner or the outer world – the film is so profound on every level and funnily enough it is particularly poignant today : isn’t Tommy is the ultimate immigrant? Coming to a new land and then stuff happens and you fall in love and get stuck – you don’t know if you are coming or going, and you belong and you don’t and they don’t treat you nice (though some do), they find excuses because you are ‘overstimulating the economy’ but you are not bitter because that’s just not you and you know that it would have probably been the same if they’d come over to your side… So true.
~ Favourite video?
SC: Hard as it is to choose, I have to say that for my money nothing beats the video of Wild is the Wind (and the Drowned Girl, which is the same thing). the jazzy feeling of it all, the tantalising effect of the solarised images where you see and you don’t see David’s face, accompanying what I think is David’s most sublime vocal performance, make this utterly addictive for me. It is ‘less is more’ (my motto) and it’s pure bliss.
~ Favourite era?
SC: 76-77 On the cusp of becoming a grown up man – looking incredible and with the fire of inspiration in him.
~ Best Bowie moment?
SC: Ah, there are just so many! The eye rolling in ‘Five Years’, the funny, pouty duck lip movement when he is interviewed at the Plaza Athénée in Paris. There’s his prank where, in the ‘L’Atra Domenica’ interview, he is sitting at a table with pretty Italian journalist Fiorella Gentile and he pretends there is something creeping from under the table, then he squashes it. Hilarious! There’s the great Jeremy Paxman interview. The winner, though, has got to be an hyperactive, whip smart and slightly irritated Bowie pointing out in a 1977 Amsterdam interview, when asked for the umpteenth time about showbiz, that he is not a rock star, ‘you see’. Why do I like it? Because he is not, ‘you see’. He’s so, so much more.
~ Guilty secret?
SC: Ah, that’d be telling! And then my reputation would sweep back home in drag… Ok, I confess: I do secretly mime his expressions quietly to myself when I am painting him, I practise pursing my lips in that way, lifting the eyebrows, that sort of stuff. Please don’t tell anybody.
~ What impact upon your life has Bowie had? Eg: Music, art and literature? Children or pet’s names? Tattoos? Mannerisms? Clothing? Choice of life partner?
SC: HUGE! I can say he was the first man I ever fell in love with. He was my awakening… no doubt! I didn’t like David Bowie – I looooooooooooooooved David Bowie!!! Everyone knew that about me when I was a teenager – he was and is an integral part of my identity. He accompanied my becoming an adult and his music was a sort of anchor, a safe harbour in the darkest moments, throughout my life – there is huge empathy in it. He was also a bit of a mentor who, from afar, by namechecking all manner of cultural connections, made me discover some many new things. He opened fantastic aesthetic horizons, which brings me to his greatest gift of all: he was instrumental in liberating the artist in me. Seeing how much he’d packed into this life of his, I thought: ‘Hey! Look at that! I too have got a gift and it must be for a reason, so I had better not waste it! David didn’t!’ I felt an irresistible urge to say so much, through painting – to paint not only him, but people I love, and stuff about life and death, time…you name it! It was what I could do with my life: art was a kind of obvious destiny that, for one reason or another, I was trying to escape, put off. Now, with David as the catalyst, and I am fully immersed in it and it is my chief occupation. Didn’t he say: ‘I always wanted to be that catalystic sort of thing’? Well David, with me, you fully succeeded.
~ Do you have a Bowie related photograph we could use? If so, what’s the story behind it?
SC: This is one of my latest paintings and I like it very much because it is simple yet effective – less is more! The palette is stripped down to a minimum, with the background used as a colour, and a contrast between ultra-soft and very stark brushstrokes. David is pictured in a Paris hotel around the time of ‘Be my Wife’, a lyric from which is visible in the back ground: ‘Stay with me’. He had that gorgeous, slightly pained ‘Rudy Valentino’ / Buster Keaton look around that time, which fascinates me no end. The focus here is on his elegance and charisma, while the lyrics create a tension between us wanting him to stay with us and him wanting us to keep him close, to pay attention, to keep listening to his music. This was painted for my upcoming Paris exhibition … but it sold before it got there. There will be many others, though! The leitmotif of the new show is this incredible creative connection David establishes with both those he loves and those who love him. @galeriestardust La Galerie Stardust in Paris, which will host it, are themselves massive Bowie fans (as the name suggests) and they have held many a great Bowie –related show: Sukita, Hanekroot and more. My one, ‘Sound & Vision – the Universe of David Bowie’ will run for two months from 31st May to 31st July and will feature, alongside my portraits of our David at the centre of it all, people he loved and those on whom he had a big impact – for example, I will pay homage to Linsday Kemp. Plus, we might have some illustrious guests, but I can’t reveal who just yet… It should be a very exciting show!
37 rue de Stalingrad,
93310 Le Pré-Saint-Gervais
France
“Though I'm past eighteen thousand days”
To make sense of today’s Bowie lyric appropriation, fact fans might like to know that 18,262 days will have passed between Space Oddity’s original UK single release on 11th July, 1969, and the 50th anniversary of the single in a couple of months.
And so, without further ado, here’s the press release.
#SpaceOddity50
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DAVID BOWIE - SPACE ODDITY - 50th ANNIVERSARY 2 x 7” BOX SET
FEATURING BRAND NEW TONY VISCONTI REMIXES AND SPACE ODDITY (2019 MIX – SINGLE EDIT) 1 TRACK DIGITAL SINGLE
RELEASED ON PARLOPHONE 12th JULY 2019
As part of the ongoing celebrations marking 50 years since David Bowie’s first hit, and following announcements of the Spying Through A Keyhole, Clareville Grove Demos and the “Mercury" Demos collections, Parlophone is releasing a very special double 7” single of Space Oddity featuring brand new remixes by Tony Visconti. The set and a 1 track digital single of the single edit of the 2019 mix of Space Oddity for streaming and download will be released by Parlophone on 12th July, 2019, the day after the single’s 50th anniversary.
Space Oddity 50th anniversary double 7” set will come in a box including a double-sided poster featuring an original Space Oddity press advertisement and a Ray Stevenson shot of David taken on stage at the Save Rave ‘69 concert at the London Palladium on 30th November, 1969, the backdrop featuring a N.A.S.A. astronaut. The set also includes an information card and a print featuring an alternative shot by Jojanneke Claassen from the Space Oddity promo single cover session.
A facsimile of the original ultra-rare unissued UK picture sleeve has been used for the cover of the original mono single, which, along with the label, features the original Philips trademark specifically cleared for this 50th anniversary release. The single itself has been cut from the original analogue single master tape. The jacket housing the 2019 remixes by Tony Visconti is a new design featuring an alternative Ray Stevenson shot from the Save Rave ‘69 concert to that on the poster.
First released as a 7-inch single on 11 July 1969, Space Oddity was also the opening track of his second studio album, David Bowie. Initially inspired by Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey, the song gained huge popularity when it was adopted as the unofficial theme of the Apollo 11 Moon landing mission which launched five days after the single’s release.
Over the past 50 years Space Oddity has been on a journey as long and as far as its main character, Major Tom. Originally written and demoed in November 1968, the song has gone through many guises from appearing in the filmed for television special Love You Til Tuesday in an earlier recorded incarnation with John ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson, to being recorded in Italian (Ragazzo solo, Ragazza sola), winning an Ivor Novello Special Award for Originality in May 1970, being Bowie’s first hit on both sides of the Atlantic (#5 in the U.K. in 1969, #1 in the U.K. in 1975 and #15 in the U.S. in 1973), having no less than three videos made for it and in 2013 was performed by Canadian astronaut Commander Chris Hadfield, while aboard the International Space Station, and became the first music video shot in space. Major Tom remained a motif for Bowie throughout his career revisiting the character in the songs Ashes to Ashes, Hallo Spaceboy and in the music video for ★.
Further news of moments and events celebrating the anniversary of this very special song will follow.
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SPACE ODDITY (1 TRACK DIGITAL SINGLE)
(2019 Mix - Single Edit) 2019 mix by Tony Visconti, March 2019.
SPACE ODDITY (2 x 7” SINGLE BOX SET)
Single 1
Side A
SPACE ODDITY (Original Mono Single Edit)
Side B
WILD EYED BOY FROM FREECLOUD (Original Mono Single Version)
Single 2
Side A
SPACE ODDITY (2019 Mix - Single Edit) 2019 mix by Tony Visconti, March 2019.
Side B
WILD EYED BOY FROM FREECLOUD (2019 Mix - Single Version) 2019 mix by Tony Visconti, March 2019.
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DAVID BOWIE - SPACE ODDITY 2 x 7" BOX SET AND 1 TRACK DIGITAL SINGLE are released on Parlophone 12th July 2019
#SpaceOddity50
“Time flies when you’re having fun“
DAVID BOWIE - D.J. LIMITED EDITION 40th ANNIVERSARY 7" PICTURE DISC
The 40th anniversary of David Bowie’s D.J. single will be marked by the next in Parlophone’s vinyl picture disc single series on 28th June, 2019.
Originally released on 29th June 1979, D.J. was the second and final single from Lodger in the UK and the follow up to Boys Keep Swinging. The Netherlands and Turkey would get Yassassin and the U.S. Look Back In Anger.
Echoing the method utilised for Robert Fripp’s improvisational guitar work on "Heroes", Bowie, Eno and Visconti assembled the guitar solo for D.J. from various ‘deaf takes’ by Adrian Belew, wherein he played against backing tracks he hadn’t heard previously and was further disoriented by being given no clue of chord structure or key before he soloed. The same method was used for Boys Keep Swinging and Red Sails, giving all three ‘solos’ their improvised feel.
The single release was accompanied by another delightfully mad David Mallet-directed video featuring Bowie as nonchalant DJ in a radio station studio, gradually destroying the equipment and the room around him. These scenes are interspersed with footage of our man rubbing shoulders and getting friendly with some of the wonderful people of Earls Court in London, as he strolls through the evening in a long coat being accosted by various strangers. The whole thing is topped off with Bowie as gas-masked art terrorist, spray-painting the DJ logo.
The A side of this D.J. picture disc features a previously unreleased single edit of the track from the Lodger (2017 Tony Visconti Mix) included in the A New Career In A New Town box set.
The previously unreleased version of Boys Keep Swinging recorded especially for The Kenny Everett Video Show features on the AA side. This take was recorded by Tony Visconti in Soho in London on the 9th April 1979 and features Sean Mayes on keyboards, Tony Visconti on bass, Simon House on violin, Andy Duncan on drums, Brian Robertson (of Thin Lizzy) on guitar and Ricky Hitchcock on guitar. The Kenny Everett Video Show was filmed on the following day and broadcast on 23rd April, 1979.
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DAVID BOWIE - D.J. LIMITED EDITION 40th ANNIVERSARY 7" PICTURE DISC
Side A
D.J. (2017 Tony Visconti mix - single edit)
(David Bowie, Brian Eno, Carlos Alomar)
Previously unreleased
Produced by David Bowie & Tony Visconti
Mixed by Tony Visconti at Human Studios, NYC, 2017
Side AA
Boys Keep Swinging (Kenny Everett Video Show Version)
(David Bowie, Brian Eno)
Previously unreleased.
Produced by David Bowie & Tony Visconti
Recorded at Good Earth Studio, Soho London, 9th April, 1979
The images used on each side of the disc are stills taken from the respective video performances.
D.J. is released on Parlophone 28th June, 2019.
COLLECTORS' FOOTNOTE: DJ was originally issued on green vinyl in the UK and remains a desirable collectors’ item forty years later. The most recent copy to sell (January 2019), went for £145 ($190 USD).
#BowieDJ #DBDJ40 #BowieVinyl #ANCIANTbox
“They’ll never clone ya“
Released forty years ago today (27th April 1979), it’s an actual fact that Boys Keep Swinging (the first single from 1979’s Lodger) is one of the very best 45s of all time, not to mention another Top Ten hit for David Bowie in the UK.
The Bowie/Visconti produced tongue in cheek ode to the joys of gender stability, was a breath of fresh air in a musical landscape dominated by folk taking themselves a little too seriously.
Both the humour and the role reversal of the recording (that’s musicians swapping instruments), transferred perfectly to the David Mallet-directed video (Mallet’s first in a string of classic Bowie promos), with Bowie taking on the guise of his own female backing singers.
As you know, 17th May sees the release of the 40th anniversary Boys Keep Swinging (2017 Tony Visconti mix) picture disc, pre-order here.
To mark the event, the absurdly talented @TheNachoVideos has married the original video to the 2017 Tony Visconti mix, enjoy that here.
#DBBKS40 #BowieBKS #NachosVideos #BowieVinyl
“I recall how we lived on the corner of a bed”
DAVID BOWIE (WITH JOHN ‘HUTCH’ HUTCHINSON)
THE 'MERCURY’ DEMOS 1 LP BOX SET FEATURING PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED DAVID BOWIE RECORDINGS
RELEASED ON PARLOPHONE 28th JUNE 2019
As part of the ongoing celebrations marking 50 years since David Bowie’s first hit, Space Oddity, and following the recent Spying Through A Keyhole and Clareville Grove Demos collections, Parlophone is releasing a further set of recordings known as The ‘Mercury’ Demos.
The ‘Mercury’ Demos are 10 early Bowie recordings captured live in one take to a Revox reel to reel tape machine in David’s flat in spring 1969, with accompaniment from John ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson on guitar and vocals.
The version of ‘Space Oddity’ from the Demos, originally released with edits on the Sound & Vision boxset, is presented here in its true context for the first time. The other nine recordings on the album are all previously unreleased. In addition to Bowie originals, the session also includes the Roger Bunn composition Life Is A Circus (which features as an earlier demo version on the Clareville Grove Demos set) and the Lesley Duncan composition, Love Song, later recorded by Elton John for his Tumbleweed Connection album. David’s own Conversation Piece is announced as ‘a new song’ and Janine features a short nineteen second section sung to the melody of The Beatles’ Hey Jude.
The session was a basic recording of the ‘Bowie & Hutch’ duo’s set list at the time and was committed to tape at the request of Mercury Records A&R man Calvin Mark Lee who wanted the tracks to send them to his boss Bob Reno. Both Calvin and Bob are referenced during the 41-minute recording, and the demos were key in securing David his recording deal with Mercury Records.
The ‘Mercury’ Demos set will come in a replica of the original tape box and will feature 1 vinyl LP, a print, two photo contact sheets and sleeve notes by Mark Adams. The labels of the LP feature the same EMIDISC acetate styling as Spying Through A Keyhole and Clareville Grove Demos with the song titles in David’s own handwriting.
LP Tracklisting
Side 1
Space Oddity
Janine
An Occasional Dream
Conversation Piece
Ching-a-Ling
I’m Not Quite (aka Letter To Hermione)
Side 2
Lover To The Dawn
Love Song
When I’m Five
Life Is A Circus
Musicians
David Bowie – vocals, guitar and Stylophone
John ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson – vocals and guitar
The ‘Mercury’ Demos LP is mono and plays at 33 1/3 rpm. It is released on Parlophone on 28th June 2019.
#BowieTheMercuryDemos
“And so the story goes they wore the clothes...”
There’s a great piece by Susannah Cohen over on okwhatever.org titled: The Enduring Appeal of David Bowie Merch. The article also makes the observation that “Someone you know owns a Bowie T-shirt. It's (kind of) a fact.”
Here are a few edited excerpts from the feature:
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Everything looks better with David Bowie’s face on it. And a lot of people know this. Lady Gaga knew it when she rejoiced over A Star Is Born’s BAFTA win, posting a video to Twitter dressed in nothing but an oversized T-shirt that said “Bowie.” Man Booker Prize-winning author Marlon James knows it, too. He’s been rocking a Bowie tee — a black, long-sleeved one celebrating his Let’s Dance era — in publicity shots for his latest novel, Black Leopard, Red Wolf. And sneaker brand Vans knew it when they launched a limited edition collection based on four different Bowie albums in April.
David Bowie merch is having a moment — but then again, hasn’t it always? Whatever else is going on in the world of fashion, it seems that paying tribute to the Dame on a piece of white cotton is always sartorially acceptable. Celebrities have long known this. There was Sid Vicious in a red Bowie tee at the age of 15, en route to a concert in the 1970s. Kate Moss paid tribute to her dead friend in 2016, pairing a graphic tee of the artist with a black faux fur coat. Cate Blanchett was spotted in a lightning bolt shirt at the airport last year. Janelle Monae teamed hers with sequins for a performance on The Today Show a few months later.
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Norman Perry is the president of Perryscope Productions, a licensing and merchandising company that represents David Bowie (among many other icons) in partnership with Epic Rights. He believes that Bowie’s personal style has a lot to do with his impact on fashion.
“I have four clients [Bowie, Janis Joplin, Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix] that were fashion forward, and they each looked different on every album cover, every tour,” he told OK Whatever in a phone interview. “There's a handful of people where clothes were a really significant part of their persona and their aura, and in the case of David Bowie, he was not a predictable man.”
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Of course, there’s also a simpler explanation for the musician’s enduring fashion appeal. Wearing a piece of clothing emblazoned with Bowie’s face might be cool, but it could also just be an homage to a beloved artist. The reason why we see Bowie’s face so often in fashion might have less to do with style than it does fandom. The truth is, maybe we all just really loved the guy.
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Read the full article here.
FOOTNOTE: Our montage shows David Bowie in 2002 sporting a 1973 live T-shirt. The picture was taken by director/photographer duo Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin. The pair were also responsible for filming the Louis Vuitton L’Invitation Au Voyage Part 1 short in 2013, which starred Bowie singing “I’d Rather Be High”.
The T-shirt on the left is the latest addition to the Official Bowie Store: BOWIE light bulb logo T-shirts which glow in the dark! Pre-order here.
#BowieMerch #BowieStore
“Try and wake up tomorrow”
Good luck to all of you that are choosing to queue for Record Store Day 2019 tomorrow. (Saturday, 13th April.)
Knowing how enthusiastic many of the BOWIE KOOKS are, some fans will already be queuing...Hello Charlie.
Our montage shows Parlophone’s Pin Ups picture disc and the blue vinyl The World Of David Bowie released by Universal. More details here.
Check out the BOWIE KOOKS FB Group here.
#BowieRSD #RSD2019 #BowieVinyl #BowiePinUps #TWODB
“Five, four, three, two, one”
In June 2007, David Bowie was honoured at the 11th Annual Webby Awards (known as the “Oscars of the Internet”) with the Webby Lifetime Achievement Award for pushing the boundaries between art and technology.
So it's appropriate now that the David Bowie is AR app by Planeta has been nominated in two categories in the 23rd Annual Webby Awards. Click on the links below to vote in each category:
• David Bowie is is a Webby Nominee in Apps, Mobile, and Voice: Best Use of Augmented Reality
• David Bowie is is a Webby Nominee in Apps, Mobile, and Voice: Art & Experimental
23rd ANNUAL WEBBY AWARDS
PEOPLE'S VOICE
You decide the best of the Internet
START VOTING HERE - Search Bowie for vote links
Voting is open until Thursday, April 18th
On a related note, NYTimes - Magicleap: David Bowie in Three Dimensions has also been nominated.
FOOTNOTE: Today's main pic and lyric quotation are related to the 2007 Annual Webby Awards. The picture is from Bowie’s hilarious acceptance speech that went something like this...
“So, only got five words...Shit, that was five...Four right there...Three there...Two...”
#WebbyBowie
“You’re a juvenile success”
On 24th May 2019, 45 years to the day since its original release date, David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs will be reissued by Parlophone in a 'one-run-only' red vinyl edition featuring the 2016 remaster. This strictly limited pressing will only be available at ‘bricks and mortar’ retail outlets and not through online stores.
In celebration of the 45th anniversary of Diamond Dogs, there will also be a 1-track digital single of the original single mix of Rebel Rebel.
The original single mix of Rebel Rebel featured on the 2016 boxset 'Who Can I Be Now?’ was taken from a pristine copy of a 45rpm vinyl single from the time. The original tape (which had been missing since the mid-1970s), has now been discovered and remastered for this special one-track digital single.
Preceding the album by more than three months, Rebel Rebel peaked at #5 on the official UK singles chart. The original single mix was substituted by the shorter, ‘phased’ US single version in North America, featuring a new arrangement and overdubbed vocals. The album originally peaked at #1 on the official UK album chart and #5 on the Billboard album chart in the US.
Diamond Dogs is the latest in a series of 45th anniversary Bowie vinyl albums reissued over the last two years. Previous releases in the series have included gold vinyl versions of Hunky Dory and The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars, plus a silver vinyl release of Aladdin Sane.
Diamond Dogs 45th anniversary red vinyl and Rebel Rebel (Original Single Mix) download/stream will be released via Parlophone on 24th May 2019.
#DiamondDogsRed #BowieRebelRebel #BowieVinyl
“We will be gods on nite flights”
Sad to report the passing of Scott Walker at the age of 76, as announced by his record label, 4AD, this morning.
Most of you will be well aware of David Bowie and Scott Walker’s mutual appreciation for each other’s work, indeed, fans have been sharing the recording of Walker’s 50th birthday message to David on the BBC Radio 1 special, CHANGESNOWBOWIE, presented by Maryanne Hobbs in January 1997:
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“Hi David, this is Scott Walker. I’m coming to you via a very crappy old handheld tape machine, so I hope it’s alright. I’m gonna be a devil today, and not ask you any questions. I’m certain that among the many messages there’ll be those about how you’ve always embraced the new and how you freed so many artists, and this is, of course, true.”
Like everyone else, I’d like to thank you for all the years, and especially for your generosity of spirit when it comes to other artists, I’ve been the beneficiary on more than one occasion, let me tell you. So have a wonderful birthday, and by the way, mine’s the day after yours, so I’ll have a drink to you on the other side of midnight. How’s that?”
After a short pause and a sharp intake of breath, an emotional Bowie responded:
“That’s amazing...I see God in the window. That really got to me there I'm afraid. I think he’s probably been my idol since I was a kid. That’s very moving. I want a copy of that. I'm absolutely...That’s really thrown me. Thank you very much.”
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David was first made aware of Scott Walker’s catalogue by Lesley Duncan, who had co-written with Walker, including You're All Around Me on The Walker Brothers’ 1965 debut, Take It Easy.
Bowie talked about this and his appreciation of Jacques Brel in Vanity Fair’s November 2003 feature: David Bowie’s Favorite Albums:
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JACQUES BREL IS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN PARIS
CAST ALBUM (1968, CBS)
“In the mid-60s, I was having an on-again, off-again thing with a wonderful singer-songwriter who had previously been the girlfriend of Scott Walker. Much to my chagrin, Walker’s music played in her apartment night and day. I sadly lost contact with her, but unexpectedly kept a fond and hugely admiring love for Walker’s work. One of the writers he covered on an early album was Jacques Brel. That was enough to take me to the theater to catch the above-named production when it came to London in 1968. By the time the cast, led by the earthy translator and Brooklynite Mort Shuman, had gotten to the song that dealt with guys lining up for their syphilis shots (“Next”), I was completely won over. By way of Brel, I discovered French chanson a revelation. Here was a popular song form wherein poems by the likes of Sartre, Cocteau, Verlaine, and Baudelaire were known and embraced by the general populace. No flinching, please.”
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Over the years Bowie covered Mort Shuman’s translations of Next, My Death and Amsterdam, originally brought to a wider audience via Walker’s own covers. That torch was carried further by successive musicians, including Marc Almond who had this to say in an exclusive interview for DavidBowie.com in 2014:
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Total Blam Blam: Were Bowie's versions of My Death and Amsterdam your introduction to Jacques Brel?
Marc Almond: “It was hearing Bowie's versions of Brel that really turned me onto Brel in a big way. When I turned over Bowie’s single Sorrow and played Amsterdam on the B-side, it really was a seminal influential moment. I had been aware of Brel through hearing Scott Walker and Alex Harvey but it was Bowie who really sanctioned Brel as being very cool. Bowie opened up a whole world to me. When Bowie mentioned a Singer or a Writer or Artist I had to check them out and they would become a big part of my cultural sphere. Genet, Lou Reed, Lindsay Kemp. Iggy Pop, Brel and many more. When Bowie recorded Pin Ups, all the artists he covered were instantly cool. His influence on Pop Culture was and is enormous. I’m sure it was the same for many musicians of my generation. Bowie taught me what my teachers at school couldn’t.”
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Bowie gave several more nods to Walker over the years via the likes of: Nite Flights on Black Tie White Noise in 1993; a 1996 artwork for the Milestones 1997 charity auction titled: The Walker Brothers Triptych; Stephen Kijak’s 2007 film SCOTT WALKER – 30 CENTURY MAN, of which Bowie was Executive Producer, from where today’s montage pic of Bowie was taken and this pre-release quotation from him:
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“He really didn’t want to abide by the rules of the genre. He kind of opted out of rock very early on in his career. It just seems he wanted to expand in some very unusual ways. And that was pretty much what I wanted to do. And it was always guys like that that I admired”
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In an exclusive interview in the film Bowie also had this to say regarding Walker:
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"What I really like about his songwriting is the way that he can paint a picture with what he says. I have no idea what he's singing about and I've never bothered to find out and I'm not really interested. I'm quite happy to take the songs that he sings and make something of them myself, and I read my own reasoning into the images and all that, which is how I use music personally. I construct my own worlds out of the music that I listen to. It's rarely important to me what the reason was that someone wrote something, it doesn't matter to me really. So his songs are really useful! (laughs) They're useful for everyday living!"
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The closest Bowie got to the sound of Scott Walker was possibly the sublime Heat from 2013’s The Next Day, with its echoes of the verse of Walker’s own The Electrician from aforementioned Nite Flights. Also, Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime) was certainly in the spirit of some of Walker’s later recordings, particularly the first single version released ahead of Blackstar.
Bowie continued to champion Walker's work to the end and but we’ll leave you with something Scott himself told Jarvis Cocker in a rare interview on BBC Radio 6 music’s Jarvis Cocker’s Sunday Service in 2017:
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“We spoke several times on the phone about various things. He wanted at one stage to do an interview with me. This was 10 years ago, maybe, something like that. I didn’t do it and I can’t remember why I didn’t do it. Every time I spoke to him he was very nice to me. He always was on my side. He would recommend people to listen to my records. He was really generous when it came to me and always was interested in what I was doing. It’s funny, every time I spoke to him on the phone, he’d say, ‘Here I am overlooking the park. It’s sort of snowing, it looks lovely.’ You know, he’d describe where he was. And I thought, ‘I’m sitting in the flat here,’ you know, wherever I was [laughs]. But I always remember that about him. But [his death] was such a shock to all of us.”
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Scott Walker 9th January, 1943 – 25th March, 2019
#BowieWalker
“Tom, Tom she whispers low, don't forget my name” *
The May 2019 issue of UNCUT has a 4-page feature regarding both the Spying Through A Keyhole (STAK) and the David Bowie (with John 'Hutch' Hutchinson) - Clareville Grove Demos (CGD) 7” box sets.
Under the heading of “The right stuff! Ground control prepares for the lift-off of Major Tom, in demo form”, the feature by John Robinson awards STAK 7/10 and CGD 8/10
There’s also a reprint of an NME interview from November 1969 with Gordon Coxhill, following the success of the Space Oddity. Here’s a bit from it:
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It looked like a piece of master planning, but it wasn’t. It looked like a monster hit, and it was. David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”, inspired by a visit to the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, was released just as the world was staying up all night to watch the moon landing.
Like the modest, self-effacing young man he is, David passed the credit on to his record company, but as it was written last November, he can hardly disown his amazing foresight!
“Put it down to luck,” he said over the phone from Perth, where he was about to begin a short tour of the Haggisland. “I really am amazed at the success of the record, even though I had confidence in it. I’ve been the male equivalent of the dumb blonde for a few years, and I was beginning to despair of people accepting me for my music.
“It may be fine for a male model to be told that he’s a great-looking guy, but that doesn’t help a singer much, especially now that the pretty-boy personality cult seems to be on the way out.”
Much as David takes his songwriting seriously, he is amused by pundits who examine his material looking for hidden meanings even he is unaware of. “My songs are all from the heart, and they are wholly personal to me and I would like people to accept them as such.”
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the new issue of Uncut is in shops now and available online here.
The 4 x 7" Spying Through A Keyhole box set is released on 5th April
The 3 x 7" Clareville Grove Demos box set is released on 17th May
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The David Bowie Store has a limited T-shirt and box STAK set bundle:
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*Today’s lyric quotation is from Angel Angel Grubby Face (version 2)
#BowieSTAK #BowieCGD #BowieUNCUT
“And let me kiss you like you’ve never been kissed before” *
The May 2019 issue of MOJO has a full-page, 4 star review by Mark Paytress of the Spying Through A Keyhole (STAK) 7” box set.
Headlined ‘Ignition Time’ the review is introduced thus: Space Oddity’s anniversary year lifts off with a candid peek into the difficult months before that first flush of fame, writes Mark Paytress.
Here are the first three paragraphs:
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DAVID BOWIE spent the months between 1967 and ‘69 cast in a role that now seems unthinkable: he was deeply unfashionable. It was a time of endless auditions, blind alleys and doubt. His record label dropped him. No agent would touch his one-man cabaret show. The Laughing Gnome had become a Threepenny Pierrot.
Still Bowie persevered. Early in 1969, with a love affair crumbling, he reached for his 12-string to strum out his despair. It was his salvation. In Space Oddity, melancholy folkpop enriched with futuristic Stylophone and flyaway brothers Gibb vocal, Bowie flipped hopelessness into 'Pop’s Brightest Hope'.
Two newly unearthed versions of the song feature on this nine-track, four-vinyl 45s set, comprising demos from 1968 and thereabouts. The first, a persuasive, 90-second segment, consists of two verses split by the 'tin can' chorus, fading out with “Can you hear me, Major Tom?” Boasting provisional lyrics (“Can I please get back inside/If I may”, “my time on Earth is nearly, through”), it’s Bowie committing it to tape before the moment goes.
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If you want to read the remaining eight paragraphs, you can find MOJO digitally online or in stores right about now.
Go here for more information on Spying Through A Keyhole and pre-order links.
*Today’s lyric quotation is from Love All Around
#BowieSTAK #BowieMOJO
“And when I get excited, My little China Girl says”
It’s hard to imagine in these times, just how much of an uproar the unedited version of David Bowie’s China Girl video created when it was first released in 1983.
The effect on ordinary folk was like that scene in Perfume, with folk ripping off each other's clothes and fornicating in the streets and the like.
OK, it wasn’t quite like that, but there was certainly a right brouhaha in the press and it was even banned by TV stations the world over.
The David Mallet directed video featured New Zealand model Geeling Ng, and the final moments of the video with her naked in the surf with Bowie (which got some a little hot under the collar), was a visual reference to the film From Here To Eternity.
Of course, this was all a bit of a distraction from the intended message of the video and possibly even Iggy Pop’s original lyric too.
Mainly shot in the Chinatown district of Sydney, the China Girl video (along with the previous Let’s Dance video), was a critique of racism with Bowie describing it as a “very simple, very direct” statement against racism.
Bowie said in Rolling Stone that same year:
“Let’s try to use the video format as a platform for some kind of social observation, and not just waste it on trotting out and trying to enhance the public image of the singer involved. I mean, these are little movies, and some movies can have a point, so why not try to make some point.”
And in another interview at the time, Bowie opined: “The message that they [the videos] have is very simple, it’s wrong to be racist!”
If you’ve never seen it, you can watch the full unedited version on the official David Bowie YouTube channel.
#BowieChinaGirl
“It's a very modern world”
Back in October 2017, the Modernism Museum in Mount Dora, Florida, launched one of the most comprehensive exhibitions of Memphis Group art and furniture ever assembled: SPACE ODDITIES: BOWIE | SOTTSASS | MEMPHIS.
Here’s a bit about the exhibition, which closes “early 2019”...
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DAVID BOWIE’S COLLECTION OF MEMPHIS GROUP ART by Karen LeBlanc
A rare look at pop icon David Bowie’s private collection of art and furniture by The Memphis Group on view at the Modernism Museum. Bowie was an avid collector of Memphis. After his death, his collection was auctioned off and for this exhibit, gathered together for one of the most comprehensive exhibitions of Memphis Group art and furniture. Learn about this movement in the 1980s that broke all the design rules to create its own unique, over-the-top aesthetic as The Design Tourist Karen LeBlanc takes you on a tour of works by Ettore Sottsass, the founder of the Memphis Group and his international group of artists and designers.
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Not everybody would have had the chance to visit either the exhibition or the Sotheby’s auction from whence the Bowie pieces came. However, The Design Tourist has just posted a tour of these incredible objects with some interesting history of The Memphis Group.
Watch the fifteen minute video here on you tube.
FOOTNOTE: Our montage shows David Bowie sitting on his Palm Springs table in New York in 2009, as later pictured in GQ magazine.
Here’s the original caption:
“When I was five, I spent an awful lot of time reading and drawing on the living room table, just like this. I don’t want to follow this line of thought to the inevitable conclusion, but it does look as though all that I’m missing is a model train set. The table is by the peculiar Milanese design company Memphis and is probably made out of hardboard and old socks.”
In fact the table is made of briar and plastic laminate. The piece on the left is called Casablanca, and both were designed by Ettore Sottsass
PALM SPRING – 1984 - Ettore Sottsass
Table in briar and plastic laminate
CASABLANCA – 1981 - Ettore Sottsass
Sideboard in plastic laminate with internal shelves
No old socks were harmed in the making of the table.
#BowieMemphisGroup
Kenneth Cooper Pitt: 10 November 1922 – 25 February 2019
Kevin Cann has been in touch with the sad news that David Bowie’s former manager, Kenneth Pitt, has died at his home in Hertfordshire.
Ken passed on Monday, 25th February, following a short illness. He was 96.
“Hot tramp, I love you so”
Though the press adverts proclaimed that it was a Valentine's Day release, Rebel Rebel was actually issued forty five years ago today on the 15th of February, 1974. The release, which had already been put back two weeks (original printed release date on demo label is Feb 1st), was an edited version of the song and a first taste from the upcoming Diamond Dogs LP, though it was considered a bit of a curveball compared to much of the music on that album. The single was backed with Queen Bitch.
It was the first release since the dissolution of The Spiders From Mars, though stylistically it may have been more at home on Aladdin Sane, with its up-tempo, Stonesy feel and with an unmistakable and instantly recognisable riff played by Bowie. A riff that he was more than grateful to have conjured up, later saying of it: “It's a fabulous riff! Just fabulous! When I stumbled onto it, it was 'Oh, thank you!'”.
The track reached #5 on the UK singles chart (Bowie's sixth Top Five single in the UK), and even managed a placing in the US Billboard Hot 100, no doubt helped by the exclusive New York Mix, which was almost a minute and a half shorter than the regular single mix. The New York Mix was released in North America and Mexico in May 1974 backed with Lady Grinning Soul.
This second version was more urgent than the original, with a backward echo effect on the new la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la backing vocals, castanets and more general excitement all round...more akin to the live version that would be performed shortly on the US Diamond Dogs tour.
The main images in our montage show the music press adverts from the UK (left) and the Netherlands (on the right), where David’s performance of the song on the Dutch TV show, Top Pop, was broadcast on the 18th. Watch it here.
#BowieRebelRebel
“Under the moonlight, this serious moonlight”
The five selected stand-alone albums from last year’s David Bowie: Loving the Alien (1983-1988) box set are released today (15th February) by Parlophone.
The break-outs include the three studio albums, Let’s Dance, Tonight and Never Let Me Down on vinyl LP, CD and various digital formats, plus the two live albums: Serious Moonlight (Live ’83) and Glass Spider (Live Montreal ’87) on CD and digital formats. In addition, the compilation album, Dance (which features twelve remixes), will be available on standard digital.
If you haven’t already, you can order here and go here for the full breakdown.
#LTABox
“Boys always work it out”
2019 is the 40th anniversary of Lodger and 17th May sees the release of the latest limited 7" picture disc from Parlophone, Boys Keep Swinging.
While originally recording the song, Bowie had hoped to capture a garage band feel with the musicians swapping instruments after a deck of Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies cards had suggested ‘reverse roles’. So guitarist Carlos Alomar played drums and drummer Dennis Davis played bass.
The version featured on the A side is the 2017 mix by Tony Visconti from Lodger, undertaken for the A New Career In A New Town box set, as both Tony and Bowie felt they never had the opportunity to give Lodger the mix it deserved in 1979, due to time and studio constraints.
The AA side features I Pray, Ole which was apparently recorded during the Lodger sessions, but remained unreleased until mixed by David and David Richards for inclusion as an extra track on the 1991 reissue of the Lodger album. The track has been commercially unavailable since then.
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DAVID BOWIE - BOYS KEEP SWINGING LIMITED EDITION 40th ANNIVERSARY 7" PICTURE DISC
Side A
Boys Keep Swinging (2017 Tony Visconti mix)
(David Bowie, Brian Eno)
Produced by David Bowie & Tony Visconti
Mixed by Tony Visconti at Human Studios, NYC, 2017
Side AA
I Pray, Ole
(David Bowie)
Produced by David Bowie & Tony Visconti
Mixed by David Bowie & David Richards, 1991
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Boys Keep Swinging limited 40th anniversary 7" picture disc is released by Parlophone on 17th May.
#DBBKS40 #BowieVinyl