David Bowie original Stage. What were they thinking?

When I first got this record, when I initially becoming a Bowie fan, I was so excited since I really love live albums, but this one always made me scratch my head in wonder. First off I HATE live albums that fade between tracks. Looking at you too Hard Rain. Then the short total time for a two record set always bugged me. Seventy minutes, really? Then I discover through bootlegs that they really screwed with the running order of the actual concert, with side one, the Ziggy side, not even in order of how it was ever played, or presented even on the original album. So after all that, what were they thinking upon compiling this album? It seems like every side has a theme, Ziggy, hits?, then Low and Heroes best of? A weird way to present a live record. I guess David didn't view it as a way of giving a fans a souvenir of the shows, but more of another way to present his material? I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall of the tracking debates.

As an aside, I guess we will have to wait until the 40th anniversary edition to get a live Rebel, Rebel to complete the show. You can't tell me when they "discovered" a version of Suffragette City, they didn't find a Rebel Rebel too.

 

70 mins is optimum for a double vinyl album. 17-18 mins per side.
they didn't want to repeat any tracks that featured on David Live.
and yes, they chose to rearrange the order of the show for the live LP, perhaps because beginning with Warszawa might have been too low key from a commercial POV.
me, i'll stick with the original as presented and leave others to bemoan the absence of this or that track. i wasn't there, so i don't feel short changed.
plenty of bootlegs out there.

 

No debates. According to Visconti he came up with the idea, presented it to David and the band, they liked it, the record came out

 

What about the lazy packaging? Only one single photo and it was repeated on the back cover and inner gatefold!

 

Well, what was thinking Bowie when he was making Low as well, then? An album with short songs, no lyrics, an instrumental-only B-side...

I think the original Stage was a bit of an experiment as well (not repeating any song from the previous live album, sorting by albums, and so on). That's something I could like, however what I don't like in the original version is this gigantic feeling that's I'm listening to a rehearsal with only 3 people in the audience.

IMO a live album is about experiencing the songs, not just listening to them. So I prefer Nassau. Brickwalled but at least it sounds live and it's got a huge groove.

 

Stage doesn't have the adventurous excitement of seeing that tour "in the flesh". What went wrong?

 

He has some spectacular vocal moments on the album, but I remain as bored by it as I was when I first got the yellow vinyl version as a kid in around ‘83. Compared to his amazing studio albums and the 1976 tour it’s a dud for me. Almost MOR in places.

 

How about that, even though it's only 70 minutes long, RCA and Ryko both though it should be a 2CD set (and be priced accordingly.) And the new Parlophone version in the 'New Career' box AGAIN puts it on two discs! (though price isn't an issue here, I reckon.)

I can't say I was ever bored by it, but I bought the yellow edition when it came out and then, not too much later, bought the 'Slaughter In The Air' boot. Guess which one I played more often?

 

Does anyone know about the spectacular way Bowie took the stage during this tour?

 

I got to see this tour when it hit Boston in '78. Thought some of you might appreciate a couple pics. I did not have great seats (way back) for picture taking, but the sound was fine. He opened with some of the instrumentals from side 2 of Low and Heroes.

 

The version with the songs in the correct order is the one to get. It is my favorite Bowie live album. But I understand why they rearranged the songs for the original release. Also, Bowie had lost a lot of fans in 1978 who were still pining for his hard-rocking days, so putting all the Ziggy tracks on side 1 might have been an attempt to win them back (even if the arrangements were drastically changed compared to the originals). Those were the vinyl-only days, with inevitable side breaks, so side 1 was Ziggy, side 2 was Young Americans/Station to Station and sides 3 and 4 were Low/Heroes. That was the ideia: divide the songs by period.

 

I saw David at Bingley Hall, Stafford, so I jumped at this album as a souvenir. The jumbled order bothered me, so I immediately made a cassette version, putting the set more or less into the order that it had been played in.

 

Yeah, I thought it was an odd way to present a live album when I first heard it. Like Purple Jim I also got to work with my tape deck and put the tracks in their correct concert order. Years later I found the Baton Rouge bootleg which, to my ears, is easily the best of that tour. For some reason the re-ordered Stage is still not a complete concert of which there must be many official recordings. I suppose whoever owns those official recordings will wait until every possible format and package of the current Stage has been bought by the fans before releasing their "newly discovered" complete concert recordings.

 

His entrance was anything but spectacular, it was low key, low light and stayed that way until the second song. That was effective. Warszawa followed by "Heroes".

David Live seems fairly accurate as a tour souvenir. Stage not so much.

The revised version, with the correct running order, still sounds odd to me - the between tracks spaces are truncated which I find jarring, seeing how the recordings from other dates on the tour are so imprinted in my memory.

The vocals are great though.

 

I love this album.
I know it’s not a true representation of that tour but as an 11 year old when I bought it, being my first live album I fell in love with it.
The cover is much better than David Live and the instrumentals are cool live too IMO.

 

I like the original album. I wore out a TDK D-120 tape that had Stage and Scary Monsters on it. It is just a intersting package. I do agree the newer versions are great, and that the songs are placed too close together.

 

I think the problem with it is that it’s practically a compilation album of live shows. It’s not cohesive in any way, and the fadeouts are just ridiculous; not exactly representative of a live show. The performances are pretty good, but the original sleeve was awful, as was Ziggy Stardust: The Motion Picture. He seemed totally disinterested in packaging them as a live event, going for minimalism instead.

 

Well, not really....standard playing time for a live double album was more like 80-90 minutes really. 17-18 minutes may have been optimum quality wise, but the `norm' was more than that I'd say.

Dylan at Budokan: 99:41
Zeppelin Song Remains The Same: 99:45
Genesis Seconds Out: 95:31
Rush All The World's A Stage: 79:32

 

For starters, they took out a bunch of songs which ROCK and make Stage'17 a much better live album than Stage'79 was. I'm enjoying the 24/48 off my newly acquired Stage DVD-A (ebay, like new, $99), but it still really needs those two latest songs only on the Box Set Which we Dare Not Name. (Or, I could just call it a day and start amassing '78 boots, which I never did before, because, you know, Stage.)

 

I have never had a problem with the original Stage. It's a great collection of his material performed brilliantly. I would take most of these recordings over the studio counterparts any day of the week and in whatever order they weed presented in.
I like the correctly resequenced versions issued since but the original Stage is the one I knew when I first started expanding my understanding of Bowie and I'm happy I have it in that and the other forms.

 

Come to think of it, what was Bowie thinking, putting so much Ziggy music into the set!?
This was supposed to be about modernity, the new age Bowie and he had firmly anchored that image at that stage and there he was on a nostalgia kick?
Of course at the time, it was quite thrilling to see/hear him doing those old songs but in retrospect it was quite a bizarre thing to do. Perhaps he just wanted to reward his long-term fans and make it a good night out for all.

 

That would be the Bowie estate.

 

Who dreamed up the practice of fade-outs on live albums, anyway? I hate it! As mentioned above, Hard Rain and (I think) Exit...Stage Left also suffer from this.

As to the not-terribly-present audience. In truth, I don't think much of the Low/Heroes material is particularly suited to 'rock concert' presentation. A lot of somewhat dour instrumentals are not going to get fans up and pumping the air.

 

I agree with you regarding the fade out/ins. It never sounds good. The playing of instrumentals is fine by me, however. Marks a change in pace, sound and gives a framing point. They also were an important part of the catalogue. He wrote plenty of superb "sit and listen" songs. IMHO, it's not all about pumping the air - even Led Zeppelin had an acoustic set.

 

Also, too. By the time 1979 rolled along, the double-live album juggernaut was inescapable - almost everyone (including DB) had one out there, and in DB's case, it was a particular blemish on his catalogue (as far as some were concerned).

I totally get the reluctance to make "Bowie Comes Alive!"