Damn, I really like the 1990 version. Again, it does something different to the classic tune - I always enjoy it.
This vinyl box is now down to £153.35. A strange price - no .99? Finally pulled the trigger on the vinyl. How low can you go? I notice that Five Years is now £800 on vinyl. Five Years (1969 - 1973) [VINYL]: Amazon.co.uk: Music
I might be in a very tiny minority, but I wish he'd stuck with a studio version of Footstompin' instead of Fame - I love the Cavett live version - it's got so much energy and would have really lifted Young Americans. However Win really adds class to that album so even though I love JIODA I can't say one is better than the other as an album.
The 808 State Giftmix or the David Richards one or both? I don't like either but don't detest them and maybe feel the 808 version is passable, for a occasional, listen.
I notice you like these 80s remixes, but they just jar on me. I just checked that 808 one on YT and it's upsetting. The 808 one makes Dave Richards seem not too bad!
Ryko were struggling for bonus material at this stage, so remixes were a quick fix (see Richards' similarly redundant Joe The Lion remix on "Heroes"). bowie wasn't very forthcoming and also a little wrapped up in his current projects hence the questionable origin of Abdulmajid and I Pray Olé (the latter sounding suspiciously Tin Machine-esque).
Guilty as charged, however, I only like them as oddities and the thought of any of them appearing on a greatest hits album does makes me feel ill.
Yeah - I've never been convinced that I Pray wasn't Tin Machine. I read somewhere that Crystal Japan was recorded nearer to Lodger than Scary Monsters.
I Pray Olé might have been an unfinished Lodger track but it was more than likely knocked into releasable shape by TM. Crystal Japan started out as a track called Fujimoto San and when issued as a single in Japan was marketed as from the forthcoming Scary Monsters. i believe it was originally intended to end the album before It's No Game part 2 took its place.
Makes sense. If I find where I read that I'll post it. Abdulmajid doesn't sound very Low either I agree. Edit: Found it. Scary Monsters, RCD 10147, January 1992. “Crystal Japan.” Instrumental used for a Japanese liquor TV ad, possibly coming from the Lodger sessions, most likely cut during some interim sessions Bowie had in Switzerland before he went to New York to make Scary Monsters. Currently on: All Saints, download. A Bowie Rykodiscography
better yet, i'll quote Pegg with key input from Visconti: "The mix is dated 1991 and credited to Bowie and David Richards [spot a pattern with these bonus tracks yet?]... the soundscape is redolent of Tin Machine II which, perhaps not coincidentally, was the album being mixed at the same time as the Ryko reissue... I Pray Olé begins with a sequence of power chords against metronomic percussion which bear an obvious similarity to the extended intro of the 1988 version of Look Back In Anger. There's also a decidedly close similarity between the phrasing of the "Can you make it through?" chant and the "Take me to the heart" refrain in 1990's Pretty Pink Rose. "Suspicions suitably piqued, I played I Pray Olé to Tony Visconti, who confirmed that he had never heard it before. 'This draws a complete blank,' he told me. 'I can definitely rule it out of the Lodger/Scary Monsters sessions... If I were to make an educated guess I would say it's post-Lodger, pre-Scary Monsters, recorded with David Richards in Montreux. David overdubbed years later on other unfinished tracks ... I wouldn't rule that out'."
Nope. Pegg again: ...recorded in 1980 during the Scary Monsters sessions ("It was just David and me," recalled Tony Visconti who sang the treated falsetto vocal line). and to keep up the theme... this on "Heroes" bonus track, Abdulmajid. "Mixed in 1991 ... this Eastern-influenced instrumental dating from the "Heroes" sessions was renamed in honour of Bowie's then fiancée Iman Muhammid Abdulmajid. It's original title, if there was one, is unknown. 'I recall working on this on "Heroes", but it was abandoned,' Tony Visconti told me... 'This is a heavily remixed, worked-on nineties creation'."
And let's not forget "All Saints"! From Pegg: "Like most of the Ryko bonus tracks on the albums from Low onwards, its provenance is obscure. "I have no idea where it came from," Tony Visconti told me of 'All Saints'. I never worked on it. The electronic loops are more eighties - we didn't have anything like that for Low or "Heroes".
yes, i nearly went to Low too but thought i might be overdoing the Pegg quotes... go buy the book everyone, plenty more insights within
But because they often overdubbed 90s sessions onto 70s demos we can't know what's going on. They are hybrids or Reanimations back from the dead - like Frankenstein's monster if you mix the brain with the wrong body it van all go horribly wrong. They should just have released the demos as they were IMO.
On Diamond Dogs in this box the title song of Diamond dogs has some strange issues in the stereospectrum. Sometimes ist shifts to the side or narrows. Is this a specific problem with this mastering or a general thing on that record ?
KM, Forgive me for not having the inclination to slog through the 7,000+ posts in the Five Years and WCIBY threads.... have you offered similar detailed analyses of the other discs in the two extant box sets? I'd greatly appreciate reading them, both for specific issues like tape damage and for more generalized opinion of "the 2015/2016 issue sounds better/worse than XYZ because ...". Thanks.
yes and no, i've posted my thoughts on The Man Who Sold The World and Hunky Dory in comparison with my preferred RCA CD masters. there are mentions of damage/tweaks there. David Bowie 2015/2016 Remasters Opinion David Bowie 2015/2016 Remasters Opinion do you have the boxes? they have their supporters here and some claim them as "definitive" which is a view i don't share for any title. while none are as bad as the '69 album for flaws, all but a handful have their issues and i generally don't care for the Ray Staff default EQ (push the bass and ignore how it impacts on other instruments and definition, and sometimes throw on compression).
When you read all those quotes of Visconti digging his memory ... conclusion is they really did scrape the demo/outtake barrel for the Ryko reissues. It also makes you wonder if better stuff even exists. Did Bowie after recording for an album leave with a rich bunch of extra tracks under his arm, like the Rolling Stones ? Or were they rough ideas, (quickly abandoned) that didn't work, few takes recorded yet never mixed & finished. In other words: are there really worthy leftovers for future expanded editions or can one expect some live shows and that's pretty much it. Unless material was really finished I don't see Bowie leaving instructions for anyone, not even Visconti, to work on unfinished stuff. Hence another reason to prioritize box set releases of known material. Visconti isn't getting any younger.
Shortly after his death I read that Bowie had lots of finished, unreleased, material, and specific plans about their posthumous release. At the time I considered this to be typical Bowie; treating his death as an art project, but since then there doesn't seem to have been anything released out of the existing schedule, so now I'm not sure and whether there is lots of stuff but its all unfinished.
Well, there is a widely distributed demo version of Scary Monsters which I consider to be excellent. Everyone knows about Toy, which has been farmed out. There have been rumors of lots of unreleased music from Outside sessions too. I guess it largely depends on what you consider worthy or essential. Some dislike demo's, I take each on their own merits. I doubt there is much "finished" work - but then that's okay by me - mix the thing and put it out.
