Lazarus Cast Recording including three new Bowie tracks.

Just through my 2nd complete spin of the cast album, and I'm really diggin' it. The relative absence of warhorses, and inclusion of *so* much material from the 2010's, is a huge plus for me. Realistically, not a whole lot more I could have asked for.

I said it before, but the decision to use the stripped down 1995 live-band arrangement of "The Man Who Sold The World" was a MOST delightful and incredible surprise. I adore that arrangement, preferring it by a mile over the original (and over any later live versions that sound like the original).

Hell's bells, here it is again. I think I squealed out loud when it first started, when I reallized what they'd done. [My only disappointment (now) is that Bowie didn't keep this arrangement for the 2004 Reality Tour release.]

 

Ain't nothing like the real deal R_T
https://www.discogs.com/David-Bowie...e-Man-Who-Sold-The-World-Live/release/2722925

 

I bought it for the 3 new Bowie tracks on CD2, but I'm also really enjoying the original cast recordings on CD1. As the sleeve notes point out, the session for the original cast recordings was scheduled for January 11. The cast arrived at the studio only to hear that Bowie had died the previous evening. They went ahead with the session anyway, and I think it shows.

 

I really much prefer the original LP version. I really dislike the 1995 arrangement - always skip it on bootlegs, but I really like the Klaus Nomi SNL version.

Yep. It sounds like they're suffering.

 

That performance is amazing indeed.

 

Polar opposite opinion here, on both points.

IMHO, the 1995 live arrangement of TMWSTW is one of Bowie's very best moments, and the cast recording sounds and feels pretty inspired to me.

 

A few days ago we were in sync!

 

Must say I'm enjoying both discs very much.
It's a great tribute to DB - the best yet


Peace and love✌

 

Michael C. Hall is quite the talent.

 

I think the best tribute was John Cale and Anna Calvi doing Valentine's Day and Space Oddity. Brave and original.

 

HAH! I listened to all three of my Autorip MP3 tracks through Amazon's desktop music player (No EQ available), and it was all just mud. Could barely make out a word. (And really? 250-something VBR tracks?? Come ON, Amazon.

Decided that Round 2 would be in a player with an EQ which included capability to increase or reduce overall gain (the software sez it's its "PREAMP". Okay. Whatevs.).

Funny story: I set the gain in the wrong direction without knowing it, adding decibels 50% up the scale instead of taking them away 50% down like I intended. (Yes, I confused "Up" and "Down".)

"When I met You": sounded like an improvement to me. I was happier than with the Amazon player experience.

"No Plan": crazy distortion from second 1 and it was only 15 seconds into the song I discovered my whole "UP"/"DOWN" problem, after momentarily panicking that something I had done ruined my speakers forever.

Finally played them under the right EQ.

Verdict#1: DB == God? Guilty!!
Verdict#2: Amazon still one of the worst compressed music experiences out there? Guilty! And a repeat offender!
Verdict#3: Nothing's changed in years: MP3s are work to deal with and listen to and they can hopelessly color and distort for the worse even a brickwalled pro recording. Die, already, MP3. Just... go. Nobody really likes you.

 

Yeah, just torrented down a CD rip of the Bowie stuff. (My purchased copy arrives in 6 days. (Thanks, Amazon!)

Life is too TOO short for MP3.

 

They sound OK in my car and on my computer.

But I think we get what you're saying - you don't like mp3's. Gotcha.

 

Of course MP3s are in my life, as a fact of life and as a last resort - like a 3rd-gen bootleg with no other source. So sue me.

But there are certain situations where the compressed little darlings distort the content enough that when you finally get to hear the "lossless" it's like two different experiences, and it's clear the recording for sale isn't helped by the free/preview compression. This album is one example, probably due to tragic brickwalling decisions.

Another stunning example was Marianne Faihfull's "Before the Poison": I pre-ordered the CD from Amazon back before the days of Autorip, when Amazon would let you download a facsimile on select titles BEFORE album release date. My eagerness to listen lead me to a situation where I slowly stopped caring about the eventual CD ship date, but I fortunately gave the CD one shot once it arrived. Same situation: the compressed POS version didn't do the album any favors.

 

Probably like many here, I bought this set primarily for the second disc with the three new Bowie tracks. The Bowie tracks are fabulous, but the cast recording on the first disc is a lot more interesting than I expected and will definitely get more than the one obligatory spin in my house. On first listen This Is Not America and The Man Who Sold The World stand out.

 

I find myself unexpectedly really enjoying the soundtrack CD (disc 1). Yes, it's clearly "Broadway" at times, and no, these versions will never replace the Bowie originals. But it works well, for me at least.

Likewise, I made myself a playlist consisting of the Bowie originals of each track on the Lazarus cast CD (substituting the 1995 "Man Who Sold the World" remake in place of the 1971 original, to better match the soundtrack). It makes for a great listen.

Having seen/heard a number of attempts to write a musicals incorporating a single artist or band's catalog (something "Mamma Mia" made popular, starting in 1999), I think the temptation to shoehorn the artist/band's major hits into the playlist must be enormous. If that were the approach used for this, we'd expect to see "Let's Dance", "Fame", "Young Americans", etc. worked into the narrative.

The Lazarus playlist, on the other hand, really eschews this approach in favor of many bona fide deep cuts. The only songs on here that could qualify as "hits" would probably be "Changes", "All the Young Dudes" (but via Mott the Hoople, not Bowie), "The Man Who Sold the World" (via Nirvana in a different arrangement, not Bowie), and "Heroes". Instead, we get lesser-known gems like "It's No Game", "Where Are We Now", "Love is Lost", "Always Crashing in the Same Car", etc. I'm so glad Bowie and the Lazarus team went this way. It's works beautifully.

 

It started earlier than 1999. This is from 1968:



I'd be very surprised if Bowie's record collection didn't include this at some point.

 

He's growing on me too. Wasn't (yet) convinced by what I'd heard before I got the actual CD (just on Friday), but I think he does have an edginess to his voice that seems to be quite preferable to any number of other, more "theatrical" voices they could have otherwise gotten for the part. While he's not Bowie, he does seem sufficiently 'direct' in his presentation, and without too much extraneous 'affect'. I tend to like drier, more reserved performances, and his seems to fall into this category. And yet his tone is rather in your face, which I also like (not unlike Thom Yorke, or maybe Rufus Wainwright). Hall's tone isn't quite as 'in your face' as theirs, but I do think it works.

Also, the band for the cast album also seems very much in the spirit of what Bowie was doing towards the end with his collaborators on both his last two albums. Love the horns, for instance, and the back-up vocalists seem appropriate for most of the tunes (and not too 'musical theater'-y either, thank goodness).

I was really prepared to only like the cast album 'so much' -- but I can already tell it's going to be one that grows on me more and more. With out any of the material from Bowie's last two albums (from the 2010's) ever being performed like, these cast-album versions of so many of those tunes will be the only "authorized" alternate performances of them to come directly out of the Bowie camp. No, not the real thing, but with a greater sense of authenticity than one is likely to hear anywhere else. And lord knows the likelihood of 2010's-era Bowie tunes ever being performed as 'covers' is probably next to nil.

So after three (3) full spins of the cast album, so far, I'd give most of it a solid 7/10 (at least).

 

Thumbs up on these 1st 2 paragraphs, but then we begin to part ways, I think.

 

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."

David Bowie’s Favorite Albums »


BTW, I've been reading elsewhere that people think Hall's voice sounds strikingly similar to that of Bowie. Andrew Marr also said that to his face on tv. People seem to either have cloth ears or for some reason want to elevate Hall to be some sort of all conquering hero. I really can't see anything above ordinary about his voice as much as I wish it were true.

As I said before, he's a good actor.

 

True! Forgot about this one. But can you think of another pre-1999 -- or one focused on an English-speaking rock/pop act? I definitely felt Mamma Mia kicked this trend off in the modern era; while I was living in NYC (late 90s to mid-2000s) there were musicals based around the music of John Lennon, the Beach Boys, etc. All flops, as best I can recall.

 

So, of the seventeen (17) total tracks that are sung by the cast on the cast-album -- practically half(!) of the cast-album (8 songs total) were written in the 2010's!! (Four tunes from The Next Day, and four more from the Blackstar sessions.)

That's one of the very best things about the album, is the high degree of "new" material (written less than 5-6 years ago, probably), that makes up the cast-album. Then of the remaining 9 tracks... two (2) are much less well-known ("It's No Game" and "Always Crashing The Same Car").

And only the last seven (7) were bona fide 'hits' -- and even then, not too many of the very most obvious choices (i.e. no "Space Oddity", nothing from the albums Ziggy, or Diamond Dogs, nor "Young Americans", nor any of his biggest 80's hits.

I'm sure the temptation to include more 'popular' material was there, but thankfully Bowie and his collaborators thought wisely to not turn this into too much of a text book 'juke box musical'.