The best versions for each David Bowie album?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Haristar, Jul 10, 2017.

  1. footprintsinthesand

    footprintsinthesand Reasons to be cheerful part 1

    Location:
    Dutch mountains
    You think God is on top of it all ?
     
  2. TonyCzar

    TonyCzar Forum Resident

    Location:
    PhIladelphia, PA
    OMG that's what that voice is saying over that catchy tune at the end of "Earthling", isn't it? Only took 21 years, but it's nice to know.

    ("Law (Earthling's on Fire)", I just looked it up. Looking over this tracklist, how do people not like this album?? This song in particular drives me nuts. Love it.)

    (No, it's "Pallas Athena".. oh, well. Duh. "Law" is still awesome sauce.)

    LOLSHF: "I don't want knowledge. I want certainty."
     
    Last edited: Aug 14, 2018
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  3. karmaman

    karmaman Forum Resident

    no tweaks, identical mastering. 2002 and 2003 masters for Ziggy and Aladdin Sane respectively, all others from '99.
     
  4. karmaman

    karmaman Forum Resident

    i knew but i'd usually turned it off by then!
     
  5. TonyCzar

    TonyCzar Forum Resident

    Location:
    PhIladelphia, PA
    Streaming it from Tidal RIGHT NOW!!!
     
  6. no.nine

    no.nine (not his real name)

    Location:
    NYC
    Sorry for replying to this so late, but I'm seeing this thread for the first time.

    Anyway, I'm no expert, but it's my understanding that this attribution to Bowie about the RCA tapes not being good is incorrect. Or, if he really did make such a statement, it may be something he said during the launch of the Ryko reissues. If so, that could merely indicate promotional bias.

    Thing is, once RCA began issuing Bowie's catalog on CD, their contract with him was due to expire. That would have been in '86 or '87 (can't remember the exact year). So RCA was going to have to stop producing Bowie CDs at that time no matter what. Nothing to do with quality. There was even a theory (unproven to my knowledge but plausible) that this limited sales window was the exact reason his entire RCA catalog became available on CD, at a time when many other artists had only a specific individual album or a selected few titles available as CD reissues.

    Anyway, maybe someone can verify this or even elaborate, but I believe this to be largely accurate.
     
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  7. TonyCzar

    TonyCzar Forum Resident

    Location:
    PhIladelphia, PA
    Yes, well, it would have been self-defeating to tell people to forget about the Rykos and pursue out-of-print RCAs in 1990, but still, both things are true: the people tasked with getting RCA CDs done for the American market got a disappointing pile in their hands for their trouble, and they took it upon themselves to pursue European and Japanese sources for the masters. So the legal sources for the lineup of albums for the official American market were not good. #FibNotAFib

    There was a sunset window for RCA but it was not exploited to the bitter end because (the theory goes) there was a bit of a resource crunch in manufacturing the newly popular CD format, and wait times started to get longer. Labels (again, the theory goes) poured their resources into titles which would pay for a long time, as opposed to being printed, shipped, then recalled. RCA could sell Elvis CDs forever, and Bowie for maybe another year, so....
     
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  8. no.nine

    no.nine (not his real name)

    Location:
    NYC
    Sorry, but I'm not sure I'm accurately understanding what you're saying here. Are you saying that the U.S. market's tape sources weren't good? (That's accurate in some cases but not all). And remember that many of the European market copies ARE good, so taken along with some of the U.S. copies which are also good, I almost have a hard time believing that Bowie would have even been aware enough about them or cared enough to put the RCAs down. Although now that I'm thinking about it, I suppose it's possible that a one or two of the badly flawed ones came to his attention, and maybe that was enough for him to deem the CDs as deficient overall. I'm just thinking out loud now.

    Anyway, regarding the anti-RCA comment, I don't know for a fact that Bowie made one at all, although it's a common claim that he did. I've just never come across proof of it, that's all. Maybe someone can point me in the right direction? IF this statement was made during the Ryko launch, my only point is that of course he's not going to say anything positive about the RCAs. Under those circumstances, I wouldn't put much stock into such a statement.


    Do you mean that the sunset window wouldn't have had anything to do with why they were issued? If that's what you mean, I disagree. Mainly because, to my knowledge, the CDs weren't recalled once the contract expired. Remaining store stock was allowed to stay until sold. But the other reason I disagree is because RCA issued CDs of ALL the titles. Plus THREE compilations. This surely seems to me to be an indication they wanted to sell them while they still could. If that contract wasn't about to expire soon, I firmly believe they wouldn't have issued so many titles. At least not so quickly anyway.
     
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  9. TonyCzar

    TonyCzar Forum Resident

    Location:
    PhIladelphia, PA
    Someone will probably be along shortly with a URL, but there's a webpage somewhere telling the whole US-market RCA CD story from one of the two engineers tasked with making it happen. And one of the first problems was that RCA said: "Here ya go" and handed the two engineers masters that sounded like crap.

    The ones you consider today "not crap" were probably the ones which the guys successfully tracked down around the world on their own and substituted for manufacturing.

    It gets very confusing because at this early stage in the game, all of the CD manufacturing, including for the US market, was actually done in Japan or the EU.

    Yes, well the happy ending to their horror story (which I've read myself) is that they did find some better sources to press (always overseas) for the US market than the sources they were originally given.

    It seems that the limitations on manufacturing resources and contract lifespan conspired to bring the Bowie RCA CD era to a close sooner than it technically had to be brought to a close. I have no opinion on why RCA issued Bowie CDs in the first place (Because they could?).

    I didn't say any were recalled. But if you go "Full Steam Ahead" on manufacture of CDs that you only get to sell until (let's say 1987), then when (1987) comes, there's no "But we already pressed them!" clause. Lawyers had better not find them on the shelf at Sam Goody's. And Bowie pretty clearly telegraphed in 1983 that he was not re-upping with RCA.
     
  10. For his 70s albums (and Super Creeps) it's Ryko disks for me all the way. I like the bonus material and with a bit of bass added and the treble backed-off they sound just fine.
     
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  11. mdm08033

    mdm08033 Senior Member

    Chuckles, that press release will be on my favorite website, notgonnahappen.com.
     
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  12. no.nine

    no.nine (not his real name)

    Location:
    NYC
    I've read it - if we're thinking of the same blog, that is. There were some bits of information which seemed to call the writer's credibility into question, though I don't specifically remember what. But I think it had something to do with a claim that the U.S. and European market mastering teams worked from the same sources and just worked on them differently. Something like that. I'll read it again if the URL materializes.


    Possibly. But for the purposes of this discussion, I don't think it matters which ones are considered crap and which ones aren't. My main point was that enough of the masterings were good, and therefore not likely (IMO, of course) for Bowie to have had an issue with the RCA catalog as a whole, or for it to have even come to his attention at all possibly.


    Yes, I know. I remember those days well. For awhile there, you HAD to buy something you wanted if you saw it, because there was no telling if or when you'd see another copy. This comment is not Bowie-specific. :)


    OK, I re-read your post and now realize your use of the word "recalled" was in a general context, not necessarily about the Bowie CDs. Sorry.

    But I don't know of any situation where an out of print CD by any artist WASN'T allowed to remain in stores until it sold. There could be individual cases, and those cases could be for very specific reasons, but I seriously don't think there was ever an industry-wide standard procedure to pull unsold albums from stores just because of a contract expiration. The label just couldn't MANUFACTURE them anymore.

    It should be said, though, that it IS a fairly common view that the Bowie RCA CDs were withdrawn. But as far as I know, they were not. And I've read first hand accounts right here on the forum from members who found these CDs on store shelves well after the contract expiration date. I wish I could remember names so I could ping them. I'm pretty sure I've seen them myself at the time, but I wasn't paying much attention because I wasn't into Bowie yet.



    Are we sufficiently off topic enough yet? :laugh:
     
    Last edited: Aug 14, 2018
  13. karmaman

    karmaman Forum Resident

    no, these were UK engineers tasked with handling the European editions after deciding the US sources were inadequate. the US discs used these "inadequate" sources and it's fair to say the majority of the flaws appear on the US discs and thus the European discs are generally preferred (with the usual caveats assumed understood after years of this same topic).
     
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  14. footprintsinthesand

    footprintsinthesand Reasons to be cheerful part 1

    Location:
    Dutch mountains
  15. TonyCzar

    TonyCzar Forum Resident

    Location:
    PhIladelphia, PA
    Yes. Checking the URL fits provided, the author was tasked with discs for European (not US) distribution.

    But the legal clearances and crappy masters came from RCA USA, hence my confusion. Apologies.
     
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  16. karmaman

    karmaman Forum Resident

    it's a blurry picture made worse by conflicting information that "the RCA CDs" were sourced from cassette masters, u-matics or other "non-master" tapes.
    the key information missing from the euro engineer is just where they sourced their alternative masters from.
     
  17. SincerelyLCohen

    SincerelyLCohen Active Member

    Location:
    DC
    Those Ryko Gold AU 20 releases with bonuses, and the picture disks were the best
     
  18. swedgin

    swedgin Forum Resident

    Location:
    Earth
    How does that 2003 remaster of AS stack up? Any reason other than the bonus disc to pick up that mastering?
     
  19. karmaman

    karmaman Forum Resident

    picture disks?
     
  20. karmaman

    karmaman Forum Resident

    better than the '90, '99 and '13 but if you have either of the RCAs you don't need it. the bonus material was pretty thin too.
     
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  21. SincerelyLCohen

    SincerelyLCohen Active Member

    Location:
    DC
  22. karmaman

    karmaman Forum Resident

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  23. TonyCzar

    TonyCzar Forum Resident

    Location:
    PhIladelphia, PA
    I always figured that was because the author was covering somebody's behind. Perhaps his own.
     
  24. TonyCzar

    TonyCzar Forum Resident

    Location:
    PhIladelphia, PA
    I'm neither a record company lawyer nor an old-school retailer. I don't know what gears turn this way and that during contract negotiations. In general, you are right. Someone "changing labels" has traditionally not meant that the "old label" loses their copyright. And following from that, it's no problem if what's on the store shelf is pressed by the old label. 100% continuity, if the old label chooses to bother.

    But big acts like the Stones and Bowie licensed their works, kit and kaboodle. I personally don't recall, e.g., whether the retail decks were cleared of Stones CBS/Sony discs (based on a 1983-ish agreement) when Virgin started rolling out their Stones remasters in 1994 (based on a deal signed in November 1991).

    But I'm pretty sure that every contract is different.
     
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  25. 93curr

    93curr Senior Member

    Three decades later, I'm still very confused as to why RCA put out three compilations on CD but failed to issue the live albums. Neither 'David Live', 'Ziggy Live - The Motion Picture' nor 'Stage' came out in the States or Japan and 'David Live' and 'Ziggy Live' didn't come out anywhere. Surely any of those would have been more in demand than any compilation other than 'ChangesOne', no?
     
    Last edited: Aug 15, 2018
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