David Bowie - Brilliant Adventure (1992-2001) [Box set #5]

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Ken_McAlinden, Sep 17, 2021.

  1. Bink

    Bink Forum Resident

    I have heard different people assigning it to 1970 and others 1971 so I have never been sure.
     
  2. Oogie

    Oogie Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    So in the press garb for shadowman streaming its confirmed 2 versions were recorded.
    One in late 70 and another later in 71.
    The former has the streaming only exclusive release possibly leaving the other for the ziggy boxset.
    Which one is previously unheard and not the bootleg version we've all heard.
    Will be interesting to find this out.
     
  3. Oogie

    Oogie Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    If you read the full press release it states that 2 versions were recorded one in late 70 and another during 1971 I presume during the ziggy sessions.
     
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  4. Jmetamatic

    Jmetamatic This is the end of our oxygen supply.

    Location:
    Glasgow, Scotland
    Nothing here, are you getting the Vinyl?
     
    Bink likes this.
  5. falldog

    falldog Calmer Man

    Location:
    England
    Yes, me too. Given that they must have known yesterday at least that they wouldn't be shipping them out tonight for delivery tomorrow, waiting until 7:30pm the day before is just taking the P.

    I had my BA set delivered to the wrong house (they couldn't tell me *where* it had been delivered - no photo of the doorstep or anything - and said I'd have to wait 12 days before I could raise a ticket to get a replacement). I eventually got it later that day by walking the streets and knocking on doors until I found it! Then, they only gave me the paltry 82p or whatever it was "pre-order price promise" despite dropping the price significantly on the day of release, or maybe the day after (as documented well in this thread - I obviously don't have the patience that some of you guys have).

    So, I think this is it for me and Amazon from now on WRT things with a particular release date to look forward to. Cancelling my order.

    I'll try to source one locally if I can (though the closest B&M is quite some distance from me), and collect it at the weekend. I hope to still get it before they would have sent me one.

    Not best pleased.
     
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  6. Innocent Smith

    Innocent Smith Always crashing in the same car

    Location:
    Minnesota, USA
    Shadow Man (Early Version) is one of the "74108 Demos" listed on PPL Repertoire. Maybe we're finally going to get some info on that?

    They sure are making a bunch of announcements this week. Here's hoping it's leading up to a big announcement on his birthday.
     
  7. Bink

    Bink Forum Resident

    No, CD version.
     
    bluearmy78 likes this.
  8. Jmetamatic

    Jmetamatic This is the end of our oxygen supply.

    Location:
    Glasgow, Scotland
    Thanks for replying, yeah me too. Just checked Amazon status .. says due for arrival tomorrow.
     
    Bink likes this.
  9. pobbard

    pobbard Still buying CDs

    Location:
    Andover, MA
    The Economist(!) has a thoughtful review of Toy up.

    David Bowie delved into his own past on “Toy”

    "This changes nothing.” Colonel Tom Parker made the now-notorious remark when his client, Elvis Presley, died in 1977. Yet the cold-blooded former fairground huckster was right: Presley would be the first of many artists to have a posthumous career that rivalled their mortal one. Death was just one more marketing opportunity.

    Something similar is happening with David Bowie, who in the six years since his death has remained a subject of fascination. This month Warner Chappell Music acquired the global publishing rights to his musical catalogue, in a deal thought to be worth more than $250m. Bowie has also been subject to a prolific release schedule since 2016, including 11 live albums, a soundtrack, several EPs and singles, another Best-of compilation and a slew of box sets. “Brilliant Adventure”, the latest of those, contained something genuinely intriguing, however—an original studio album called “Toy”. (The record is also being released as a stand-alone box set this month, under the title “Toy:Box”.)

    It is the first time this work has been made officially available in its entirety, though it is not wholly new to devoted Bowie fans. Recorded in 2000 and shelved by Virgin, the musician’s record label at the time, it was leaked online in 2011 and various patchwork versions have circulated ever since. Nor is the material on the album strictly fresh. Most of the songs on “Toy” had been previously recorded by Bowie, albeit before he was famous.

    The record differs from all the other posthumous Bowie material in that, instead of being a satellite or an alternative to the core canon, “Toy” straightaway becomes a new and definitive part of it. This was no faded artist trading on past glories, but a reinvigorated one mining what he found valuable in his early missteps—flop singles, forgotten B-sides and unheard demos from the time before Bowie found out just who he was meant to be, when he was just another chancer casting about, hoping to catch the lightning. Evidently his idea was to take seriously songs which had previously been dismissed as curios or juvenilia.

    In 2000 Bowie was riding high after a protracted slump. After a phenomenal period spanning the 1970s and early 1980s, the late 1980s and the 1990s had not been kind to him—nor had the critics. “Sit down man: you’re a ****ing disgrace,” concluded a review of the second album by his hard-rock band Tin Machine, released in 1991. (The article reportedly reduced Bowie to tears.) He had strayed into that no-man’s-land where a great artist almost inevitably loses their impetus and relevance, but has yet to attain cherished elder status. A joyously received headline slot at the Glastonbury festival in 2000 (pictured) proved a turning-point. No longer making the weather, he could now ride above it.

    Bowie’s legacy was assured: he had an audience spanning all ages and an expert and agile band to back him. Who, with all the strength, confidence and experience of maturity, would not fancy a second shot at their younger, more uncertain days? There was, naturally, a danger that the idiosyncratic charm these songs possessed would be crushed out by the professionalism and self-assurance of the star he very much wasn’t when he wrote them; that knowing how things turned out would be fatal to their questing innocence.

    But that didn’t happen. The treasure on “Toy” can be found in the tracks about Bowie’s life as teenage bohemian wannabe. “I Dig Everything” catalogues the hectic and novel joys of trying your luck in the big city; “The London Boys” is a marvel of a song depicting that life’s occasionally dangerous downsides. “Can’t Help Thinking About Me” is a portrait of the artist as a young and rather maladroit rake, at once droll, self-pitying and possessed of that curious nostalgia the youthful often express for childhood days just gone. Had Bowie written that triad of songs at 53, they’d surely have been seen as revealing his knowing, older eye, as a sensitive, wise and wry reflection on the past. He first recorded all of them before he turned 20.

    Yet “Toy” is not just an album about the past. It is an album with layers upon layers of the past wrapped around itself. There is the listener’s perception today—Bowie having departed just after reaching a fresh artistic peak on his album “Blackstar” (2016)—looking back at the Bowie of 2000. There’s the Bowie of 2000 looking back at the Bowie of 1966 with affection and a certain admiration, thinking his younger self was onto something even if the lad didn’t yet know what it was. And there’s the Bowie of 1966, looking back at the schoolboy, at the new arrival in London’s wild playground, at the person he had been only days or weeks before and would never be again. From the very start, one thing Bowie never lacked the courage to do was to turn and face the strange changes.
     
  10. croquetlawns

    croquetlawns Forum Resident

    Location:
    Scotland
    It's nice to see that real, thoughtful reviews still exist in 2022!
     
  11. Vaughan

    Vaughan Forum Resident

    Location:
    Essex, UK
    Me too. Bah humbug.

    My status says "arriving tomorrow", but I don't expect it now.

    I guess the entire British public are desperate for Toy. Perhaps they want to use the covers as halloween masks?
     
    whatprogress and Bink like this.
  12. Bink

    Bink Forum Resident

    Yes, mine still says 'arriving tomorrow' too. I will see what happens overnight but assuming it won't be dispatched based on that email, I will walk down to HMV on my lunchbreak tomorrow. Assuming they aren't also having the same supply issues!
     
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  13. muzzer

    muzzer Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    That’s a great review. This box is overpriced atm though.
     
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  14. Jmetamatic

    Jmetamatic This is the end of our oxygen supply.

    Location:
    Glasgow, Scotland
    Just got the email, ah well still have the leaked version to listen too.
     
  15. Vaughan

    Vaughan Forum Resident

    Location:
    Essex, UK
    I'll let mine ride, it's not something I have to hear on release day. Still, a little annoying when we've had it pre-ordered for so long.
     
  16. pobbard

    pobbard Still buying CDs

    Location:
    Andover, MA
    I'm in the US, but Amazon emailed a few weeks ago to say that my box would arrive January 7th (tomorrow!). But checking now, it says... January 10th. Oh well.
     
  17. footprintsinthesand

    footprintsinthesand Reasons to be cheerful part 1

    Location:
    Dutch mountains
  18. Oogie

    Oogie Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    Thanks.
    So this sounds like the bootleg version we all know.
    I guess the later 71 version is previously unheard.
     
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  19. MHP

    MHP Lover of Rock ‘n Roll

    Location:
    DK
    Last edited: Jan 6, 2022
  20. croquetlawns

    croquetlawns Forum Resident

    Location:
    Scotland
    Excellent job! It's a bit frustrating that they just needed to add a handful of tracks to the box to make it complete, but no....
     
    Runicen likes this.
  21. MHP

    MHP Lover of Rock ‘n Roll

    Location:
    DK
    Yes, it’s the bizz in a nutshell.
    Bowie was no saint either!
    He did this all the time when he was alive too!
    So I guess they are at least following this strange logic…
     
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  22. Stump

    Stump Forum Resident

    Location:
    Adelaide Australia
    "The less you give them the more they want" was a quote I remember Bowie saying.....
     
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  23. will_b_free

    will_b_free Forum Resident

    Location:
    Boulder, CO
    Toy:Box is on its way to me too. I really like most of what I’ve heard but not “Shadow Man” - I am surprised that this song is being used this week to hype the release. It is dreary. Or at least the sparse “alternative mix” being promoted on Facebook and such is.
     
    muzzer likes this.
  24. muzzer

    muzzer Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    That press release reference to ‘Autumn 1971’ is a tease isn’t it? ****ers ;)
     
  25. muzzer

    muzzer Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    You can see why he kept it in the can, but equally I wonder what its genesis was. Shadow Man
     
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