Nile Rodgers was on TV here last year, & he said a collaboration 4 a project
was scheduled 4 this year...wonder if that's still on...

Anxiety said:

No, no, you must buy David Live.
If only for the live version of Sweet Thing.

Martinelli said:

I hope not; Bowie's collaborations with Nile have always been spotty. I'd rather have him work with an underground producer, or perhaps someone like Nigel Godrich.

Martinelli said:

Judging from the quotes I read from him, he's so full of himself, at least concerning "Let's Dance". How can he praise it like he does (do not know exactly what he said at the moment, though), when half of it is BS? Almost every other Bowie album is so much better.

noepie said:

"David Live" is great, like one of Miles Davis's coke-jazz live albums from the mid-seventies redone as a dark camp musical. Apparently Bowie was doing so much coke then he was perpetually dehydrated on stage and his lips stuck to his gums.

But yeah, that version of "Sweet Thing" is seriously spooky.

Axchi696 said:

I love Nile Rodgers, but I want Bowie and Eno to get back and finish "Outside 2".

noepie said:

No, no, you must buy Stage.
If only for the far superior (read: healther) vocals, the superb arrangements of the songs, and a sound that, to my ears, is altogether far more full, powerful and confident.

Not that I have anything against 'David Live' - it has a kind of sickly, decadent, funky charm to it that I enjoy from time to time. Mostly though, I find myself cringing at how off-the-mark Bowie is (for HIM, anyway) most of the time. It's like listening to a car wreck. Which, I suppose, has its value...

Hell, get 'em both.

endorphin74 said:

Hey D, do you have Low and "Heroes" yet? If not, I might hold off until you get those first. They're so mind-bogglingly, shockingly different and good. Nothing can prepare you for your first time hearing them really. I'd recommend picking those up first, making friends with them, and then getting Stage.

GangstaFam said:

i dunno about that...i heard "stage" before i even knew what the "heroes" and "low" albums were, and hearing that album made me want to dip into those albums, "station to station", and a bunch of other stuff. for me, "stage" was a fantastic starting-off point.

of course, results may vary.

Anxiety said:

Me too. People rip on those, but they were my formative Bowie experience. And some of those bonus tracks are priceless.

I'm majorly psyched about the Young Americans reissue. "Who Can I Be Now?" and "It's Gonna Be Me" are two of his absolutely greatest songs. Shame they weren't on the original album. I can't wait to see what he does with this one.

The next batch after that should be interesting though. Station To Station I imagine will include lot of live stuff as bonus material. My preference would be to use some of the unused Man Who Fell To Earth demos. Now that would be cool.

I've also heard that there are many, many outtakes, several instrumentals from the Berlin-era stuff, especially from Lodger. He's been pretty skimp on including never before heard material on these 30th anniversary editions, but one can still hope!

Anxiety said:

Shit, get all 3 tomorrow and thank us later.

GangstaFam said:

aye aye cap'ns!

I NEED THESE

what a perfect description

that's cool...but I won a signed Marilyn Manson mask. Although i had to threaten a lawsuit to actually get it.

origmnd said:

oh!

GrayKing said:

The single edit is terrible , isn't it? They shouldn't even put it on the re-issue, it's bad enough that this is the mix on his Greatest Hits CDs.

Axchi696 said:

i always thought it sounded like a cassette-to-cassette dub, with that awful/cheap effect to bridge out the edited part. like pushing pause and unpausing it to make the edit. truly horrendous

Congratulations!

I love Bowie. I have been dithering about joining BowieNet for months now. Is it worth it?

Mr7 said:

i think it's worth it just to get the liveandwell.com disc that they deliver to ya for joining. the music on it isn't going to change your life - it's a two disc set...one disc is live stuff from the 'earthling' tour, and the other disc is remixes...not bad, but not amazing either...but it's only available via joining bowienet, so if you're into collector's item stuff, this is a gem.

also, you get to read bowie's blog (when he updates it) and ask him questions (when he decides to write answers) and you have access to the message boards (i can't really get into the bowienet boards, but the people on there seem to be having a good time).

really - and i never thought i'd say this - i've gotten more out of my NPGMC membership...though if i weren't a bowienet member, i wouldn't have won my stage CD!

Though it is fair to say, that when he joins today there might not be another question answered by Bowie or a new journal entry before his annual membership is over again.
It's not like it happens every month, at least not anymore. but of course you can access the old ones.

BTW, do you remember the "Bowie interviews Bowie" text? For some reason I saved it to my harddrive back then.. shortly thereafter they took it off the site.
If anyone wants to read it again, I'll post it. It's really interesting.

calldapplwondery83 said:

I would like to read that.

At your wish:


Bowie (53) interviews Bowie (23)

db1. (53 years old) You look tired, what have you been up to?

db2. (23 years old) Thanks, you don't look so rested yourself. I've been recording a song called Space Oddity. It's a sort of a sequel to '2001', a fantastic movie I just saw with my girlfriend Hermione, and the other half of my duo, a guy from Yorkshire called Hutch. This Kubrick guy is fantastic. So modern, really objective and with this amazing cold eye. Fantastic.

db1. You've got to learn some more adjectives. I'm sorry to tell you that Kubrick just passed on, quite unexpectedly. Hey, go and see 'Clockwork Orange' when it comes out. It'll change your life.

db2. Yea, well, I doubt it. Andrew Loog Oldham, the Stones manager has already lifted bits of the book for a Stones album liner-notes. I think they were supposed to do the film.

db1. Ah, but you haven't seen the false eyelashes yet.

db2. Eh?

db1. Never mind. Have you met Jagger yet? I can't remember.

db2. No. I was in the same room as him once. I met Brian Jones though. We got drunk with Ramblin' Jack Elliot one night. Jonesy uses really big words and I don't think he quite knows what they mean.

db1. It's endemic to rock music.

db2. What? Anyway, why would I want to meet Jagger?

db1. Oh, I'm sure you'd have a lot in common.

db2. But do you remember Hutch, though.

db1. Sure, but he didn't do the record with you, did he?

db2. No, he only did the demo. He got cold feet at the last minute and went back to Yorkshire because he didn't think we would make it in the biz and he needed to have a proper job 'cause he's married with a kid and all that. I wanted to have it produced by Tony Visconti but he hates the song, thinks it's a 'novelty' thing. What do you think?

db1. Biz? I haven't heard that in a long time. Well, yea, it's kind of a novelty song, though Visconti has always maintained that he didn't want to produce it because he thought it was a cheap shot to cash in on the 'moonshot' Though of course that's a bit of a fib as here you are in February or March recording it and the moonshot won't be announced until August. The Americans kept it very secret from the Russians 'til the last minute, not wanting to be pipped at the post so to speak.

db2. How can you be so sure of the announcement date?

db1. There's been a series on the TV, 'From Earth to the Moon', and they've used all the archives as reference, including press stuff.

db2. So they got there then? What's up there?

db1. Conspiracy theories.

db2. Oh.

db1. You know, the books say that Hermione has already left you .

db2. Do what? That's rubbish. She's working on a movie.

db1. I know, and then she's gonna come back for a while and then go off again to another movie called 'Song of Norway'. That's where the problems will begin. She'll come home around the end of spring and tell you she's fallen in love with a dancer she met on the film-shoot in Norway.

db2. Oh God, you're breaking my heart. How can you be so sure?

db1. I've kept nearly all of the letters we got throughout the sixties. you'll write at least two songs about her though, 'An Occasional Dream' and 'Letter to Hermione'. Mind you, you've not exactly been stopping at home yourself have you? You've been putting it about all over the place. Bit of a leg-over man aren't you?

db2. You publish all this and I'll sue. .... Are we happy now?

db1. We're happier than we've ever been. More than we deserve really.

db2. What do you mean by that?

db1. It took you a long, long time to learn how to share your life with another person. We've just about got life in focus now.

db2. Did we get married?

db1. Ha-ha. Yes. Twice. First time because we thought nothing of it and the second time because we thought everything of it. What kind of music are you listening to?

db2. Oh, Incredible String Band, Velvet Underground, The Village Fugs and the Godz, Buzzy Linehart, Biff Rose, shall I go on?

db1. Yes please, it's interesting. I've forgotten some of those guys.

db2. Leo Kotke is pretty amazing. He plays 12-string, beyond anything that I could even contemplate but a real turn-on. And it sounds like Buzzy plays one as well. I can't tell you for sure as I haven't got a sleeve for that one.

db1. I see that there're few Brits in your list, no-one you like?

db2. Well, I've got over two hundred records so I'm just throwing out the names of people I'm listening to at the moment. I've left out all the R&B stuff, for instance, but I still play them all the time. As for the English I quite like Tyrannosaurus Rex, Roy Harper and 'Gong'. But since Syd left the Floyd there's no-one over here that I'm really into. I used to be friends with Marc Bolan a few years ago, but we've drifted apart a bit. I bump into him occasionally at Tony Visconti's place. He's always going over there to have a bath as the place he's got hasn't got one, I think. Tony's producing him. He's doing this sort of elfin king thing which I don't personally think will go very far. It's all a bit twee. I'm more into mixed-media type stuff. I probably won't end up in rock, more kind of theater with music kind of thing. Rock probably doesn't have that much longer. Anyway, when I've had my tincture, I kind of like Stockhausen and Harry Parch. It's way out stuff but really quite groovy.

db1. Ha-ha. Sorry. I'd forgotten about the tincture. It's tincture of cannabis isn't it? You take a dessert spoonful and fly for a day or so. You get it from a naughty doctor in Notting Hill Gate, don't you? I would stop doing the stuff if I were you.

db2. Oh, it's cool. I wouldn't dream of doing anything harder than tincture. I used to pop pills when I was a mod but I've stopped all that now. You won't see me trying heroin or getting strung out on cocaine or anything like that. I think too much of myself.

db1. Well, we will leave that one for now. It makes me too sad. Phillip Glass will be coming to Britain next year, go and see him, you might like him. There'll be a young student in the audience that you won't meet for a bit but things will happen when you do, name of Brian Eno. By the way, you've got over four thousand Vinyls now.

db2. Blimey! Glass did you say? O.K. I'll watch out for him.

db1. You're going to America in the next while. What would you expect to find?

db2. Well, of course, It's my fantasy home isn't it? All my life I've dreamt of going there. I used to lie under the covers when I was about nine or ten and listen to everything on the American Forces Network, AFN. They would play the top ten records and do little plays based in 'Springtown' - USA' and I would put myself into the play in my head and be living there, and drink sodas and drive a cadillac and play sax in Little Richard's band and all that. I expect it's a lot different from my imagination though. I'm a little bit wary of all the violence at the moment though. There's been this huge thing about gun control ever since the Black Panthers started carrying them in public. It's really ironic because, apparently, you can carry guns in the street in California as long as they are on display. And no one thought twice about that law but as soon as a black guy took advantage of it they scream about changing the law. Typical isn't it? And it doesn't seem like the Panthers have used their guns very much, if they have it's nearly always in self-defense. Anyway, Power To The People, man! It's no good reading the straight press for information though, 'cause they write on the side of the pigs. The International Times is the best source. Also, there's been this Manson murder thing and it's freaked out all the Hollywood straights. So it's all the violence and stuff that's a bit scary really, but I'm still going to see the Velvet Underground if I can. I've got to talk to Lou Reed, he's the singer, because I really dig the way he writes about street life, no-one else is doing that in rock y'know? And I think I can do a similar kind of thing but, like, make it more English. I suppose they've got rid of all the guns now, yea?

db1. It's too depressing, don't let's go there. And I don't want to 'bring you down' but Reed has already left the Velvets. Now, something very funny is going to happen to you. You won't think it funny, just humiliating, but you'll look back on it as really good. You'll be told about a gig by the Velvets at the Electric Circus when you first get to N.Y. and you'll go. They'll do all the songs that you know plus some new one's from their album 'Loaded'. As there are only about one hundred people in the club, you'll be right at the front, by the stage, singing along with them, trying to show Lou that you know all the lyrics. After the show, you'll knock on the dressing-room door, (they're not 'famous' enough to have security), and John Cale will answer. You ask if you can speak with Lou Reed and Cale smiles and says "Sure". Lou slips out of the dressing room and you both sit on a bench that's placed on a side wall in the club. You chat to him about how you think you're probably the only person in London to be a major fan and how you had a copy of their first album before it was even released in America. You also ask about the meaning of some of the lyrics and how the distorted sound on their records was made. Lou, for you believe it to be him, replies thoughtfully and with charm . You chat for a good fifteen minutes until Lou says he has to go. You float off into the night, a fan whose dream came true. The next day, one of your new-found N.Y. friends tells you that Lou has not been with the band for quite a while and that the new singer, Doug Yule, kinda looks like Reed. You will be gutted.

db2. That's awful. I'm definitely not going then.

db1. Oh, but you will. Our conversation isn't really taking place, you see. I'm merely typing it.

db2. I can feel you putting the word 'hours...' in my head. What's that?

db1. It's our new album, or CD as it is these days. It's vaguely a 'Songs for A Generation' I suppose. Some of it is drawn from you, but most of it is a sketch of how guys of my age feel about looking back and where they are now.

db2 I know where I am. I'm trying to make up my mind whether I want to be a rock star or write musicals. I'm being pulled in all kinds of directions. My manager, Ken, wants me to do the all-round entertainer route and when he can't get me rock gigs he keeps trying to push me into cabaret because he says that I could make some good bread doing that. I don't know. Maybe he's right. He certainly doesn't seem to understand what I do want, though.

db1. Which is what?

db2. I don't know. Everything. Do you think of me fondly... or...I dunno...at all?

db1. Not that much, I'm afraid. But when I do, I get scared for you. You'll put yourself through so much unnecessary stuff. But you'll survive. You'll leave Ken this year, well, you virtually stopped working with him last year. But don't forget that though you both had completely different ideas about what you should be doing, he stuck by you. He lent you money whenever you needed it and showed a great deal of enthusiasm for all your crazy ideas. Look, a word of advice. Don't get so obsessed with your work that you neglect to have a personal life of quality. You're an addictive personality and the work is going to take over.

db2. I thought you said you're typing this? Nothing's gonna change is it?

db1. Quite right, of course. I'd forgotten that. It seemed quite real for a minute or two there. There's so much I'd like to talk to you about, mime (snigger) the Legendary Stardust Cowboy, Le Kilt Club, the Sombrero, how the Bread and Puppet theater got under your skin... and is it true you met Jim Morrison in London? At the Roundhouse. Your love life, all that.

db2. Why don't you tell me all the things that are going to happen to me and I can write an album around them?

db1. Hey, that's my idea. You've got your own albums to write. Mark my words.

c. david bowie 1999

calldapplwondery83 said:

i remember this. always thought it was corny. interesting. but corny.

GrayKing said:

Well, I think it really represents Bowie in 1999. Fits the mood and themes on ...hours.
And just to have someone like him sit down and have a little conversation between him now and back then is great, IMO.

calldapplwondery83 said:

That was funny and interesting.

i'm very impressed - i got an e-mail from bowienet letting me know they mailed my CD....follow-through messages from an official fan-site? i think i need smelling salts!

Holy crap, 'Hang on to yourself' rocks HARD on Stage! The whole thing is killer, better than David Live, IMO. Though that one's still great, too.

winning stuff is fun! congrats!