blimey, that title is an awful lot of doing the d, so to speak, look you see. also, it is perhaps somewhat misleading for the sake of the d, but we will get to that.
yes, more (day after) day of release events for you. in this instance, recordings released on the 2nd last day of June 2018 were purchased by me on the 1st last day of June, despite the recordings being made some 40 and 30 years earlier to day of release. so it goes.
what saw me get off to town early, and get delayed by some sort of food festival closing off roads without any diversion signs up, was the release (on CD) of Bowie's Welcome To The Blackout and the 2CD version of some form of celebratory anniversary issue of Appetite For Destruction by Guns N' Roses. no, neither are exactly new, then. but new releases. and much appreciated ones.
off to HMV, then. where i discovered that neither release made it to their "trending now" section, but were rather buried in a corner ostensibly marked "new releases". and yes, Dad, if you are reading, i will pick you up that new Ray Davies one, as and when my wallet recovers from the demands of Mr Bowie and Mr Rose and Mr Slash and, since i named him, Mr Duff. and Mr Izzy and Mr other one, Adler i think he is.
how much was spent? each set was £12.99 each. which seems fair and much like what they cost when i browsed online. nice one HMV for not shoving their customary extra £1 or so on the price for the honour of being able to purchase it in a store.
indeed, these were two releases that i for the most part did not contemplate buying. they seemed on the whole excessive, in truth. but, bought they are, done now.
a closer look of sorts at them, with some Commodore 64 image action? surely.
no, strangely, i do not purchase every Bowie release on autopilot. i, for instance, did not purchase that Cracked Actor CD set from last year (or the one before if then), purely because it promised more of what David Live had, only some Young Americans mixed in. as i don't really care that much for either, well.
this one, though. despite being "more or less" the same as the celebrated 1978 release Stage, i just wanted it. mostly because, i suppose, it has Station To Station on it. i would buy any release of David Bowie what features that song, even if it is just the same as versions i already have.
there, that's the Stage back compared to Welcome To the Blackout. mostly, then, kind of the same except a bit of a different order. well, maybe a couple more songs on Blackout.
quite a few people are saying that Blackout is "better" than Stage. i am not sure. it's certainly not worse. the performances from the two shows are exceedingly similar. Blackout, though, given the freedom of CD which was not available to Stage, seems to feature bits of Bowie speaking to we, the people in the audience. so far as i recall Stage is just the songs straight with no "banter".
am i happy with the purchase? yes, very much so. it has pictures of Bowie on it and when you put the discs on the stereo and press play you can hear Bowie. that is one of the few things i want from life.
on, then, to one of several albums that could claim to define the 80s, and certainly one of the most in your face, confrontational, dangerous and jolly exciting records ever to be made. yes, Appetite For Destruction by Guns N' Roses, as they style it. and its their/his band.
i really wasn't going to bother with this as i have purchased several copies of the years. my most treasured, however, is probably still the C90 tape i made off of the copy what Norman B@stard bought, for it was he who introduced me to the record and the band.
why buy? it caught my eye on the web. there are some ludicrously priced versions of this re-release, but an inspection of the 2CD set revealed, much as was the case with a 20th or something anniversary of Achtung Baby off of U2, that the 2CD set will just do fine. plus, also, it looked beautiful.
frankly, the "newly remastered" copy of the album which comprises CD 1 of this set sounds exactly like the other CD issues, which as you can see you can get for £5.99 or two copies of it for £10. no doubt someone with a finer ear than mine can distinguish between versions, but it all sounds the same to me.
and a bloody good thing it does, too. what an album. as excellent today as when i first heard it, which was, i think the summer of 1988, although i suspect it was released in 1987. things were not instant back then.
the tragedy of Guns N' Roses is the lack of a Peter Grant figure manager. no way should egos been allowed to release two double albums on the same day. if they had staggered the material over the 90s they would have dominated the decade, rather than becoming an obscure joke for far too long.
a problem with that, i suppose, is that the world needed Axl Rose more than Axl Rose needed the world. we, the people, needed a rock god - a Jagger, a Plant, a whoever you like. he should have been revered as the greatest rock frontman of all time (except for Freddie Mercury and David Lee Roth), but life, history and the world just did not go that way. hey ho, still great album.
anyway, yes, the extras on CD 2 of Appetite are well worth it. nice to hear the demo recordings - it is clear that the band was "there" at the threshold of excellence before any professional record labels came in. not sure if the high volume of such on the more expensive editions are worth it, but that's your call not mine.
would i say i am happy with the just south of £26 i spent on these recordings today? yes. but in fairness i knew mostly what i would be getting for my cash. and sorry for the title, i quite agree it is a bit much to highlight Duff for the Guns N' Roses release, as smart as he may very well be. it's not my fault you don't, generally, spell Slash or Axl with a D.
next on day of release or day after day of release? well, Suede and James have albums on the way. also, persistent rumours that there shall be a revival of Ian Brown's solo career this year.
as ever, nice one if any of this has been of use or interest to someone!
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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