a spitting sentry horned and tailed, waiting for you

howdy pop pickers

so (yet) another David Bowie release for the year that is the year 2020, look you see. i guess, then, that this particular year has not been all that much of a complete write off. or, maybe, has it.

in this particular instance the Bowie (re)release is the second time that an album of his has been given a "50th anniversary mix" by Tony Visconti. the first was Space Oddity, and as you can read here it turned out to be a very good idea to let exist. here it is The Man Who Sold The World to get the same. and i am not at all sure that this has been quite such a good idea. 

a decision was taken to rename The Man Who Sold The World as Metrobolist for this fifty year anniversary mix. the claim is that it was "always" going to be called that anyway, but was changed to The Man Who Sold The World at the last minute. well, if they (whoever they are) say so, i guess. fine. but for years we had heard and had been told that Bowie never particularly cared for his recording of the titular track, so it seems strange that he would have merrily used it as the name of the album entire, out of the blue, and at the last minute. still, a rose by any other name, etc. 

what worked with the new mix of Space Oddity was a slight fiddle with the tracks (introducing obscure gem Conversation Piece to the album proper was a wise move) and giving it all a fresh, crisp (hello, Faye) new sounding perspective. here, for as far as i can tell, the tracklisting (or order) remains as was the case on the original, and it is just that Visconti has "remixed" all but one tune. to be complete, the untouched one is After All, with the official claim being that it was "already perfect as it was" but the official statement also saying no one could, for some reason, find the original master tape for that song so they just had to use the most recent "remix" of it. 

quite a fair comment to make, i do believe, is that The Man Who Sold The World is not one of Bowie's albums one would call widely celebrated or hailed as one of his greatest. which is absolutely not to say it is a bad album, just he has done better. my general view on the record is that one of his all time greatest songs of all time, The Width Of A Circle, is on this album, and so are eight other songs which are not quite so good as that one. but yes, a shout out to those who do hold this album up as their favourite Bowie work. famously and memorably Kurt Cobain certainly did, and i have some mates who got into Bowie after hearing this album. 

the one really baffling question posed by this release, then, is who, exactly, is it aimed at. a certain element of the Bowie fan base exists which will of course just buy anything they care to release, and yes i suppose that is where i reside. but who else did they wish to lure? removing the rather well known original title and using one of the original alternate covers which does not feature Bowie on it kind of removes the more casual fan happening to stumble across it, i would think. or suspect. nope, no idea how sales of this have gone. 

once again i have to confess (or state) that i have no idea of the technical ways in which music is produced or made, or remixed, and so i do not, perhaps, have an awareness of the correct terms to use, or phrases to say. all i can do is offer my reaction to what i hear. what i heard here, then, on this Metrobolist album, was not all that good. 

maybe it is my familiarity with it, i know not, but something just sounded plain off with the first track, the previously (as opposed to later) mentioned The Width Of A Circle. i have no idea what Tony Visconti and his crew have done to the sound of it, but no longer does it sound like the audacious masterpiece it once did. is the song sounding all of a sudden strangely "out of balance" the right way to say it, i wonder. please forgive my ignorance in how to word it, but the song here does not sound as good as it does on the tape off of a library from the 70s which was where i first heard the song, nor anywhere near as good as it does on the early 90s CD release. 

for whatever flaws and faults there were (to the ears of some) in the original release, i am far from convinced that a viable solution or practical suggestion would have been to "make the songs sound a bit more tinny". yet this is the fate which befalls Running Gun Blues. never really a great song, in truth, but one that you could just let play. by my third listen to this new version of the album, i just had to skip this track, so mangled it has now become. 

is it all bad? not really. quite close but not a complete write off. a lovely touch, for instance, is accentuating (or making louder, clearer) the guitar riff and "zane, zane, zane" bit off the end of All The Madmen, which feels like a quasi tacit acknowledgement of Bowie borrowing it and shoving it on the end of the titular track of The Buddha Of Suburbia. also, the previous titular track off this record sounds quite suspiciously like it has had more extra work on it, to try and make it the standout, or outstanding, song on the record. 

so is this worth getting? frankly, no. if you want the album and for some reason don't have it, rather look around for any of the 90s CD issues of it. absurd prices are being asked in regards of the various different "limited edition" coloured vinyl releases of this, but that will be more to do with the rarity of them rather than the quality of the actual record. but again, let me say, there was really only so much scope to do something different with what was, should we be honest, a very average album. whereas i shall place the Space Oddity variation from time to time, i do not see Metrobolist moving off the shelf very often at all. 

what next? as much as Bowie liked him and considered him a friend across many years, on the basis of Metrobolist it will be rather f*****g brave of the custodians of the Bowie Estate to let Tony Visconti mess (or mix) with the next three albums which would be due 50th anniversary celebrations, as they are Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane. actually, no. musically Hunky Dory is a little similar in tone to Space Oddity so that may work out. by that same logic, though, what Visconti has done to the rock sound of Man Who Sold The World is not something one would willingly wish to hear done to the rock sound of Ziggy. unless i am in some sort of minority on this. 

ultimately, or fundamentally, there is no such thing as "bad" Bowie. oh, but there are many cases where some Bowie is much better than other Bowie. 

be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!