three of two for south of six

howdy pop pickers

yes, more music acquisitions, look you see. i do indeed appreciate that vast (large) swathes of the world are all moving towards all this "streaming" business (nonsense), but no, not me. my preference is to hold, to appreciate, to cherish and to play music. long may this continue. 

so, i have been browsing the great (virtual, i suppose) car boot sale of the internet, looking for, or if you like seeking out, releases which may have passed me by at the time, always for reasonable prices. alas, it is quite often the latter which proves troublesome. but, patience pays off. i have learned (learnt?) not to panic buy. 

indeed, as seems my perpetual (yet happy) plight, it amuses and pleases me so to more or less limit these searches to the works of Bowie, although from time to time i will consider other artists. not often, but every now and then. and if it is another artist working with Bowie, well, splendid. 

two cd singles, then, what are (at time of writing) about 22 years old, since they were released in the very Prince friendly sounding year of 1999. ah, what a year. 2000 onward was all going to be amazing and brilliant, we were promised. and yet, here we are. also and yes, a dominant presence of David Bowie, with him featuring directly on (hang on whilst i fire up the calculator) just north of 83% of the tracks here, or if you like 5 (five) of the six (6). 

purpose of purchase? mostly it was they were of an agreeable price, and were not in my collection. do not think that i am obsessive completest for my Bowie collection, as there are several releases i have no interest in. but, every now and then, when i spot one i do not have and the cost makes it move from beyond tempting to worth it, i generally do make the effort to get it. and why not. to this end, or extent if that is the correct use, i think the cost of both singles added together, and postage, all came in at a coin of money cost south of £6. maybe with some postage it was a little over, but the two discs in themselves were certainly below that price. 

a look at each? certainly. with it being the oldest song of the two on feature, why would one not start with Under Pressure. i am not 100% certain of this being the case, but i am pretty sure that this was released as a means of promoting the Queen Greatest Hits III thing released around that time. certainly the focus would be more on the Queen aspects of the song than the Bowie ones, since David himself does not feature on the artwork, or anything like that. but visually on the disc, what i will get to. 

one thing entirely absent from this disc is, as you can note in the above, the standard, original or if you will proper version of the song. recently, or of late, there has been much in the way of nostalgic retelling of how the song came to be recorded. probably (as in likely) because nothing ever quite so cool happens no more. in essence, the legend of the song is that David Bowie just happened to drop by a studio in Switzerland where Queen were recording (Hot Space, at a guess), they sat around, caught up over a cup of tea, reportedly did an astonishing amount of [name of illicit substance removed], John Deacon jammed the infectious bass, Bowie and Freddie freestyled some lyrics to it, they mashed them together and et voila, so Under Pressure came to be. 

something of an accurate way to describe the three tracks (proper) on this single is "twelve minutes of ladadedahdedah", for the emphasis is on all them whimsical vocal things what Freddie did. this is, believe me, no bad thing. vocals for both Freddie and David have been sharpened, accentuated, made to sound a trifle crisper (hello, Faye) and louder. which is lovely. as for the "remixed" music, well, it has all the elements of late 90s dance to the sound and beat, which sounded immediately dated at the time, which has not changed. but, still good. 

for the "enhanced" element, which one gets via putting the disc in a computer, one gets an interesting video that i had certainly not seen before. someone had taken footage of Queen doing Under Pressure live, and moments of Bowie doing it at the Freddie Mercury tribute concert (Freddie Aid, if you will), spliced it up and made it seem like they did it live together. a really remarkable and very good indeed editing job, especially including some "backstage" moments to make it all seem more authentic, and yet weirdly my abiding feeling was the whole thing was very (very) unfair on how ace Annie Lennox was at the Freddie Aid performance, since she is erased. 

disc two (the second) purchased, then, was a "promo" of Thursday's Child, which someone had taken a marker pen to, but no matter. this, i believe, was the kind of thing sent out to radio stations and, when we still had them, record stores, so that they may play it and promote sales of the record itself, back in those days when one generally had to buy music in order to hear it. this song was indeed lifted off of the hours..... album. one which was welcomed at the time for not sounding anything like the previous album (hey kids, i am down on your sound, here, hear Earthling) and has stood up exceptionally well over the years. 

basically this is (arguably) also three versions of the same song. and yet, and i had no expectation of this, the differences between the three are intriguing enough to make it sound like quite varied listening. i think breaking up the "single edit" and the album version with a "rock" mix is what does that. on an initial listen level, the "rock" mix appears to do what all so-called mixes of this nature does, which is to simply slam a loud electric guitar over it all. but, no, the vocals have been accentuated and lifted, and the song has indeed been mixed of a much more hard rock nature than the original would suggest it ever intended to be. should that make sense. a lovely, accidental and incidental, addition. 

usually these two releases go for (in terms of coins of money) well north of what i paid for them collectively on an individual basis. the Under Pressure single, for instance, is one that i did not ever see for less than £10 anywhere, just before i was able to procure it for south of £1. happy days, and win all around, then. 

right, let me get on with some other stuff. also, browse for more of what one might, if they were inclined or of a mind to do so, consider to be Bowie bargains. they exist, they are out there somewhere. 

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