well, here we are again. once more it is so, look you see, that i have found some reason or other to write of Bowie once again. yes, indeed, after doing one (1) album of his per month for many, many months i kind of suggested i probably had not much else to write. it turns out that yes, i do.
so, i have a penchant (or proclivity) to spend coins of money on things i like. and i rather like Bowie. with the Bowie Estate remaining, at time of writing, unusually reluctant to offer me anything in exchange for such coins, i browsed the virtual car boot sale of the internet. yes, i have a large amount of the releases made by Bowie, but by no means all. i find it worthwhile to search for the ones i do not have every now and then, on the off chance that they crop up at an agreeable price.
if there is one area my collection falls short it would be in the world of CD singles what he deemed to release, specifically in the 90s. perhaps sensing that the sales of physical music would soon drop off, as it was after all him who coined the phrase "streaming", he did go on a little bit of a bender in that decade, releasing a mountain of CD singles. alas, i was unable to take advantage of this. i was still in SA at the time, and there was no real global online shopping then, also few of the singles got an international release.
collecting, or picking up, these CD singles in the hear and now is neither easy nor cheap. mostly what's out there is in the hands of collectors who would no more part with them than i would. also, and this is entirely fair, the entrepreneurs have sussed the CD singles - as pointless as they are on face value, based on number of tracks and what those tracks are - hold a significant value for those looking for them. it is quite rare for a Bowie CD single to appear on the market for south of £10, so i was rather pleased, delighted and instant purchase mode (full tilt) when the chance came to get the above four (4), including postage, for south of £10 all in.
quite the bargain, really. even when, as it sort of kind of turned out, i already had one of them, and really had exceptionally little interest in another of them. further, then, also, it became clear that i did, as point of fact, already have all the tracks what feature across the other two. no matter, done now. if one were to say, via the mystery of maths, each of these works out at £2 each, then it is so that i believe no instance of spending £2 has been wasted.
a look at each of the 4 (four) what i picked up, with thanks to some super pricing off whoever it was selling them? sure. i am not sure how extensive or interesting the notes shall be, but also artwork presented in the greater good and glory of Commodore 64 mode.
first up then, and one that i suppose i should have been a trifle excited about, what with it being labelled a "limited edition" thing, but really the one i so very easily could have done without. allowing for the fact that anyone and everyone can and will have a view on a subject, for me it really is so that Earthling is, was, by some distance his worst album. not everything about it was sh!t, but it was all quite close to being so. in no way, shape or form is the song Seven Years In Tibet one of the positives of the whole experience, but go ahead and release it as a single he did.
to go positive, the artwork is indeed lovely. a very stylish cover, and one which has, what, some 25 years or so later, stood up well. oddly not all Bowie covers have been as stylish as we would have like to think; cf Never Let Me Down. on a slightly less positive, track one is an "edit" version of Seven Years In Tibet. by making the time to endure it shorter, yes, that is a plus.
on to tracks two and three, and oh dear. theoretically track two (2), which is also Seven Years In Tibet, should be the best of the lot, as it is even shorter than the edit version. also, it is a 'Mandarin' version, meaning you no longer even have to pretend you can understand whatever it is David is going on about in this song. but track 3 (three), man. oh no. yet another copy of Pallas Athena. i first heard this, i believe, on a Jump They Say single, and thought it was sh!t. then it turned up on the Black Tie White Noise album, and was only half as sh!t as it was a half the length version. finally a sh!t live version of it turned up on that Earthling In The City disc i acquired "free" with an expensive magazine. now i have another copy of it. lucky, lucky boy.
moving on to better, then, and what it says on the box is CD3 of a 3 (three) CD single set for Seven, with this one being a "special live" CD single. what one gets on this disc, ostensibly, then, is three songs off of the hours..... album, live. and not just any live. no, these are recordings from the Kit Kat Club. yes, so these are from the git that forms that mythical, impossible to get sixth (6th) volume of Brilliant Live Adventures, the one i am still waiting to see if Iman or whoever runs the Bowie Estate will get around to selling me.
whereas the three songs from that album - the single-wise titular Seven, the superb Something In The Air and the he's done/did worse The Pretty Things Are Going To Hell - are good, one would not rush to say these are either excellently recorded live performances, or overtly great performances at all. by no means bad, but now i am also even more less arsed about if the Bowie Estate gets around to selling me the comically short full set for a lot of money. a mercy, or blessing, or both.
but for the ultra, or uber, win on getting this single, i was most pleased to find the four (4) postcards, as they are described, which came with the release were indeed still with the single.
since, or considering, the "postcards" are CD booklet sized squares, i would not really fancy the chances of them surviving being posted via the Royal Mail system. or any postal system in the world. but, well, they are lovely things to have, as is hopefully reflected in the non-Commodore 64 mode picture (or image) above.
no reason to think anyone would be interested in this, but yes, i have indeed taken an image of the spines of these CD singles. and since i trimmed it down to be included here, well, here you go.
of course there would be no consistency in font, size, shape, positioning of text or anything like that. this is David and, for 75% of the above, Virgin Records. they just kind of all went "whatever", i suppose. at least on the spine his name is all proper, and not the numbers variations one finds on the covers of the hours.... originating singles.
really am now doubting my grasp of sanity with my daily (sometimes more) check-ins on the Bowie site to see if they will let me give them probably somewhere around £20 for the "full" concert from the Kit Kat Club on CD. from what i remember the three tracks on that Seven single are 25% of the gig, and that does not bode well for how the remaining 75% will sound, really. at all. still, yes, the moment they condescend to take my money, undoubtedly i shall foolishly hand it over.
we go on, then, to the one single of the lot which is "objectively" likely to be seen as the most sensible, or makes sense, purchase, and the one which i now happen to have 2 (two) copies of. by accident, for i had forgotten about the one bid i put in on the virtual car boot, but of course honoured it. oh, yeah, as the above image should make (reasonably) clear, this is one (of two, i believe, maybe 3) of the CD singles released of Thursday's Child, which i believe was the lead single for hours.....
the point of appeal for this one is that rarity for Bowie, actual, dedicated, only found here "b-sides". yes, very much plural, as there are two extra tracks. not what one would call the greatest of great songs, being as they are We All Go Through and No One Calls. but, interesting ones. each of these songs, in particular the first of them, sound very much like "transitional" ones. by that i mean they sound like David feeling around for a sound that slightly echoes the nightmare of Earthling he was (thankfully) leaving behind, yet is not quite fully formed as how hours..... sounds. this is particularly true lyrically. no lost or rare masterpieces here, but still, well worth having.
shall, or will, i go after the other CD single of Thursday's Child? this is unlikely. yes, some appeal as it has a further two (2) unavailable anywhere else songs, plus the video (which i think is on the Best of Bowie 2 DVD set, mind), but that seems rather pricey. a quick look says it's not available for south of £10 presently, so alas no.
in conclusion for the four (4) i obtained, then, a "special collector edition" CD single of Survive, with it featuring an all "special live" track list. three songs, no less, the titular one, Survive, plus other single Thursday's Child and other, other single Seven. all of which are really, really excellent.
and the very interesting, or really interesting, thing is that all three (3) are recorded in Paris, 1999. which means yes, they are very much the ones to be bought (if you were lucky) 21 or 22 years later, claiming to be "previously unreleased", on the 5th Brilliant Live Adventure release. unlike what i have heard thus far of the sixth, impossible to get Kit Kat, this one was actually a brilliant gig, no doubt very much wasted on French people, but still, a recording worth having. some aspects of it now twice over, due to this purchase.
for those who have read on this far, or have simply scrolled down, go on then, a minor treat, of sorts. this CD single included a 'special live video' on the "enhanced" CD of Survive as performed in Paris. getting a video to play on your PC in 1999 was amazing, for there was no "streaming" as such, and piracy was very much in its infancy, it taking over 30 minutes to download a song alone.
yes, at some stage i shall, inevitably, cease purchasing David Bowie recordings. but know that this will not be by reason of having them all, for to achieve such seems a mix of impossible and too expensive. at some point, though, either i shall have all that i can get, find others too expensive, get bored of it all, be in such a state that i cannot afford more discs or anything, or be deceased. until one of those pounts is reached, though, i go on, i continue.
quite highly unlikely, of course, that the present wave of "new" releases shall cease. as i have commented on a number of posts, we ebb ever closer to 50th anniversaries of Hunky Dory and one record called Ziggy Stardust. i, along with most other Bowie fans, expect both heart and bank account to get a right good f*****g over by the Bowie Estate for these two. please, please let the anniversaries not be marked by "new special ruined the record mixes by Tony Visconti". if they do that no doubt i will hesitate and then go right ahead and buy. what else must i do?
no, nothing else to add. which i am pretty sure is fine, for it feels like i have written a fair chunk here for releases that were pretty much intended to be a bit disposable, such is the way of pop.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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