nothing really, just a bit of general housekeeping. well, of sorts, look you see. as it all seems to be well and truly over now, i thought a look back at, rather than forward to, all of that Brilliant Live Adventures stuff from the Bowie Estate would be in order. quite a good deal of this shall be, i suspect, a bit of a whine and groan, since the releases did not really live up to the name (much), with the only two points of general success being making resellers very wealthy and actual fans quite cross.
shall i try and get the majority of moans and groans out the way first? yes? ok. whatever good intentions there were in releasing these (certainly not financial for the Bowie Estate) pretty much went out of the window immediately. for some reason them what control his affairs think there is an unlimited market for belt buckles, wallets and - i kid you not - bar stools what have "Bowie" written on them. inexplicably, they somehow determined that there was a very limited, finite market for his music. other than some really, really interesting devout Labyrinth fans, i would suggest the majority of Bowie fans were, are, drawn in by the music, and not by his name looking good on things. although yes, in fairness (or to be fair) it does.
faux pas after faux pas, then. these Brilliant Live Adventures were released randomly, and in limited numbers. all bar the third one (oh we shall get to that) were sold out long before the email alert came in saying it was available. you had to check daily to try and secure them, and i was successful with five of the six in this regard. many copies ended up, of course (welcome to the 21st century), in the hands of people trying to sell them for 3, 4 or more times the sale price. the mind boggles as what they might have thought would happen with this sort of thing, but it was the predictable which did.
making the above somewhat worse is the fact that, overall, exactly how "brilliant" these Brilliant Live Adventures turned out to be was highly debatable. indeed i am a Bowie fan, but no apologist, and do not go around saying all that he did was amazing. far from it. some more on this below.
briefly it seemed the site were going to make a form of amends. not so long ago they put out an apology saying that they were (ahem) aware some fans had been frustrated by the release system, leaving them with incomplete sets. we were, what, 4 to 6 months ago, asked to make an "expression of interest" in purchasing some copies. all information regarding that apology has, at the time of writing, disappeared, with them now more interested in flogging a box set called Brilliant Adventures, covering the studio recordings of the 90s (excluding Tin Machine, alas), and an at last official release of Toy, with a hideous cover, that has been widely bootlegged for somewhere close to twenty years.
undoubtedly a few more moans and groans about the whole mess of a release this turned out to be shall follow. but first, a couple of nice pictures of David, and then a look at each release. i shall try and give a decent rundown of them, but also link to my original thoughts or "review".
warning signs were very much there, then, in the first release, Ovrez Le Chien. this was a recording of Bowie on what was likely his first tour "proper" since dispensing with obligations to do all the usual greatest hits with Sound & Vision, the demise of Tin Machine and two very, very good solo albums. it was a tour of his quasi-jazz odyssey Outside, mind. as with all of these i am going to say hit the link provided for more details, but the biggest issue with this average sounding gig is the hideous sound quality of the disc. everything about it suggests it's a polished up bootleg rather than something recorded with any intention of ever releasing.
second came something much better in the form of No Trendy Rechauffe. quoting one of my all time favourite Bowie tunes in the title was an easy way to win me over. as was including the song quoted itself, Strangers When We Meet. quite close to approaching brilliant, in fairness, this release is. sound quality was miles (decibels?) better than the first, better set and a David clearly loving the love from his audience.
oh, how the wheels came off with the third release. ideas of this being all "previously unreleased" went away with the release of LiveAndWell, the only volume not to sell out on the day it was announced. also not sell out for two (2) weeks. the bulk of the songs here were on the 'fan club only' (and so widely bootlegged) CD of the same name in the 90s, with others featuring on discs what came free with magazines and that. it's not as appalling as i suspected, but ultimately it's dominated by Earthling.
fourth (4th) release was Look At The Moon!, a no less than 2 (two) CD set covering, more or less, all of his set off of the Phoenix Festival. again, at least this moved somewhere in the vicinity of being brilliant, for David at least sounded like he was having fun with the audience and loving the songs played. quite a bit of Earthling in the set, but balanced with songs that people may actually wish to hear.
if you are wondering about any of the Brilliant Live Adventures being actually brilliant, wonder no more. yes, volume 5 (five), Something In The Air, is amazing. superb performances of an outstanding selection of songs, probably wasted on a French audience but still. this is so good it did not need to be a volume in a "limited edition" thing; it should have been put out as a proper release. however you can get your hands on this one, be it streaming, bootleg, not overpriced disc on ebay or if the Bowie Estate do decide to re-release them all, this is the one to get.
a bit of an expectation existed that the sixth (and final) release might have been a nice CD & DVD of the infamous London Astoria 99 gig, what Bowie set up specifically to be filmed and recorded for released, but never did. instead, we got a half baked, this will do, not even bothered with a name Live At The Kit Kat, and not the proper one but one in New York. dire, really. Bowie sounds like he cannot get off the stage fast enough, all the songs here feature in much better performances on the fifth.
my copy of the last one came off of ebay, more or less (as in south of 50p more) the same as what the website sold a "limited" number of copies for. i think ebay sellers have clocked that nobody is going to pay a fortune for these "rare" releases which can be streamed for me. there is a finite number of people who are like me and still prefer to have music you can hold.
exactly how anyone, or someone (and it's vaguely interesting to imagine that Iman sits there and just has good ideas alone) can have full control of the Bowie Estate, access to his recordings and his fans and somehow manage to completely f*** both over and up. hey ho, what's done is done i suppose, but yes this does seem to have left a quite cross sense in some fans. let us hope that the Bowie Estate has taken away from this that there is a demand (well) in excess of 3,000 (three thousand) copies per release from here on out.
this i have been mentioning for a while, but in conclusion, i really do hope the Bowie Estate has its act rather more together. coming up are the "big ones", the 50th anniversaries of the likes of Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane. also Pin Ups. please don't make a mess of them.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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