David Bowie- "Be My Wife" Video (1977)

Classic Bowie from his "Thin White Duke" years. This song can be found on the first album of the Berlin Trilogy, Low:

David Bowie- Aylesbury Friars Club 1971 (2006) MP3 & FLAC

"But the key to the city is in the sun that pins the branches to the sky."

David Bowie's September 25th, 1971 appearance at the Friars Club in Aylesbury, England was, for all intents and purposes, the first live appearance of the band that would soon come to be known as The Spiders from Mars (for this show, they were joined by ex-Animal Tom Parker on piano). Bowie had spent the previous summer months appearing at the Glastonbury Fair (in June), completing the recording sessions that would eventually yield Hunky Dory, and traveling to the U.S. to do a publicity tour (he couldn't perform due to not having a union card), during which, while in New York, he entered the orbit of Andy Warhol and Lou Reed. At this point in time, Bowie was still in the process of building a fan base on both sides of the Atlantic despite his brush with success two years earlier with the "Space Oddity" single. However, it was no secret that he had nagging doubts about his ability to ever gain the kind of popularity he desired in the U.K. And legend has it that it was the 1971 Aylesbury gig that convinced him otherwise. As audience member Rick Pearce recalls, "Bowie arrived on stage to a collective "Oooh!" worthy of Frankie Howerd. I'm not sure what some people were expecting. Major Tom, or a drag act or something of both, but he certainly looked different. Wearing huge blue oxford bags, a white satin jacket and the red and black platforms seen on the reissue of the Space Oddity  album, he was light years away from your average beardy, shaggy, muso bloke." Drummer Woody Woodmansey has said that the band spent weeks rehearsing for the Aylesbury show, as it was their first as a group and something of a "coming out" party for Bowie. Interestingly, the show begins tentatively with Bowie and Mick Ronson doing an acoustic set, which includes a couple of Biff Rose covers, Jacques Brel's "Port of Amsterdam," and "Space Oddity," which Bowie self-deprecatingly prefaces by saying, "This is one of my own that we get over with as soon as possible." Eventually the entire band joins Bowie and Ronson on stage for a 10-song set that includes great renditions of "The Supermen," "Oh! You Pretty Things," and an early version of "Queen Bitch" with different lyrics. Aylesbury Friars Club 1971 offers a rare live glimpse of pre-Ziggy era Bowie, alternating between a modest hesitancy and an awareness that he is on the cusp of something great. While the audio source is certainly an audience recording, the sound is quite clear, if not slightly distant. Despite the sonic limitations, this show captures a key moment in Bowie's meteoric rise to fame in the early seventies, and as such, it is nearly as essential as the more famous Santa Monica Civic Auditorium show recorded the following year.

Mick Ronson- Slaughter on 10th Avenue (1974) MP3 & FLAC -For scurfie-

"There I stood like soap on heat, while blood ran thick past both my quaking feet,

into the Street."

Mick Ronson is easily one of the most underrated musicians of the rock era. A first rate arranger and a sublimely talented multi-instrumentalist whose fiery lead-guitar work for David Bowie's Ziggy-era band The Spiders from Mars proved to be a huge influence on both the Punk and Post-Punk movements of the late-seventies and early eighties, Ronson was a rock 'n' roll careerist, who, much like Bowie, had endured many failures before his star finally began to ascend. Before meeting up with Bowie in 1969 toward the end of the recording sessions for the Space Oddity album, Ronson had paid his dues knocking about in several bands in his native city of Hull, most notably, an R&B-influenced outfit called The Rats who had a few minor brushes with success in London before descending again and forever into obscurity. The story goes that when former Rats band-mate John Cambridge made the trek from London back to Hull to recruit his friend to join Bowie's new backing band, The Hype, Ronson was working as a Parks Department gardener. Understandably reluctant after his previous failures, Ronson was finally persuaded to agree and consummated his legendary musical partnership with Bowie only a few days later on the John Peel radio show. In hindsight, Ronson's influence on Bowie's glam-phase is incalculable, as he not only was the architect (along with Tony Visconti) of the darker, harder-edged sound Bowie adopted beginning with The Man Who Sold the World, but he also co-produced, with Bowie, many of the classic Ziggy-era albums. Following Bowie's sudden retirement of his Ziggy Stardust alter-ego in July, 1973, Ronson, at the behest of Bowie's manager, Tony DeFries, recorded his first solo album, which, if nothing else, clearly demonstrates the extent to which Ronson had a hand in Bowie's distinctive sound. Slaughter on 10th Avenue isn't the kind of solo effort you'd expect from a lead guitarist striking out on his own for the first time; rather, it attempts to present Ronson as a viable pop star in his own right, instead of merely giving him a forum to lay down impressive guitar solos. This is evident from the first song, a cover of Elvis Presley's "Love Me Tender," which starts out reverentially enough, but soon converts this gentle (or sappy depending on your taste) chestnut into an over-the-top Glam-Rock power ballad, complete with Ronson's histrionic Bowie-esque vocals and dramatic Ziggy-style guitar work. It really should be a mess, but the song is so lovingly executed and sumptuously recorded that it simply works, and works well. Things get even more interesting on the Bowie & Ronson penned "Growing Up and I'm Fine," which listeners will either love or hate depending on their tolerance for (or love of) Glam-Rock excess. A fey take-off on Springsteen, it's the kind of song Bowie excelled at on albums such as Aladdin Sane, and though Ronson does a credible job on vocals, it's impossible not to wonder what Bowie might have done with the song; nonetheless, it's a great, glittery three-minute ride. And then there is "Music Is Lethal," another Bowie-penned tune that starts out sounding a little like "The Port of Amsterdam," but soon develops into a full-fledged Jacques Brel meets Scott Walker meets Bowie Glam-opera. Overall, the production on Slaughter on 10th Avenue is consistently gorgeous and Ronno's guitar-work is spectacular (as usual), and while this is indeed a strange album that ultimately pales in comparison to the Bowie albums it, in many ways, tries to mimic, it still manages to feel like an essential document of a brief but inspired moment when pop hooks and high art could be taken in a single dose.

David Bowie- Space Oddity (1969) 40th Anniversary Edition (Bonus Disc) MP3 & FLAC

"I'm the cream of the great utopia dream, and you're the gleam in depths of your

banker's spleen."

David Bowie (aka David Jones) had been struggling for years to achieve some semblance of commercial and artistic success as a musician, a journey that included stints as a blues-singer for mod-rock groups such as The King Bees and The Mannish Boys, a campy dance-hall dandy with a taste for Anthony Newley, and a Dylan-esque folksinger. While all of these musical incarnations failed miserably, it was, strangely enough, Bowie's participation in an avante-garde mime troupe that put him on the pathway to the kind of success he so badly craved. In 1968, now a solo mime artist, Bowie opened a show for Marc Bolan's Tyrannosaurus Rex, and in the process, crossed paths with Bolan's producer Tony Visconti. This was, of course, a fortuitous meeting because Visconti would prove to be instrumental in shaping the careers of both Bolan and Bowie, as well as helping to foster the birth of the Glam-Rock movement that would make them both superstars by 1972. Bowie had recorded a self-titled debut album for Deram in 1967, but when it failed to chart, his days at the label were numbered, and he was unceremoniously dropped in early 1968. Despite this turn of events, he had written a good deal of new material by the time he entered the studio in 1969 on Mercury Records' dime to record his second album, now with Visconti as his producer. Among the new songs was "Space Oddity," which was obviously influenced by the Stanley Kubrick film, 2001: A Space Odyssey and the impending Apollo moon landing. Bowie had originally written and recorded the song for a promotional film called Love You Till Tuesday, which ended up staying in the can until 1984.

While the song was deemed worthy (or timely) enough to be chosen, previous to the Mercury recording sessions, as the lead-single for the new album, Visconti reportedly hated the song and had no interest in producing it, which is why his assistant, Gus Dudgeon, who would later become Elton John's producer, was pressed into service. The Dudgeon-produced version is a dark, lush, and dramatic epic that quickly transcended the initial impression by critics that it was a novelty song. Central to the song's success are the haunting "space" effects provided by a mellotron and a pocket electronic organ called a stylophone, Bowie's now-iconic vocal performance, and the distinctive prog-folk arrangement. Not only was "Space Oddity" Bowie's first hit (top five in the U.K.), but it also, in many ways, provided the blueprint for his Ziggy Stardust persona and his ongoing thematic preoccupation with social outcasts and aliens. Originally titled David Bowie in the U.K. (inviting confusion with his identically-titled Deram debut), Man of Words / Man of Music in the U.S. and renamed Space Oddity for its re-issue in 1972, Bowie's second album is an edgy dystopian artistic breakthrough, which, though suffering a bit from a lack of stylistic cohesion, offers several glimpses of the genius Bowie would demonstrate in his work throughout the seventies. The approach to recording the album was a bit haphazard, but proved to be a valuable learning experience for all involved; as Visconti recalls, "we had no idea what we were doing. It was all over the map. But we met Mick Ronson at the very end of making that album and allowed him to educate us." In addition to the title track, Space Oddity features several gems, including "Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed," a proto-Glam kiss-off (both stylistically and lyrically) to what Bowie took to be the "lock-step" mentality hiding beneath the surface of various late-sixties counter-cultural ideologies. At the outset, the song sounds as though it might be an idealistic ballad, as Bowie strums his acoustic 12-string and, with a heavily reverbed voice, sings to a pretty girl in a window. However, when the bass and drums join the mix, things turn dark, as the song transforms into a snarling indictment of class from the perspective of a social outcast. The album concludes with another epic, "Memory of a Free Festival," which, in effect, closes the door on the last traces of the hippie-influenced utopianism that had preoccupied much of Bowie's earlier work. While the song recounts, in beautifully idealized terms, his first appearance at Glastonbury Festival, it maintains a funereal tone until the cathartic fade/chorus of "The sun machine is coming down / And we're gonna have a party" brings the song to a powerfully ironic conclusion. Upon its release, Space Oddity garnered a number of ecstatic reviews, but, in the eyes of Mercury, the album failed to deliver on the promise of its lead single, as the tracks recorded with Visconti are far from accessible and quite gloomy in tone. As a result, they failed to properly promote the album, so Bowie's commercial fortunes once again took a tumble.  It was to be on the next album, The Man Who Sold the World, that Bowie, Visconti and Ronson would craft the sound that helped change the face of rock music in the seventies.

David Bowie- The Man Who Sold the World (1970) Ryko Au20 Edition (Gold Disc) MP3 & FLAC

"'Cause I'd rather stay here with all the madmen than perish with the sad men
roaming free."

Although David Bowie's star had finally begun to ascend by 1970 thanks to the breakthrough success of his "Space Oddity" single the year before, it was not until the recording of his third album, The Man Who Sold the World, that he began to fully explore the rawer, darker, highly theatrical and sexually amorphous approach (both musically and thematically) that eventually made him (and his Ziggy Stardust persona) an iconic figure of the 1970s. In doing so, Bowie temporarily left behind the uniquely dystopian folk that characterized his previous album, Man of Words / Man of Music (later re-named Space Oddity) by relying heavily on two key collaborators who would help create the shape of things to come. The first, Tony Visconti, whose production credits at the time included Marc Bolan's Tyrannosaurus Rex and an early incarnation of Badfinger called The Iveys, had been playing bass in Bowie's touring band The Hype. For the new album, Bowie tabbed Visconti for production duties in addition to playing bass, and in doing so, initiated a creative partnership that would continue off and on for decades. The other, and perhaps even more significant, collaborator was guitarist Mick Ronson, who had also been recruited to play in The Hype, after having previously spent time in a Hull band called The Rats. According to Visconti, it was Ronson who provided the impetus for Bowie's first steps into the Glam-Rock arena: " We were scratching our heads, thinking, 'How do we get a big "rock" sound for David?' David felt very awkward up to that point. He hadn't worked with serious rock musicians. Mick was the first person we met who had dedicated his life to being a 'rock' guitarist." During the recording sessions for The Man Who Sold the World, Bowie, newly married, was preoccupied with family, which left the lion's share of the music arranging to Visconti and Ronson. As the infamous album cover suggests, Bowie's new direction was meant to be fearlessly provocative and musically incendiary, and by all accounts, Visconti and Ronson accomplished this goal. The overall sound of the album is muddy, fuzzy, grungy, off-kilter, and, in places, even approaches the proto-metal of bands such as Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. On the epic opener, "The Width of a Circle," things start off with some ominous guitar feedback quickly dissolving into a languorously seductive guitar melody provided by Ronson that soon kicks into second gear when the rhythm section joins in. Bowie's high-pitched Cockney vocals, displaying a new-found confidence and a defiant sense of self-conscious camp, cut through the mix like a razor-blade, and in doing so, bring to life the song's dark, apocalyptic imagery. One of the less heralded gems on the album is the T. Rex tribute "Black Country Rock," which contains some the best guitar riffing- Glam or otherwise- you're likely to hear, but unlike some of Ronson's better-known contemporaries, he understood the beauty of subtlety. The Man Who Sold the World concludes with "The Supermen," whose Nietzschean themes and strange background choral effects lend the song an eerie darkness, which sets the stage for one of Bowie's most exaggerated and effective performances on the album. This is probably Bowie's most under-appreciated album, especially since it plays such a foundational role in his discography. As Visconti has stated, "The Man Who Sold the World became the blueprint for the rest of David's career. Virtually everything he's done since, you can trace back to something on that album."

David Bowie- "Moonage Daydream" (1973) Live, Hammersmith Odeon, July 3

This one's for you Mick Ronson: the most underrated guitar-god of the rock-era. TO BE PLAYED AT MAXIMUM VOLUME!

David Bowie- Interview: Russell Harty Plus Pop (1973)

Poor David being a perfect gentleman with an interviewer who appears to have a stick up his arse.

Brian Eno Series, #4: David Bowie- Low (1977) Ryko Au20 Edition (Gold Disc) MP3 & FLAC

"Sometimes you get so lonely; sometimes you get nowhere. I've lived all over the world; I've left every place."

Low, the first installment of Bowie's so-called "Berlin Trilogy," marks the culmination of his metamorphosis from polygendered Glam-Rock icon to cool maestro of avant-pop, and when listening to this album, it's hard to believe that it is only three years removed from the Glam-meets-Cabaret of Aladdin Sane. Meanwhile, Brian Eno was undergoing his own metamorphosis, recording the last of his "pop" albums, the transitional Before and After Science, while collaborating with Bowie on these sessions in Berlin. Not unlike Eno's album, Low is comprised of two distinct halves: jagged guitar-pop married to Kraftwerk-inspired synthetics and dark, atmospheric Eno-esque ambient electronic pieces. It is evident throughout the album that Eno brings out the best in Bowie, allowing him to indulge in the kind of experimentalism that his Ziggy persona made impossible, and in the process, they come up with the blueprint for the dreams of a thousand Post-Punk bands to come.