R.I.P. David Bowie, music’s greatest innovator has died at age of 69.
The first in a series of career-spanning comprehensive box sets, Five Years 1969-1973 chronicles the beginning of David Bowie's legend by boxing all of his officially released music during those early years. This amounts to six studio albums – 1969's David Bowie (aka Space Oddity); 1970's The Man Who Sold the World; 1971's Hunky Dory; 1972's The Rise & Fall of Ziggy Stardust & the Spiders from Mars; Aladdin Sane, and Pin Ups (both from 1973); a pair of live albums (Ziggy Stardust: The Motion Picture Soundtrack and Live in Santa Monica '72, both released long after these five years) and a two-CD collection of non-LP tracks called Re:Call, plus Ken Scott's 2003 mix of Rise & Fall of Ziggy Stardust. That list suggests how "officially released" is a guideline that's easily bent.
Originally released as a home video in 2004, David Bowie's A Reality Tour saw a two-CD audio release slated for January 2010, with three previously unreleased bonus tracks – "Fall Dogs Bombs the Moon," "Breaking Glass," "China Girl" – adding value for those hardcore fans who already own this concert as a DVD. In either the video or audio incarnation, this show, from November 2003 in Dublin, Ireland, is an entertaining and open-hearted set, finding Bowie running through a generous selection of oldies – both hits and album tracks, including songs written by Bowie, like "All the Young Dudes" and "Sister Midnight" – and new songs that hold up well next to the classics.
The Sound+Vision 4 cd boxset covers DAVID BOWIE s career from 1969 to 1994 starting with the acoustic demo version of his first hit, Space Oddity to the return to his Bromley roots for the soundtrack to Hanif Kureishi s The Buddha Of Suburbia which is often cited as the most underrated piece in the Bowie canon. Sound+Vision is a collection spanning four decades, covering the 21 albums from Space Oddity through to The Buddha Of Suburbia. It s a rich survey of David Bowie's many musical lives offering a generous helping of hits, an intriguing dip into archives, classic album tracks and long lost B-sides, explosive live recordings, soundtrack recordings and remixes.
The set list includes tracks spanning Bowie's 30 plus years in the music business, from The Man Who Sold the World (1970) all the way to Reality (2003), along with collaborations such as "Sister Midnight" (with Iggy Pop) and "Under Pressure" (with Queen). There is a bit more focus, however, on tracks from the albums released since the Earthling World Tour in 1997, Heathen (2002), and Reality, whose tracks constitute 10 of the 30 songs performed.
Borrowing heavily from Marc Bolan's glam rock and the future shock of A Clockwork Orange, David Bowie reached back to the heavy rock of The Man Who Sold the World for The Rise & Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Ziggy Stardust is a glitzy array of riffs, hooks, melodrama, and style and the logical culmination of glam.–Allmusic.