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.
This two-fer from BMG Canada features a pair of out of print Guess Who LPs: Wheatfield Soul and Artificial Paradise, both originally issued on RCA Victor in 1968 and 1973 respectively…
Deep Purple had kicked off the '70s with a new lineup and a string of brilliant albums that quickly established them (along with fellow British giants Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath) as a major force in the popularization of hard rock and heavy metal. All the while, their reputation as one of the decade's fiercest live units complemented this body of work and earned them almost instant legendary status…
Produced with loving care by Claude Nobs, founder of the Montreux Jazz Festival, with no edits or overdubs, this document of Miles Davis's Montreux performances shows through never-before-released material how Miles and company transformed his music live, with their fire, invention, and interplay. The list of sidemen on these dates is a who's who of today's superstars, including saxophonist Dave Liebman, guitarists John Scofield and Robben Ford, keyboardists Adam Holzman and Kei Akagi, bassist Michael Henderson, and percussionist Mtume. Most of the music on these discs features versions of Davis's fusion "hits." The funky and R&B-ish ditty "Ife" and the bouncy "Calypso Frelimo" are rendered with more gusto than their studio versions, as are the in-the-pocket, mid-'80s tunes "Star People" and "New Blues." A package this big has more than a few surprises, however. Chaka Khan lends her powerful pipes to Davis's unique cover of the Michael Jackson sleeper, "Human Nature," and "Al Jarreau" is an upbeat (though too short) tribute to the great vocalise master.