Bowie Cracked Actor

David Bowie - David Live (1974) [2CD] {2005 EMI Remaster}
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© 2005 EMI / Jones/Tintoretto | 7243 874307 2 3
Rock / Pop / Experimental Rock

When David Bowie recorded what became DAVID LIVE at Philadelphia's Tower Theatre in July 1974, he had fully made the leap from Ziggy Stardust and landed feet-first into the shoes of the Thin White Duke. Despite announcing his retirement from live performance the year before, Bowie seemed no worse for wear fronting a ten-piece directed by future LETHAL WEAPON composer Michael Kamen and featuring new guitarist Earl Slick and horn player David Sanborn. This 2-CD set finds the chameleonic performer mixing in Ziggy-era classics such as "Rock 'N' Roll Suicide" with material from DIAMOND DOGS ("Rebel Rebel," "1984"), ALADDIN SANE ("Cracked Actor") and HUNKY DORY ("Changes"). The fullness of the horn section and the style of his back-up band give this set a soulful tilt powered by Slick's ballsy playing. This, along with a cover of the Stax nugget "Knock On Wood," pointed at Bowie's immersion in a Philly soul direction that emerged full-fledged on YOUNG AMERICANS.

Ziggy Stardust wrote the blueprint for David Bowie's hard-rocking glam, and Aladdin Sane essentially follows the pattern, for both better and worse. A lighter affair than Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane is actually a stranger album than its predecessor, buoyed by bizarre lounge-jazz flourishes from pianist Mick Garson and a handful of winding, vaguely experimental songs.

Ziggy Stardust wrote the blueprint for David Bowie's hard-rocking glam, and Aladdin Sane essentially follows the pattern, for both better and worse. A lighter affair than Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane is actually a stranger album than its predecessor, buoyed by bizarre lounge-jazz flourishes from pianist Mick Garson and a handful of winding, vaguely experimental songs…

A sequel to the 2015 box Five Years 1969-1973, 2016's Who Can I Be Now? (1974-1976) covers just three years but this stretch in the mid-'70s happens to be the peak of David Bowie's superstardom. That much can be gleaned from the number of albums within the set: three studio albums – Diamond Dogs, Young Americans, Station to Station, each released in a subsequent year – along with the double live album David Live from 1974…

Ziggy Stardust wrote the blueprint for David Bowie's hard-rocking glam, and Aladdin Sane essentially follows the pattern, for both better and worse. A lighter affair than Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane is actually a stranger album than its predecessor, buoyed by bizarre lounge-jazz flourishes from pianist Mick Garson and a handful of winding, vaguely experimental songs. Bowie abandons his futuristic obsessions to concentrate on the detached cool of New York and London hipsters, as on the compressed rockers "Watch That Man," "Cracked Actor," and "The Jean Genie." Bowie follows the hard stuff with the jazzy, dissonant sprawls of "Lady Grinning Soul," "Aladdin Sane," and "Time," all of which manage to be both campy and avant-garde simultaneously, while the sweepingly cinematic "Drive-In Saturday" is a soaring fusion of sci-fi doo wop and melodramatic teenage glam.

A sequel to the 2015 box Five Years 1969-1973, 2016's Who Can I Be Now? (1974-1976) covers just three years but this stretch in the mid-'70s happens to be the peak of David Bowie's superstardom. That much can be gleaned from the number of albums within the set: three studio albums – Diamond Dogs, Young Americans, Station to Station, each released in a subsequent year – along with the double live album David Live from 1974…

A sequel to the 2015 box Five Years 1969-1973, 2016's Who Can I Be Now? (1974-1976) covers just three years but this stretch in the mid-'70s happens to be the peak of David Bowie's superstardom. That much can be gleaned from the number of albums within the set: three studio albums - Diamond Dogs, Young Americans, Station to Station, each released in a subsequent year - along with the double live album David Live from 1974. Four albums in three years is plenty but to that core canon Who Can I Be Now? adds five additional alternate albums, each with varying degrees of rarities. There are full latter-day remixes of David Live and Station to Station - the former from 2005, the latter from 2010 - the concert album Live Nassau Coliseum '76, which was added to the super deluxe 2010 reissue of Station to Station, a bonus disc of single edits and stray songs entitled Re:Call, plus an early version of Young Americans called The Gouster.