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2021 Bowie box

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Bowie’s website has announced the next set will be released in 2021 and will cover 1993 – 2001, but won’t include the Tin Machine albums.

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  1. Oooh… Outside on vinyl… but no Heathen (2003).

    I think making a box out of Heathen, Reality, The Next Day, and Blackstar is going to be tricky, there’s not much live and nothing left in the can for the latter.

  2. I’d be surprised – given your stated time period – if the Tin Machine stuff was part of that, given that the 2 LP’s came out in ’89 and ’91.

    However, ‘Outside’ and ‘Earthling’ should yield some good stuff.

  4. I’m so excited I might lose my bodily functions.

    Basically, they have skipped the Tin Machine era & there is loads of juicy stuff for this box. Buddha Of Suburbia is one of my favourites, Black Tie White Noise is overdue a re-evaluation, 1. Outside could have a box of its own, Earthling doesn’t deserve the kicking it got at the time, hours… is brilliant, plus there are a number of superb tours to document. Lots and lots of material to love.

    • hours… brilliant? Not heard that one before. More evidence of your sometimes contrary views?

      I enjoy Buddha but it has become somewhat overrated after initially being ignored. 1.Outside is a mess, Earthling patchy as is BTWN. Any new live stuff may be interesting though, but mostly they just put out stuff that has already been released, right?

      I guess Toy will be included.

      • hours.. is amongst his most personal of albums. He normally adopts a persona but on some albums he is genuinely revealing. There are few lyrics on Low but they really capture a man depressed with writer’s block. Young Americans with Who Can I Be Now and It’s Gonna Be Me instead of the songs recorded with John Lennon is similar. Hunky Dory sums up his state of mind at the time. Then hours… is the album where he takes a long hard look at himself, his life up to that point and his future prospects. It’s a very moving listen I find. In fact, those are the four albums of his I return to the most. They are the ones I feel most in touch with the human being within the Rock Superstar.

        • This may be true, but I find it bland and musically insipid, quite liked Thursday’s Child though. I think he was a bit lost at the time, will give it another go, did try again about a year ago with similar results to previously. Heathen is a good follow up.

          • He does sound vulnerable on it. he was no longer critically lauded. Outside & Earthling had been greeted with indifference or, in the case of the latter, horror of horrors, of following the trends rather than setting them. When hours… was released all the young whippersnapper critics panned it as ‘irrelevant’. I thought, these are children, they can’t appreciate a proper grown up album when they hear one.

            Go to slotbadger’s fantastic albumtoalbum podcast on it for all the detail. Wonderful.

            • Time’s been very kind indeed to Earthling. At the time it seemed like a slightly cringey attempt to be down with the kids. Now it makes perfect sense – it just roars out of the speakers.* And nice to hear Reeves at his shreddingest: no workshy fop he.

              (*Well, it does in my bloody house)

          • I’m with you, Dai! I’m one of those annoying purist people who think Bowie’s talent took a nosedive after Scary Monsters. Some of the ’80s stuff is magnificent of course, but in a scattershot way…. I can’t abide Tin Machine…. the single Jump They Say was his last masterpiece. Then his last album was an interesting experiment, and quite moving in parts, but not a patch on his ’70s work.

            I don’t know why I’m saying all this… there’s a perverse pleasure in being a contrarian I suppose!

            • Don’t agree fully, but I am of the opinion that after BTWN until his death, “hours…” was his weakest album (or maybe Earthling) . Whether he is trying to put across some intense personal feelings or not, it fails because the songs are not good enough, which is what it should be judged on.

                • Of course. I think I am a person who can react positively to all sorts of different types of songs. I just didn’t react very positively to these ones, I am not alone.

            • The two-disc edition of BTWN shows that the problem, if there was a problem, with the album was not Bowie but the sainted Nile Rodgers. The remixes showed how good the songs were. And Bowie’s decision to plaster his, er, “special” sax-playing all over the album is both weird and admirable.

                • Me too, sort of. Although having now read his post, not really. For many years I thought Absolute Beginners would be the last brilliant Bowie song on my ‘brilliant Bowie’ playlist. But then along came Where Are We Now?, which is as deserving of a place on said list as anything else thereupon.

                  • I can do you both a playlist of tracks from say “Tonight” onwards to match anything from the Imperial phase of his career. All you need are open ears

                    /patronising mode

                    • I have tried, but not found anything that has wowed me. Of course I know the more well known singles (Blue Jean, Day In Day Out, The Heart’s Filthy Lesson, Hallo Spaceboy, Little Wonder, I’m Afraid Of Americans, Thursday’s Child, Everyone Says Hi) but none of them have entered my head like some of the pre-Absolute Beginners songs. I’m Afraid Of Americans is the one I like most from that list, but I just find it ok, rather than stunningly brilliant, which is how I would describe so much of the “imperial phase”.

                      To give an idea of my tastes re Bowie, my “stunningly brilliant” playlist would be:

                      Memory Of A Free Festival
                      Letter To Hermione
                      The Man Who Sold The World (song)
                      Most of Hunky Dory
                      Most of Ziggy Stardust
                      Drive In Saturday
                      Sorrow
                      All of Changesonebowie
                      John I’m Only Dancing (Again)
                      Side one of Young Americans
                      All of Station To Station
                      Sound & Vision
                      Always Crashing In The Same Car
                      New Career In A New Town
                      Heroes (song)
                      Fantastic Voyage
                      Boys Keep Swinging
                      Up The Hill Backwards
                      Ashes To Ashes
                      Fashion
                      Modern Love
                      China Girl – sort of
                      Let’s Dance (song)
                      Cat People – sort of
                      This Is Not America – sort of
                      Absolute Beginners

                      then a big gap until Where Are We Now and most of Blackstar.

                    • That’s because you’re not a young man anymore, Gary. I bet no new music will enter your head in the same stunning fashion (SWIDT?) either. I don’t make up the rules, it’s just the way it is.

                      My playlist would be stunningly brilliant if you were 14, of course.

                    • Ah yes, well, now, you see, them would be my thoughts too possibly, except for I was blown away by Where Are We Now at the ripe old age of cough ahem cough. Many decades after I’d passed 14. Lazarus and Blackstar (the song) would make my Brilliant Bowie playlist too. I think you’ll agree this smashes your theory to smithereens, like a wrecking ball to a sparrow’s nest.
                      So, is there a tune between Absolute Beginners and Where Are We Now that I’m a dang fool for missing out on?

                    • They are all on my putative playlist. But my taste differs from yours obviously, because I think Where Are We Now is quite average apart from the end guitar solo. So I’m not going to bother.

  5. “Black Tie White Noise” was the last album from the era when singles came as both 12″ and CD singles in multiple editions with dozens of B-sides and useless remixes/edits/instrumental and dub versions. The non-album tracks from “Black Tie” would fill three discs…

  6. Given that it’s been extended to cover 2001 (when the last official studio album of this period was hours in 1999), does this suggest we may get an official release of Toy – like they did with The Gouster on one of the previous boxes ?

    • my understanding of The Gouster is that it was compiled using versions of the tracks already released, whereas the actual Gouster used different versions of the tracks in question. This would fit in with the general use of only previously released tracks on these boxes.

      • In the Who Can I Be Now? box, the versions of Somebody Up There Likes Me, Can You Hear Me? and Right are different, early mixes without strings and other production touches (Right being the most radically different). John, I’m Only Dancing (Again) was released four years after it was recorded and Who Can I Be Now? and It’s Gonna Be Me (without strings) were issued much, much later.

        Young Americans is a much better album and It’s Gonna Be Me with strings is a huge improvement. Still The Gouster highlights the magnificent vocals.

        • @Tiggerlion – I thought you had reviewed the “Who can I be Now?” box here on the site – but I can’t find it, so I must have dreamt it. Recommended purchase, or howling waste of money if you still have yer old LPs and CDs?

          • As ever, the music is faultless. However, this is where Tony Visconti gets stuck. The Gouster, the box’s main attraction, is a disappointment with a terrible tinny sound. The remaster of Young Americans isn’t a patch on the 2007 mix, which is really very beautiful. There are two David Lives filling four of the 12 CDs. A bit much, methinks. I prefer the second one. Live at Nausau is superb if you don’t have it already. The Harry Maslin mix of Stationtostation is a revelation, worth the entry fee by itself. You also get a remastered original mix of Stationtostation.

            It’s the biggest mix bag of the Bowie boxes so far with Young Americans/Gouster suffering but Stationtostation gaining considerably. Diamond Dogs is brilliant, the remaster rivalling Aladdin Sane and Pin Ups from the box before.

  7. They won’t include Toy, that might actually make me happy, and we can’t have that.

    I suspect extending the time to 2001 is obfuscating that there won’t be any extras beyond the six studio albums – maybe Maida Vale or Glasto.

    I expect disappointment.

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