Contest: Win David Bowie – Santa Monica ‘72 Double Vinyl!
August 26, 2008
About the Prize:
In 1972, David Bowie released the landmark album, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, and embarked on his first US tour. Bowie was at his creative peak and his performance in Southern California, which was recorded for a FM broadcast and bootlegged years before being released, is considered to be the best has ever been captured by Bowie (even more than the officially released David Live! and the Ziggy Stardust soundtrack). The recording was so legendary among fans that a David Bowie biographer went as far to say that possessing a copy was the test of a true Bowie fan.
After listening myself, I can attest that the songs truly come alive on this recording. Tracks like “Width of a Circle” and “Andy Warhol” that I paid little attention to before now stand out and songs I’ve heard hundreds of times like “Changes” and “Ziggy Stardust” are played with an increased intensity of a young, passionate group trying to earn their place in rock and roll history.
Reviews:
Rolling Stone Review (5 out of 5)
Pitchfork Review (7.7)
NME Review (8 out of 10)
Contest Rules:
So the million dollar question is how do you win the double vinyl set? To enter you have to reply to this post and tell me what your favorite David Bowie song is and why. I’ll choose what I think is the best, most convincing response and then contact you to get your mailing address. This means that you have to supply me an email address as well in order to be eligible to win. This is a fabulous prize, especially for the vinyl collectors and David Bowie fans out there who consider this the holy grail of David Bowie performances. Not to mention the fact (as you can see by checking amazon) that purchasing the album would set you back a pretty penny, you’re getting quite a good deal here. The contest will be open for two weeks which should give you plenty of time to write your entry.
MP3s:
MP3 David Bowie – Ziggy Stardust
MP3 David Bowie – Life on Mars
and just for fun:
MP3 Flight of the Conchords – Bowie
Click “Talk to Me” at the bottom of this post to reply.
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Tags: David Bowie, Vinyl
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I absolutly love it!
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August 26th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
My favorite Bowie song?
It is so hard to choose. So many of his songs have made an impact on me throughout my life. From listening and singing along to China Girl and Let’s Dance as a little girl to discovering Ziggy Stardust as a teenager and getting my mind blown to being annoyed by his cheesy songs like Dancing in the Streets with Mick. All the cheesy stuff is forgiven though because David Bowie has created some of the best songs ever and to this day they still sound fresh and beautiful. To frustratingly narrow the list down to my one favorite song it would probably be Ashes to Ashes. There is just something about this song that moves me everytime I hear it. But I could say that about almost all his songs. By the way I’m a 1972 baby and this record would mean even more to me. Thanks for reading this and wish me luck!
August 26th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Word on a Wing from Station to Station. Because it’s the best song on one of his least heralded, most under-appreciated albums and incarnations — the thin white duke. And because it establishes once and for all that David Bowie is the Frank Sinatra of rock and roll.
August 26th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Changes..
I lost my Virginity while that song played on my stereo !
August 26th, 2008 at 11:12 pm
My favorite David Bowie song is ‘Oh! You Pretty Things’ from Hunky Dory. Not necessarily a huge single like many of his other songs – but that is one of the reasons I love it. A song about Bowie waking up to face the day, it is brilliant, exciting, and catchy – but not overplayed. Plus, the song structure was creative and unusual when the album was originally released. I especially like how the drums and other instruments don’t kick in until about 1:30 into the song. I’d say this is the albums’ secret weapon. It [the song structure] may not seem that interesting now, but that is because others have copied it in the years since. Oh, and most importantly – its just good, fun music!
August 27th, 2008 at 12:50 am
Moonage Daydream
…because we all want Bowie to be a rock ‘n’ rollin’ bitch for us.
August 27th, 2008 at 10:37 am
I’m going to have to say “Let’s Dance” because not only is it the first David Bowie song I ever heard because it mad a huge impact on my concert going and work experiences. Starting with concerts: I was listening to the song when I was around 13 and my dad comes in and goes “I saw Bowie of the Serious Moonlight tour, and now my daughter is listening to Bowie.” Now having the knowledge my dad liked David Bowie I convinced him to take me to my first real concert, Franz Ferdinand, in NYC, where my dad saw David Bowie at the bar.
And at work I slave away by myself at a pharmacy type place and I’ve been there for a year and “Let’s Dance” is the song they’ve played the entire time I’ve been there, and it happens to be the only song I’d listen to outside work. It makes the 4 minutes and 10 seconds mere bliss.
August 27th, 2008 at 11:09 am
Changes, by a long shot.
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August 27th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
My favorite Bowie song is the one you have posted from Flight of the Conchords
August 27th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
Easy…China Girl. Simply put, the exquisite Drew Barrymore and the sumptuous wife of Ben Stiller, Christine Taylor sing the most heartfelt lyrics ever put down on paper by man. The words drip like sweet honey dew from their lips and resonate from their vocal cords like the strings of harps played by cherubim, all in the most epic movie since The Party starring the late great Peter Sellers…The Wedding Singer.
Julia makes an acute observation after China Girl whips the club into a feverish frenzy, noting the level of Bowie’s sexiness which Glenn counters by saying, “You think the ‘time to make the donuts’ guy is sexy. Both provide valid points and sound reasoning. But I digress…
Yes Glenn, we all know the words, so go sit outside in your DeLorean DMC-12 and daydream about warm Miami nights with Don Johnson. Sing your little hearts out Julia Guglia and Holly!
August 28th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
I’m not going to lie, I can’t even begin to tell you how much I love David Bowie. I couldn’t tell you my favorite song by him. But I will tell you that my boyfriend/fiancée and I are Bowiests. For real. it says so on my Facebook and everything…
you can even look it up! go to facebook and look up “Chelsea Metivier”. I’m from Goshen, because there will be more than one
August 31st, 2008 at 10:49 am
ziggy stardust cuz it sounds cool and stuff
September 1st, 2008 at 11:36 am
I am the owner of a beloved little Ashes to Ashes vinyl that smells faintly of spilled coffee and strongly of old paper. The item was given to me by the owner of my local music store, the business itself as much a novelty as the record. Twenty-eight years older that the date on the label, the actual vinyl is in wonderful condition compared to its tired encasing. The edges are fringed, the cover is stained and paper has wrinkled with moisture and time. Crackling through the speakers, my favorite David Bowie song rings as a striking contradiction to its weary sleeve. Ashes to Ashes glitters in the air, every note tingling and every beat falling into place as naturally as Bowie’s voice. Bowie contradicted himself a hundred times with a hundred different personas, but on this perfect piece of plastic all emotion and color and noise blend harmoniously. I’ve spun the record a hundred times and with every play the song is newer, fresher, closer. It’s light but deep, exciting but somber. I love Ashes to Ashes because it’s a perfect expression of the artist’s indescribable ability to artfully examine human emotion while creating an exuberantly beautiful melody.
That, and Moonage Daydream. Because squawking pink monkey birds are just so cool.
September 1st, 2008 at 9:52 pm
Starman is my favorite Bowie song, although its like choosing a fav child; you miss the subjective reasons that make the others special in their own way. but seriously starman has a sweet, lazy acoustic drawl that bursts into the unmistakable pre-chorus piano beat, and falls for full-out cock rock with gaudy string arrangement(classic!). The outro guitar progression and the hazy, anti-DARE lyrics make it instantly unforgettable. I think we can almost all agree, though, that letting our children “boogie” anywhere near Bowie or his one-piece might have been a regrettable mistake(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muMcWMKPEWQ).
September 2nd, 2008 at 11:27 am
heroes without a shadow of a doubt. i don’t care that its probably one of his more famous songs, it is so with good reason. good enough reason that my arm has two hands clasped together around the words ‘we can be heroes’. every different interpretation of that song has its own unique ability to make your hair stand on end, the star crossed lovers under the wall of shame is one of the best images ever created.
aside from that, its a bloody good tune!
September 2nd, 2008 at 1:44 pm
ZIGGY STARDUST – I grew up listening to my dad play Best of Bowie in the background everyday whilst he played Solitaire on the PC. Ziggy Stardust was the first song I knew the lyrics to, and it was shortly after I learned to speak! I loved going to parties when I was little, hear Ziggy Stardust come on and watch all the adults sing the first line or two but then mumble noises to the rest of the song, knowing that I could get up and sing it word for word. Every time I heard it I’d be as rowdy and excited as all those who’d had a merry few, but I wasn’t even half the legal drinking age! Also … how many songs do you know that; feature on guitar hero, have a film named after them (Ziggy Stardust – The Motion Picture), and have the BBC asking to be performed live for them twice in just a few months? Tis jamming good!
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:53 am
HEROES
gawd, i love that artsy-fartsy-brian-eno-berlin-techno-synth-experimentation-shit!!!!
Bowie took “recording in a studio” to the limit during that era. Love the way in “Heroes” they used that Gate effect in the mics. They set up 3 different mics in the recording hall (Hansa Studios-same place U2 recorded Achtung Baby!!), each one a greater distance from Bowie as he sang. The mics were triggered by the volume of Bowies singing. So in the early part of the song, it’s just the closest mic recording, but as the song gets more passionate, and he raised the volume of his voice (near shouting) the further away mics picked up the sound of his voice, and of course the sound is more distant… So, at that peak of that song, Heroes, I always think about the pure genius at work, 3 different mics recording his voice from 3 locations, and how they found a way to capture the exclamation in Bowie’s lyrics and singing.
“and we kissed, by the wall..” i mean jesus, how friggin romantic. theres a whole story just behind those words alone.
And the coda, “we can be heroes, just for one day…” perhaps the single most important lyric of our day, next to the beatles all you need is love. Am i right?
I’ll never forget Live Aid in 86, i skipped school all day, just to watch Bowie. He threw a band together, including the brilliant Thomas Dolby on keyboards, and ended his set with Heroes, which was so damn appropriate. It still brings tears to my eyes and gives me goosebumps…
Love that song!
September 6th, 2008 at 9:54 am
starman
i used to sneak out of my bed when i was about 4 and go out into the loungeroom where my dad was listening to records and he’d put some of those huge old headphones on me and let me listen for a while. david bowie was one of my favourite requests, and as a kid i loved the lyrics to starman
September 6th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
The Labyrinth soundtrack. Why? Because Bowie can dance, magic dance in his pants, magic pants!
All kidding aside, my favorite Bowie song is off the “Low” album…the record that originally turned me on to Bowie’s work. “Always Crashing The Same Car” has such an element of melancholy despite the uptempo drum riff and back instrumentation. It is a song with layers that has managed to be relevant to me through most events in my life. While I love all of David Bowie’s music (and LOL’ed at FoTC’s dream Bowie), “Always Crashing the Same Car” is the song I return to over and over again. It’s retro, cool, and a little bit odd…just like the Thin White Duke himself!
September 7th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
Golden Years. Gets me dancing everytime and singing along everytime, even with the caterwauling and whop whop whop. Even though the movie isn’t one of my favorites, I like the dance scene in A Knights Tale that features this song. Cute. Always good memories with this song, too.
September 7th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
I definately think that China Girl is my favorite. I was in elementary school in the 80’s and even being that young, I thought that song was so haunting and I could hear the pain in Bowie’s voice. I loved the video too. In retrospect, I think China Girl was way ahead of its time. It made me a fan for life and made me want to listen to everything Bowie did. It lead to me discovering his earlier 70’s stuff and I was hooked. Much later in life, as I was listening to China Girl one day (some 80’s flashback show on the radio), it dawned on me that the song was about heroin. I listened to it over and over again with fresh ears…lol. As a child, I just thought it was about a girl. When I realized it was about something much darker, I really felt the meaning of the song and how Bowie compared the love of a woman to drug addiction. The song made me feel something different all over again as an adult.
September 8th, 2008 at 9:08 am
The Station to Station title track is a work of genius – simultaneously signaling an abrupt transition in Bowie’s career exactly when it was needed, as well as introducing his last alter ego, the Thin White Duke. The track is epic. In 10 minutes 14, it touches on the high points of everything Bowie would cover in his next four records – light flourishes of krautrock, heavy drug paranoia, emotional detachment and a slight abrasiveness in the tone of the instruments. As the train pull in at the start of the track it’s as if we’re given the opportunity to board or get off. It’s a new journey from here on out.
September 8th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
I would say that Starman is my favorite Bowie song, ever since seeing him preform the song its left good feelings in my stomach anytime i hear it. he’s a great artist
September 8th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
I’m not sure if I should apologize for this or not… “Real” Bowie fans might shun me, but… My fav Bowie song is “As The World Falls Down” from Laybrinth!
As a kid, this was my favorite movie and my first real introduction to Bowie. I thought he was sooooo otherworldly handsome in that film and I had an undying crush for the Goblin King. Being that this song is the most romantic part of the film and the one that shows Bowie off the best, it has remained my fav through the years
September 16th, 2008 at 5:39 am
Quicksand – simple