Richard Hawley

Hello All,

Has anyone purchased or listened to the above mentioned CD that was recently released?

I have a bit of a soft spot for the early 'Anthony Newleyesq' recordings made by Bowie in the mid 1960's, so decided to buy a copy. CD 1 is the original album in both Stereo and Mono mixes. The remastering is superb - beautifully clear for such old recordings. CD2 contains outakes, alternative mixes and radio sessions from the same era and is full of surprises (for me anyway). Even the sleeve design is superbly done, and I feel that the creators have put a lot of effort and thought into this reissue.

Some of the tracks are really poignant too, such as 'There is a happy land' and 'When I'm five'.

Anyone else like this stuff? I am most certainly on my own at home - when I presented it to my Wife, she rolled her eyes up and said 'there's one born every day'. My Son kindly lied and said 'Cool', but then changed the subject.

Cheers, Steve.

Longpig is a Bowie fanatic and has all soughts of books and parphnalia on him!
(Me and Mrs LPD also like him but not to the same level!)

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Woke this morning and I got myself a beer ............

I love a lot of that old Bowie stuff too, I've got a CD somewhere of a lot of unreleased early stuff, mainly Demo's and not really one for non-fans of his but pretty fascinating stuff.

His 'London Boy' Cd is great, stuff like 'When I live my dream', 'She's got medals' and 'Uncle Arthur' I think are brilliant, although I am sure musical purists think they are a load of twee bollocks.

I even like the Laughing Gnome

I'm not alone then. I think it's a great album but Bowie has airbrushed it from his life.

It's very child like in parts,When I live my dream is beautiful, and come and buy my toys, sell me a coat, silly boy blue. Then the subject matter of the little bombardier which seems very relevant today.

I started singing there is a happy land to myself when I was doing a ramble last week in lakes in the snow thinking how no-one would ever write a song like that any more.

Less child like but equally excellent, in the heat of the morning. and the london boys is one of Bowie's best ever.

I think I will buy the CD myself.

It's ok but he got (a lot) better in my opinion.

Bowie didn't completely airbrush this album from his life, in his 1999/2000 tour (supporting "hours...") he played some old songs. I think The London boys was one of them.

He then started recording an album called "Toy" which was a combination of re-recorded 60's songs (some of the lesser known ones) and some new songs I think in a 60's style. The London boys and in the heat of the morning were a couple of the songs to feature on the album.

Unfortunately the album never came out (his record label at the time didn't own these songs), and (some of) the new songs became re-worked for Heathen and the old re-worked songs remained unreleased apart a couple on the Heathen singles. London Boys didn't ever get released, but if you like other EARLY bowie and want to hear the re-worked versions they're on the b-sides to the 3 "everyone says hi" singles, and are probably somewhere on youtube as a result

Songs are:

Safe, Wood Jackson, When The Boys Come Marching Home, Shadow Man, You've got a habit of leaving, Baby loves that way.

LP

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"Nobody matters and this is depressing me,
I know a strange one could change all of this..."

If I were to choose my Top 5 Bowie albums (which I haven't), this one would definitely be in there. Maybe at number 3...

Steve - I'm in complete agreement, this deluxe edition is a very well presented set with great sound quality throughout. And any excuse to listen to The London Boys, The Gospel According to Tony Day and Let Me Sleep Beside You is a welcome one.

I'll have to get working on that Top 5!

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Fake it 'til you make it.

It's a shame this 1967 outtake wasn't included:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JAvtM_K3_c&NR=1



On the subject of Toy, the whole thing has leaked. Apparantly a nifty copy was made from the producer's laptop! Some of it is on youtube:

Silly Boy Blue: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVguSIL5vYc

The London Boys: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN7JoDPiJlk

Let Me Sleep Beside You: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrPfY3yqWQA

And there are clips of most of the songs here:

http://www.illustrated-db-discography.nl/Toy.htm

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Fake it 'til you make it.