This is the latest re-issue of David Bowies much derided debut album, that Deram and Decca have been re-issuing and re-packaging on a regular basis for the last 54 of the 58 years since the albums original release in 1966. Which is why many completist fans in the Bowie Collectors groups moaned and complained about having to buy it again, so if you already own the album and most, if not all the bonus material on The World Of David Bowie, Images, London Boy, The Deram Anthology etc, you don't need to get this re-issue.
However if you have not bothered with it before, believing the traditional thought that it was all rubbish, then maybe buy it and come to it with open ears, to hear a master finding his feet and populating his debut album with a cast of the characters he came across, growing up in war damaged Britain, PTSD is prevalent, gender dysphoria and all sorts of outre sexual liaisons appear in the what would now be called a Chamber pop backing, he is not Rock & Roll.
The album also has very good, updated liner notes by long time Bowie authority Nicholas Pegg and some great early photos. The production team on the album and bonus songs include Mike Vernon, Gus Dudgeon, Dek Fearnley, Tony Visconti and Alan Price. The Musicians include among others Big Jim Sullivan, Herbie Flowers, Dave Clague, Alan White, Alan Price, Tat Meager, Hutch Hutchinson, Hermoine Farthingale, Tony Visconti, John McLaughlin and John Renbourn.
The album opens with the first vignette Uncle Arthur, the first of the obviously war damaged characters David encounters, over a music hall backing for an Uncle who lives with his mother and acts a bit strange, before finding love with what could easily be an underage girl, before he runs back to mummy when the girl doesn't live up to expectations always tied to his mums apron strings.
Sell Me A Coat is Chamber pop for a chap in need of a coat to stop him freezing, before he describes the coat he wants, but all sorts of implications are threaded through.
Rubber Band has a brass band feel for the tale of an out of tune band that perform on the local bandstand, the locals sit in the park eating scones and drinking tea, it feels nostalgic for earlier times, while David gets bitter that the leader of said band stole his sweetheart while he was away fighting in the first world war.
Love You Till Tuesday is almost a stalker love story, of a guy who lusts after a woman that he stalks from the branches of a tree with his binoculars, he meets you on a Sunday and has an affair that last 72 hours before he moves on, the music is sweet chamber pop disguising the dastardly behaviour the narrator is involved in.
There Is A Happy Land is full of memories of childhood full of the promise of better times, even if his childhood friends get into all sorts of scrapes, does he want to stay a perpetual child, well probably, especially if all the adults you meet in childhood are war damaged in one way or another.
We Are Hungry Men has pitch shifted speeded up vocals for this dystopian vison of a world becoming over populated, with his own solutions David is your messiah, how to end world hunger? The organ goes out of time, A German officer rants and David tells us he wants to legalize mass abortion! This song is wonderfully disturbing, the mania of those fascists that seek to run the world, a subject David returned to regularly, this would have fit perfectly onto The Man Who Sold The World.
When I Live My Dream goes straight back to childhood fairy tales as David dreams of a never-ending love.
Little Bombardier is rather darker over some fairground organ we find out how he deals with life, once he's returned to normal life, drinking his life away, sitting in the cinema he becomes friends with a couple of kids, the trombone adds emphasis before the strings sweep through, David explains why the police have called to ask why he's playing with the kids, what might he have done with them, before he disappears into exile run out of town.
Silly Boy Blue just wants to be able to fly outside his body, David would revisit the backing chorus used on this song on We Are The Dead on Diamond Dogs, while his visions of Tibet and re-incarnation float into 60's idealism without sounding at all psychedelic.
Come And Buy My Toys has a folk strummed acoustic guitar, David gives his sales pitch for his toy stall, this almost has the feel of something from a musical, he observes all the other stalls at the market square.
Join The Gang has speed sitar music hall piano, acid fried characters who are in the gang of madmen and women, come be a freak like David and his mates, complaining about drinks prices a perennial we all recognise, they are all picking up joints, sound effects go reasonably weird to close the song.
She's Got Medals is a fantastic song about gender dysphoria, about a woman who managed to join the army in World War 2, transforming from Mary to Tommy so she could go and fight, coming back decorated she gets tired of looking like a bloke and picking up Girls, but the song twists to tell us when it all goes wrong in the war, she transforms back into women's clothes escaping to live a normal life again.
Maids Of Bond Street would have been a term to describe the working girls of Mayfair, anything to talk the money out of the men's pockets, no matter how many friends she seems to have, she can never hide her inner loneliness and love for a boy who didn't have the money she thought she needed. David may have been lusting after some of the local girls when he was living with Ken Pitt in nearby Manchester Square.
The album closes with the dark disturbing Please Mr Gravedigger about an old Graveyard that was bombed in the war, with David sneezing, the rain comes down, thunder and lightning accompany the details of what he sees in the desolate graveyard, he stands by the grave of a 10 year old girl whose demise the narrator caused, this is as chilling a closing song as any album could have.
The bonus disc opens with Rubber Band the single mono mix that seems to have the trombone much more up front, the snare drum also seems to have been mixed more upfront while the normal bitter tale unfolds.
London Boys was the B-side that should have been the a-side and David's first hit, a brilliant song about what it was like to come up to London as a teen trying to make it in Soho, but suddenly you are struggling to get by, then you get hooked on pills a wasted 17 year old getting consumed by the life, becoming a face as Alan Prices organ leads you further into the malaise.
The Laughing Gnome was the big cash in hit in 1973 that was used as a millstone to hang around David's neck, he makes a fun song for the kids, bags of effects and lyrics that hint at magic Mushrooms and jazz fags, all the wisecracks go on, it may stick out as a total oddity in David's career, but I can still easily sing along with this very good novelty hit.
The B-side of The Laughing Gnome is the darker pleasure of The Gospel According To Tony Day that takes us on a trip through a cast of David's friends who will either steal your girlfriend, cadge drinks from you, heed warnings on T-shirts, Or will be yours if you pay the rent.
The single version of Love You Till Tuesday ups the strings and the drama of the stalkers tale. On the flip Did You Ever Have A Dream is full of jangle as he takes flight in his dreams once more going all over the world hanging in New York while sleeping in Penge, he mentions Astral Flight which would have been all the rage at the time.
The dream sequence continues with When I Live My Dream the mono single version that again seems to up the string section, this childhood dream speculates on what would happen if his dream becomes reality as David tries out his best Burt Bacharach arrangements.
Let Me Sleep Beside You is a lust song for someone you hope will be your main squeeze, David tries on his seduction routine on a girl who has just become a woman, he even asks her to wear her mother's dresses before making clear that he seeks to aid her in losing her virginity, this can be read as both a nice love song and a creepy cherry popping manifesto.
Karma Man is full of 60's idealism cool strings as David narrates the tale of the hippy in robes who has slowed his life down to really get in touch with his karma and inner self complete with a tattoo of the wheel of life.
In The Heat Of The Morning has David claiming no man has loved you like he has, before revealing he hasn't actually made love to you yet, the cheeky lover man he is, Making sure you know how he's going to spoil you in the most wonderfully chamber pop way he can.
London Bye Ta Ta was a legendary bootleg single and shows up on loads of odds and ends comps, it's been re-issued before but good to hear a high clear mix with the musical experiments using bicycle bells and other gadgets, the strings help him lose his love, feeling the need to flee london for a while to re-build his strength.
When I'm Five is the first tune from the film Love You Till Tuesday this is an odd song, about dreaming of becoming a five year old and doing grown up things like chewing tobacco, this version has been properly mastered and sounds so much better than the hiss covered versions I spent years listening too on bootlegs, he catches a butterfly to eat and not be sick, he also dreams of marrying his mum a truly strange song.
Ching A-Ling is a music hall folk style song some of which got re-purposed later, Hermoine Farthingale duets with David on this vastly cleaned up version, sounding far less twee and more Mungo Jerry than it does with heaps of hiss.
The next two songs are only on the cd version. The Laughing Gnome first take in Mono is the first thing on this double set I don't already own, the backing vocal is higher in the mix, musically almost identical, is it essential, probably not, but nice to hear a slightly different version of the songs genesis, in some ways the more upfront louder gnome voice is better, David cracks up mid joke, it's clear they are having a lot of fun.
The mono remix of Sell Me A Coat has far more prominent backing vocals and the string section pushed back in the mix as David continues to dream of that perfect coat to help him seduce that girl.
The Bonus disc closes with the original version of Space Oddity from the Love You Till Tuesday Film, that was first issued in 1984 on VHS and then the first cd version I've got of it was on London Boy, the German Compilation of the Deram material that came out in 1995. It sounds more muffled than the rest of the album, but with what became David's first big hit still sounding all there, with the way the spectral organ part opens out, all it really lacked was a fuller production, it does in many ways sound like a leap forwards.
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