New David Bowie Live Album and Rare EP Slated for Record Store Day
It wouldn't be a Record Store Day without at least one release from David Bowie. Today (March 9), it was revealed that April 22 will see two collections of rare or unreleased music from him, a 1974 concert and an EP from 1971.
The news was announced on his website, saying that Cracked Actor (Live in Los Angeles '74) was recorded at the Universal Amphitheatre during his tour in support of Diamond Dogs. The show took place after Bowie had fired the Spiders From Mars (and therefore different from David Live) and replaced them with many of the studio musicians with whom he had, that summer, begun work on Young Americans, including guitarists Earl Slick and Carlos Alomar, saxophonist/flutist David Sanborn and background singer Luther Vandross.
Some of the music from that date wound up in Alan Yentob's BBC documentary, Cracked Actor. Bowie's longtime producer Tony Visconti took the original multi-track tapes and mixed them last fall. They're packaged across three LPs, with the sixth side featuring an etching of the Bowie logo from that period, and combined with new artwork and rare photographs from the concert.
Bowpromo contains alternate mixes of seven songs recorded during the sessions for Hunky Dory, five of which wound up on the album. It was a split EP, with the second half containing five tracks by Dana Gillespie, who was also signed to the Gem Group, a company formed by Bowie's manager Tony Defries. He pressed only 500 copies and distributed them to labels in the hopes of securing a deal for one of them. On this, the first commercial release (although this version of "Eight Line Poem" was found on one of Bowie's Record Store Day exclusives in 2015), Gillespie's songs have been removed and the package adds five Bowie prints and new liner notes.
David Bowie, 'Cracked Actor (Live in Los Angeles '74)' Tracklisting
Side 1
"Introduction"
"1984"
"Rebel Rebel"
"Moonage Daydream"
"Sweet Thing / Candidate / Sweet Thing"
Side 2
"Changes"
"Suffragette City"
"Aladdin Sane"
"All the Young Dudes"
"Cracked Actor"
Side 3
"Rock ‘n’ Roll With Me"
"Knock on Wood"
"It’s Gonna Be Me"
"Space Oddity"
Side 4
"Diamond Dogs"
"Big Brother"
"Time"
Side 5
"The Jean Genie"
"Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide"
"John, I’m Only Dancing (Again)"
Side 6
David Bowie logo etching
David Bowie, 'Bowpromo' Track Listing
"Oh! You Pretty Things"
"Eight Line Poem"
"Kooks"
"It Ain’t Easy"
"Queen Bitch"
"Quicksand"
"Bombers / Andy Warhol Intro"
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