Ain't it grand time to shill the rubes, David !?

And the David Bowie plastic soul extravaganza continues here at One Buck Records, as here is part two of the David Bowie Young Americans project. And like said in the piece on Young Americans - The Complete Edition, today's One Buck Record is an alternate version of Young Americans, one which does include two of the most famous outtakes from the period: "The Gouster" - which gave Bowie's first configuration of the album its name and a famed outtake that for years was simply a song title with no assurance that the rumored title and song actually existed. This is even more true of "Shilling The Rubes", which for years was only known as a rumored title of the album, but no leaked track that would prove its existence. And yet, "Shilling The Rubes" does indeed exist and is giving this alternate album its title. It is, however, much less polished than many of its brethren from the Sigma sessions, and in order to make it a satisfying track, some surgery had to be performed. "Shilling The Rubes" is clearly a demo that has a guide vocal by the man himself, and at one point he hasn't finished the lyrics yet, and is simply doo-doo-dooing over the melody. That section has been removed, as has been the studio chatter during the last seconds of the music. Now, "Shilling The Rubes" sounds more than ever like a finished song, warts and all. However, the songwriting and production style of "The Gouster" and "Shilling The Rubes" is quite different from the final Young Americans album, so they wouldn't have been a good fit for The Complete Edition.

The third track not on Young Americans - The Complete Edition is Bowie's cover of Springsteen's "It's Hard To Be A Saint In The City". While the other two were left for the above reasons, I didn't include "Saint" because there are - even among Bowie experts - some discussions about its exact provinence. Bowie clearly worked on a version of the song at Sigma, but the two releases it was on list it as a Station To Station outtake, so possibly another version was cut at Cherokee studios, but - as Nicholas Pegg argues - the finished track has a number of Young Americans hallmarks, so most likely the available version is indeed from Sigma studios with possible later overdubs for Station To Station before being re-abandoned again. 

As for the rest of the songs from the album, all of them are alternative versions or mixes. "Young Americans" is presented by what is called The 'Gouster version', though the differences are relatively minimal. The 'Gouster version' of "Right" is quite different though, with some more pronounced guitar work, less emphasis on the sax and the backing choir and a different Bowie vocal in which he doesn't try as hard to be a seductive soul singer. 

"Across The Universe" is presented in a stripped-down mix that takes off most of the instruments to focus on Bowie's admittedly stellar vocals (and Lennon's backing vocals). "I hammered the hell out of it" said the man without a trace of false modesty. "Someone Up There Likes Me" is an unfinished mix that sounds a little sprightlier than the finished version, though I edited down the endless vamp section at the end. Interesting for a different reason is the alternative versions of "Win", which was essentially due to an accident: When prepping the first CD edition of Young Americans, the original 1974 mixes were accidentally swapped out for these 'alternative echo-heavy mixes'. The Ryko Disc remaster from 1991 rectified that error and issued the album in its original form.

The "Young Americans (Reprise)" track was created from an early version of the song with an entirely different, slower but more funk-inspired rhythm. Problem being: That track exists (in public) only as a one-minute snippet, so I did some editing with a bit from the original to turn it into its final form...

So, out of all these disparate ingredients I tried to create a new, fresh look at Young Americans. I think I succeeded, but then again, maybe it is I who is just shilling the rubes...