And of course, Mr. David Jones is not the one to deny such an opportunity. And why would he? (Also, he's dead and I don't know him personally, but that's beside the point). So, part three of my "What I did during my summer vacation 2023" series, which was pretty much all Bowie all the time. The first two Bowie mixtapes you can find here and here, and - oh boy - is it really more than nine months since the last one? There's one more after today's edition, and the last part of my Bowie-related summer holiday mixing sessions was the never esisting sequel to art pop extravaganza 1. Outside, dashingly titled 2. Downtown. But yeah, enough with the chit chat, off to business.
At the heart of Where Are We Now? was the idea to marry Buddha of Suburbia's outstanding (almost) instrumental "The Mysteries" to his vocals from late period masterpiece "Where Are We Now". From there I expanded to the usual 30 minutes, and as before I prioritized numbers from the Moonage Daydream movie as well as unusual versions of remixes to the original versions, so that even hardened Bowie fans would have things to discover or re-discover during this. So, "Shopping For Girls", one of the few successful Tim Machine numbers, is here in the attractive, acoustic, slide guitar-based arrangement Bowie used for his 50th birthday, "Panic In Detroit" is the remake he cut in 1979 and "Seven" is here in its demo version rather than the album or single cut.
The original idea was to focus on his artier songs, but I quickly changed course, making place for fan faves like "Life On Mars?"and "Changes" and ravers "Holy Holy", fearing that otherwise the mix would become somewhat of a slog to get through. Now we not only have a solidly entertaining thirty minute trip through Bowie's career, but also something that has enough dynamism and variety to hold up to repeat listens. It also makes use of Bowie's own adventurism: Around the half-time mark we have a mash up that Bowie himself commissioned in the mid-2000s when these first became popular, "Rebel Never Gets Old". And finally, I decided to build the last third around Bowie's and Reeves Gabrels' pre-Tin Machine re-imagining of "Look Back In Anger", an impressive (if divisive among fans) track. And, ironically, Where Are We Now? has way more "Moonage Daydream" than Moonage Daydream!
Listening back to this at least a year after last listening to it, I was pleasantly surprised. I think this runs really well and I hope you'll agree...
