Yes, Yes, We've Got Him Covered Again...That Starman, That Thin White Duke, That Blackstar...

 

While I'm waiting for inspiration for another Bowie project, here's another trip through the long corridors full of funhouse mirror versions of Bowie songs. I sure hope the anonymous person answering my question of what songs they want to see on one of these is still around, because while it took me a while to do it, here are versions of “Watch That Man” (going for the obvious, it's Lulu, produced and graced with unmistakable backgrouns vocals by Mr. Bowie himself, plus Ronno on killer guitar) and “The Width Of The Circle” (way harder to find, I finally found a version credited to Norman Ball & Back In NY).

The whole compilation actually plays out like this, alternating between big names (Blondie and their classic live cover of “Heroes”, Nirvana's equally classic live unplugged cover of “The Man Who Sold The World”, Duran Duran covering “Five Years”), known quantities (Big Country taking on “Cracked Actor”, Robbie Willliams covering “Kooks”, Rick Wakeman playing “Space Oddity” alone on piano in remembrance of Bowie) and a lot of lesser known folks. Of these, I really like Lazer Cake retro-futuristic cover of “Fame”, on the other side of the (noise) spectrum we have Alice Price's take on “Lazarus” and Hazel O'Connor's “Rock'n'Roll Suicide”.

In the somewhat known quantity department we have Bowie's long-time bass player and on-stage foil Gail Ann Dorsey again, as on Vol. 3 once more teaming up with Mathieu 'M' Chedid, here doing a full- band version of “Life On Mars?”. And Beck can probably safely be slotted somewhere in between big name and known quantity. The track “Sound And Vision (Second Vision” is indeed a sort-of-sequel to his cover on Vol. 1. The original 'reimagined' tracks was almost nine minutes long and without much flow, thus I cut two different versions, the first version more or less being the 'song part' version, while this 'Second Vision' is essentially composed of the original re-imagining's beginning and end. Call it an idiosyncratic spin on a classic, and you'll get the idea.

There's again some nice variety here: Caecilia Norby & Lars Danielsson take “Andy Warhol” on a jazz trip, while Seu Jorge continues to acoustically bossa nova his way through the Bowie catalogue, here with a warm, wonderful take on “Changes”. Hey, even the Spiders From Mars show up!

We've Got You Covered – David Bowie Vol. 4 continues to prove two things we've seen throughout the series: the breadth and depth of Mr. Bowie's catalogue, though obviously most cover artists stick to the more known songs here, and so do I, and the possibility to do interesting stuff with Bowie's music. So, hear some great classics in versions you might not have heard before, or haven't heard in a while...