David Bowie
Live in Santa Monica
Been caught stealing
Bootleg. now there’s a beautiful word you don’t often hear anymore. Sounds more illicit than peer-to-peer filesharing, doesn’t it? That’s like something a data analyst or market-research boffin might get up to. Bootlegging, meanwhile, is what pirates and mobsters do.
Back in the 1970s and 1980s, the mainstream music industry was very clear about the fact that bootlegging heralded the end of recorded sound. Even home taping, they explained, was killing music. Killing music: an abstract concept, but a horrible one. Particularly for the stoners who encountered the classic skull-and-crossbones logo many companies printed on inner sleeves. The cops regularly chased acid casualties with suitcases full of tapes off O’Connell Bridge. (Funny – theirs is the only industry I know of that has been totally eradicated by the Internet.)
Dylan live at Slane, U2 at Croke Park in 1987, Echo and the Bunnymen in the Olympic Ballroom – these were precious, often obscure, documents. But there was one legendary bootleg: David Bowie’s Santa Monica show from his 1972 Ziggy Stardust tour of North America. This is Bowie and the Spiders From Mars at their extra-sexual-terrestrial peek. Mick Ronson’s guitar created a generation’s worth of rock-critic cliché, and Bowie? Dear god, how cool was Bowie in ‘72? I don’t possess the skills to put it into words. That’s how cool.
Many readers will be familiar with the Hammersmith Odeon show from 1973, which was the subject of a remarkable film (Ziggy Stardust: The Motion Picture) and also the night Bowie announced to the crowd that he was breaking up the band. (Unfortunately, he’d forgotten to announce it to the band.) The Santa Monica show, which has only now received its official release, contains a similar set list, taking heavily from Hunky Dory and The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust. But it’s a fresher, nastier-sounding band. Of all Bowie’s live recordings, this is the most exciting, the most live.
Unfortunately you can’t buy it off Mad Steve on O’Connell Bridge, ‘cause Mad Steve is gone, man.
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