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Quick shots of various supporting characters (a nameless milkman and magistrate Mrs. Brown” isn’t far removed from Bowie’s Deram debut, in terms of subject matter (another jaundiced look at suburban England) and song structure-there’s still a lot of Ray Davies being processed, along with a newer influence, Syd Barrett, while the outro is all but Bowie saying on tape “and then it ends like a Who track.” Its earliest appearance is as a title in Kenneth Pitt’s 1985 memoir, where it appears in a list of prospective songs to be recorded for Bowie’s second (and never-recorded) Deram album. Brown”) almost certainly hails from the same compositional period-late 1967 through the first months of 1968.
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“The Reverend Raymond Brown (Attends the Garden Fête on Thatchwick Green)” (hereafter referred to, for sanity’s sake, as “Rev. The Conversation Piece “demo” disc sequence opens with the set’s earliest recordings, in terms of composition: “ April’s Tooth of Gold,” “ Mother Grey,” “ In the Heat of the Morning” and “ When I’m Five” (the former two were copyrighted in December 1967 the latter two had studio versions cut in March 1968). We also have a smoother transition between “psychedelic Mod” suburban Bowie and hippie Arts Lab Bowie of 1969. “Space Oddity,” included here in what appears to be every demo ever made of it, no longer sounds like a sudden leap forward but more the culmination of years spent sitting at a reel-to-reel in his manager’s flat or in various bedsits and rented rooms.** They further document how the late Sixties were a proving ground for Bowie as a songwriter-his frustrations about lacking a record contract strengthened him as a composer his songs develop in craft and form. The collected demos* do a couple of things.
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The “average” fan, whoever they may be? I’m not sure what they’ll make of it, if they’ll even hear it. And the devoted fan-I’ll define this as someone who’s voluntarily listened to a Tin Machine bootleg-may find some of it fascinating. How sharp, though? Is it really worth one’s time to sit through these rough drafts, these murky tapes of old songs, many of which didn’t make the cut for Bowie at the time? (You can hear his laugh: “ah yes, a real treasure trove you’ve got for 80 quid.”) The release of the five-disc Conversation Piece hammers shut the year of “Sixties Bowie Redux.” The total, in terms of tracks unreleased until now: some 30 home demos, recorded between the autumns of 19.Īt last in one place (expect to see more Spying Through a Keyhole and Clareville Grove sets, over-optimistically priced, in used record stores), these demos make a decent pile and give a sharper picture of Bowie’s work life in the late Sixties. The Reverend Raymond Brown (Attends the Garden Fête on Thatchwick Green).