Search - :: Best of David Bowie: 1974-1979

AVOID THIS PIECE OF DESECRATION

03/05/2001

(1 out of 5 stars)

"From CD jacket, this looks like a great deal - 18 of David Bowie's good songs including a couple of rarities. But wait, how did they fit 18 Bowie songs on a single CD? Most of his tunes, the good ones in particular are over six minutes long, right? Easy, butcher them. You know, cut out the long saxaphone rifts in the middle of Young Americans (I thought my CD player was skipping the first time), the end of Heroes. As long as people here the bits where he is singing they'll be happy right?And record companies wonder why people want to be able to freely copy their own songs and make their OWN "best of" collections? Well guys, keep churning out stuff like this and see how long people are willing to pay for it..."

These were truly his golden years!

Pieter | Johannesburg | 02/11/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This great compilation reflects my favourite Bowie period, the middle to late seventies. Drawn from the albums Young Americans, Station To Station, Heroes and Lodger, it covers his "plastic soul" excursion, the Thin White Duke period and the three albums of synth experimentation. The sequence of tracks is odd - I think a chronogical one would have made more sense. My favorite tracks from Low are here: the sublime Sound & Vision and the ominous Breaking Glass, of which the latter inspired Nick Lowe's brilliant song I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass from 1978. Station To Station, in my opinion the best ever Bowie album, provides the energetic TVC15, the classic soulful Golden Years and the wistful ballad Wild Is The Wind, but a serious omission has been the magnificent Word On a Wing, one of the greatest and most poetic Bowie tracks of all time with its transcendent spiritual quality, its inspired lyrics and soaring melody. Fame and Young Americans, the "plastic soul" songs, still sound good after all these years, especially next to the disco version of John, I'm Only Dancing. I don't find some of these tracks from Heroes, like Secret Life Of Arabia or Beauty And The Beast, as memorable as some of the other songs here, but I love his cover of Knock On Wood and of course the title track of Heroes remains a landmark composition, one of the most psychologically trenchant songs of all time. Artists as diverse as Blondie and Nico have covered it and I still listen to the German and the French versions on vinyl. To me, Lodger was the least satisfying of the trilogy of Eno albums, but Boys Keep Swinging still swings after all these years and I remember its dramatic video clip from 1979. I consider this his most creative period based on the sheer quality of songs such as Sound & Vision, Breaking Glass, Heroes, Golden Years, Fame, Young Americans and Wild Is The Wind. That's why, although I regret the omission of the breathtaking Word On A Wing, I have awarded this album five stars"

A frustrating let-down

01/25/1999

(2 out of 5 stars)

"I always hated Rykodisc's "The Singles" double CD because of the presence of severely edited tracks. Why would they go to all the trouble of gathering so much good music, but then chop the songs up? When I heard these new "Best of..." CDs were out and saw the track listings, I felt better about the whole mess, and I bought this one. Well, Virgin is apparently taking a cue from Rykodisc and including pared-down "radio edits" which omit essential elements of Bowie's great songs (such as the distorted guitar solo of Young Americans). I hate to break it to these out-of-touch fools, but this is NOT the version the radio stations play! When I saw that the disk contained extra CD-ROM material, I hoped that there would be some pictures/videos/interviews to calm my blood pressure, but it was only an advertisement for his website. Curse all of them. Don't get suckered into buying this."