David Bowie - BBC Sessions, Volume 6: 1974-1980

I'm probably guilty of false advertising by calling this the sixth collection of David Bowie's BBC performances. In fact, while all the other albums in this series had all or many of their songs from actual BBC performances, this one has a grand total of one ("Heroes"). The rest are from other radio and TV appearances. But I'm calling it a BBC album because it finishes off the 1970s for the series. For whatever reason, Bowie almost never appeared on the BBC much after 1973 for a long time.

When it comes to Bowie appearing on TV - and most or all of these performances are from TV shows - the trick is finding versions that aren't lip-synced. The prevalence of that unfortunate technique has risen and fallen over the years, but it's never entirely gone away. For a few of these, I believe he was singing to a backing track for at least some of the instruments. But in all cases, at least his lead vocals were done live.

Absolutely none of the performances here have been officially released. But the sound is very good, because they all come from quality recordings of TV shows.

Most of the songs are the hits you'd expect, although he performed live on TV so rarely for much of the 1970s that a lot of the hits don't appear here. However, there are a couple of unexpected choices. One, a cover medley of "Foot Stompin' - I Wish I Could Shimmy like My Sister Kate," wasn't released by him at time. It's clear why, since it obviously soon evolved into his original hit song "Fame."

It's also unexpected that he sang a duet with Cher on a lesser known song of his. They also did a duet of a long medley. I haven't included it because it's so painful and cheesy, in a 1970s variety show way. It started out with "Young Americans," but did snippets of many more songs, including "Do Do Run Run," "Day Tripper," "Blue Moon," "Young Blood," and more. Trust me, it's better to read about it than to actually hear it. But if you really want to, you can find it on YouTube.

This series comes to an end in 1980, because his radio and TV appearances seem to have dwindled down after that year. Even for 1983, which was his biggest year in terms of commercial success with the "Let's Dance" album and subsequent world tour, I couldn't find any good TV or radio appearances that weren't taken from his concert tour. However, he did resume performing for the BBC in the 1990s, so the series will pick up again then.

This album is 54 minutes long.

01 1984 (David Bowie)
02 Young Americans (David Bowie)
03 Foot Stompin' - I Wish I Could Shimmy like My Sister Kate (David Bowie)
04 Can You Hear Me (David Bowie & Cher)
05 Fame (David Bowie)
06 Heroes (David Bowie)
07 Rebel Rebel (David Bowie)
08 Stay (David Bowie)
09 Beauty and the Beast (David Bowie)
10 Alabama Song [Whisky Bar] (David Bowie)
11 TVC-15 (David Bowie)
12 The Man Who Sold the World (David Bowie)
13 Boys Keep Swinging (David Bowie)
14 Ashes to Ashes (David Bowie)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17362462/DAVDBWE1974-1980BBSssonsVlum6_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/puSmeEzk

In 1979, Bowie appeared on "Saturday Night Live" wearing some exceedingly strange outfits. (He changed outfits after each song to maximize the strangeness.) The cover art photo here comes from that performance. Unfortunately, I can't really capture the event with a single photo. It's worth tracking down on YouTube and watching.