David Bowie - Bridge School Benefit, Mountain View, CA, 10-19-1996

I plan on posting some more albums of David Bowie at the BBC, because he returned to the BBC a bit towards the end of his career. But first, this makes a good stop in the mid-1990s between BBC shows. What makes this concert stand out is that it was done in the acoustic format, with Bowie only accompanied by a second guitarist and bassist.

I originally had an audience bootleg of this concert. Later, I found a soundboard bootleg. The soundboard had much better and clearer sound quality. But the downside was that it reduced the audience noise to almost nothing. It's strange to have a song end and basically just hear crickets when there's supposed to be cheering. So I took the cheering after each song from the audience bootleg and patched that into the soundboard version. Now, I think it sounds better than ever before.

The yearly Bridge School Benefit typically puts on two shows each year, on back to back nights. That was the case in 1996. Bowie played similar sets each night, but there were a few differences. I had that same two sources for both shows. So most of the songs here are from the October 19th show, but I've added in three songs from the October 20th show at the end. 

Most of the songs are written by Bowie, but he did two snippets of cover songs, "I'm a Hog for You" and "You and I and George." Plus, "White Light/White Heat" is a Velvet Underground cover.

As an aside, in his banter between songs, he occasionally made reference to some of the other performers in that year's Bridge School concerts. Pete Townshend played on October 19th, and he talked some about how much Townshend influenced him. Billy Idol and Bonnie Raitt played on October 20th only, and he made jokes referencing them. Additionally, he was introduced at the start of this recording by Neil Young.

This album is 44 minutes long.

01 talk by Neil Young (David Bowie)
02 Aladdin Sane (David Bowie)
03 talk (David Bowie)
04 The Jean Genie (David Bowie)
05 I'm a Hog for You (David Bowie)
06 talk (David Bowie)
07 I Can't Read (David Bowie)
08 talk (David Bowie)
09 The Man Who Sold the World (David Bowie)
10 talk (David Bowie)
11 'Heroes' (David Bowie)
12 talk (David Bowie)
13 Let's Dance (David Bowie)
14 talk (David Bowie)
15 You and I and George (David Bowie)
16 talk (David Bowie)
17 China Girl (David Bowie)
18 White Light-White Heat (David Bowie)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15155882/DavidB_1996_BrdgeSchoolBnefitMountnViewCA__10-19-1996_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from one of the 1996 Bridge School Benefit concerts, though I don't know which one.