Its hard keeping up with the output of this man Ty Segall has a new record coming out. Of course, that’s almost always true, considering this is everyone’s favourite lo-fi, indie-punk, psychedelic workaholic and a man who’s single-handedly trying to overload the servers over at discogs.com with his prolific musical output.

His latest thing, due for release on March 29th via Drag City Records, is a live album in conjunction with his Freedom Band entitled Deforming Lobes. All the eight tracks on the album were recorded at the Teragram Ballroom in Los Angeles and the closing tune, “Love Fuzz”, released in advance as a teaser for the album, absolutely fizzes.

Love Fuzz was taken from one of Segall’s 2012 albums Twins and has been a live favourite since then. The original is a lumbering, low-tempo piece of sleazy, grunge garage with a sweet, high-pitched vocal. Meanwhile, the live rendition on Deforming Lobes cranks up the pace, ramps up the raucousness and introduces a feedback/noise break which doubles the song’s running time despite the frantic energy on show. The guitars are overdriven to a roaring, metallic cacophony while for his live vocal, Segall dismisses sweetness in favour of a throat-shredding scream channelling Iggy, Mick Jagger and Rob Tyner simultaneously. Altogether it’s scintillating enough to scorch your eyebrows.

The translation of this this high-volume fun from an LA stage to your stereo has been helped in part by the involvement of Steve Albini who’s been on mixing duties for the project. Obviously, Albini’s experienced ear for the extreme guarantees a certain decibel level, but Ty Segall and the Freedom Band sure do give him a hell of a lot to work with.

Ty Segall and Freedom Band, Deforming Lobes, Live will be released by Drag City Records on 29th March and is available for pre-order on LP, Cassette, CD, MP3 and FLAC download now from Drag City and from Bandcamp.

thanks 50thirdand3rd

Vinyl issue of a late 1973 recording from New York with the Santa Monica Flyers.

In the second half of 1973, Neil Young formed The Santa Monica Flyers, with Crazy Horse’s rhythm section augmented by Nils Lofgren on guitar and piano and Harvest/Time Fades Away veteran Ben Keith on pedal steel guitar. Deeply affected by the drug-induced deaths of Danny Whitten and roadie Bruce Berry, Young recorded an album specifically inspired by the incidents, “Tonight’s the Night”. The album’s dark tone and rawness led Reprise to delay its release and Young had to pressure them for two years before they would do so; it finally came out on in June 1975.

By late ’73, Young and The Flyers were touring and performing songs, as yet unreleased, later to be included on Tonight’s The Night. On November 15th the ensemble performed at Queen’s College in Flushing, New York, for a show which remains quite staggering and is featured on this CD in its entirety. Including six cuts from Tonight….., plus a smattering of numbers from previous records, this concert, released here for the first time, is unlike any other Neil Young ever played.

Chrysalis are set to release a deluxe edition of Generation X, the self-titled 1978 debut album by one the British punk band that featured a young Billy Idol.

As well as Idol, the band featured Tony James (bass), Bob ‘Derwood’ Andrews (guitar) and Mark Laff (drums). Two non-album singles (‘Your Generation’ and ‘Wild Youth’) preceded the album, while a third, ‘Ready Steady Go’, was included when the long-player was released in March ’1978.

The new deluxe edition has been remastered from the original production tapes  and is available as both a two-CD and a 3LP vinyl set. Both include all the A-sides and B-sides from this era, along with 11 previously unreleased recordings including some unheard mixes created a the time by Alan Winstanley, prior to producer Martin Rushent completing his final mix of the album.

This deluxe edition comes with previously unseen photos and newly commissioned sleeve notes from Adrian Thrills and is released on vinyl and CD on 26 April 2019.

Gender-fluid, playful, but built on classic songwriting, Sundara Karma have established themselves as a singular new British rock band, in the time it took to dream up and broadcast one magnificent debut album – thus far. Still all only in the region of 22-23 years of age, but together as a unit since they were 14, their collective confidence now manifests, as they pull off a bold and future-forward metamorphosis, rematerializing with a second album called ‘Ulfilas’ Alphabet’, which intrepidly ventures into collaborative tech-exploration, and is poised to mount an irresistible charge on the pop charts’ upper échelons.

Oscar Pollock, most are agreed, is a supernova star in waiting. Strikingly blonde-haired and blue-eyed, but ever wrestling with an outsider identity, he’s one of few contemporary artists who can draw (and frequently has!) realistic comparisons with David Bowie. Like the Thin White Duke, his second batch of songs derives from a compulsive absorption of ideas, from disparate sources ranging from Buddhist/occultist literature and Hindu singer Krishna Das, through to contemporary pop icon Ariana Grande, and Tears For Fears in their mid-’80s maximalist pomp.

Informed by all those and more, ‘Ulfilas’ Alphabet’ was made with a burning desire to sound colourful, wild, forward-looking, full of optimism and revelatory zeal. Says Oscar, “We were definitely out to mess with people’s heads, to make music that paints a picture, and transports you somewhere. We didn’t want to be limited by that thing of, ‘Oh no, we can’t do that, it’s too many instruments, we won’t be able to do it live…’ Nah! Minimalism went right out of the window. We wanted to throw the kitchen sink at it. Sometimes we had to rein things back in a bit, but mostly, we let the boat go out really quite far – as far as it could go!”

Oscar and his compadres were keen to engage at the forefront of contemporary music-making, to use the sound palette of the moment, and hopefully extend it. To that end, they enlisted a freshly-minted production alliance coined on Everything Everything’s ‘Get To Heaven’, where that band’s own in-house studio wunderkind Kaines, aka Alex Robertshaw, would record the band’s music, raw and exploratory, then pass the tracks on to Los Angeles-based Stuart Price, whose elite-class pop CV includes work with Madonna, The Killers, New Order and Pet Shop Boys, to be streamlined with an expert sprinkling of aural magic.

This winning formula has worked wonders all over again, as Sundara Karma re-emerge revolutionized with a sound from a new dimension. Upfront tune ‘One Last Night On This Earth’, which was premiered on 30th October on BBC Radio One as Annie Mac’s Hottest Record, effervesces with hi-spec sonic invention, adding momentary pizzazz to the carpe-diem message in Pollock’s song.

“I wanted to write about an extra-terrestrial who’s been sent to Earth to observe human interaction,” explains Oscar, of that delirious anthem. “The being’s mission is to find an emotion that their species has never felt before but it ends up finding nothing…until it falls in love the night before it has to leave and realises, ‘Aaahh, this is the trick, this is the game we haven’t been playing!’”

A joyful sense of ‘eureka moment’ runs right through ‘Ulfilas’ Alphabet’, which’ll surely transmit to the buying public in 2019, sending Sundara Karma into the Big League they were always destined for…

Oscar Pollock spent his early years in Singapore, until he was seven, when the family moved to England – to Bourne End, near Maidenhead. One of the first friends he made at school was Haydn Evans, later to become drummer in Sundara Karma. Oscar acquired his first guitar aged eight, and his songwriting adventure began right there. “It just felt right for me,” he shrugs, “you know something’s true when you don’t think about it – it just happens.”

The music he heard from his folks included Bowie (from his mum), while his father, a party DJ, introduced him to a whole gamut of classic pop-rock, from Thin Lizzy and Pink Floyd, to The Smiths and Shirley Bassey. He’d later find his ‘own stuff’ in post-millennial acts like The War On Drugs, but his early teens were a tumultuous time in his family, and his father relocated them to nearby Reading. Oscar started at a new secondary school, and there met lead guitarist Ally Baty and bassist Dom Cordell; quickly reconnecting with Haydn Evans, Sundara Karma (Sanskrit for ‘beautiful action’) was born, says Pollock, as “a reaction to the void of Reading”.

Aged 17, circa 2013, the band were signed by indie label Chess Club on the strength of an online posting of early composition, and were already gigging heavily during their A-level year. Shelving plans to go to uni, they’d released two EP’s, supported Swim Deep and Wolf Alice around the UK (“party central!”) and played their first headline tour before 2015 was out.

Oscar’s songs, as spirited up in their tight-knit group, evoked the skyscraping majesty of early Arcade Fire, as well as Bowie’s ‘Hunky Dory’, amid themes of loneliness, identity crisis and precocious self-awareness. Released in January ’17, their debut long-player, ‘Youth Is Only Ever Fun In Retrospect’, also showcased a depth of cultural engagement rare in ’Teens music, with inspiration drawn from Manet, Plato and Lama Marut, and even then Pollock talked of this collection as only “the tip of the iceberg – I don’t even know if it captures us totally, or everything we have to say.”

Still, the album shot to Number 24 in the UK, and took Sundara Karma to unimaginable heights. Their fifth UK headline tour culminated with an euphoric sold-out show at Brixton Academy, and at last year’s Reading Festival, which the four of them had attended together as kids, with dreams of one day playing there, they were anecdotally the weekend’s biggest draw in the second-stage tent, with scores of latecomers forced to listen from outside.

As touring rumbled exotically onwards through Japan, South Korea and Indonesia, “meeting people who’d literally waited years to see us play live”, Oscar says it was all “so much fun, filled with a huge amount of joy”, and it never got too much, because there’d be breaks in the itinerary “for me to be reclusive and go into writer mode at home”. And so ‘Ulfilas’ Alphabet’ was percolating.

Bear’s Den announce third album with two new tracks “Fuel on the Fire” and “Blankets of Sorrow”. London-based duoBear’s Den return with their first new material in over two years, after 2016’s “Berlin” single, and their 2016 sophomore record Red Earth & Pouring Rain. Bear’s Den’s third album So that you might hear me, which was recorded across multiple studios in Seattle with the help of producer Phil Ek (The Shins, Fleet Foxes, Father John Misty), and mixing master Craig Silvey (Arcade Fire, Metronomy).

We wanted to let you know that we’ve been working on a podcast with our friend Danny Carissimi, where we discuss our new album and our experiences recording it in some depth.

Music video by Bear’s Den performing Blankets Of Sorrow (Lyric Video). © 2019 Bear’s Den, under exclusive license to Communion Group Ltd

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Man are a rock band from South Wales whose style is a mixture of American West coast psychedelia, progressive rock, and blues. Formed in November 1968 as a reincarnation of Welsh rock harmony group ‘The Bystanders’, Man are renowned for the extended jams in their live performances

Man evolved out of The Bystanders, formed in 1962 The Bystanders included Owen Money, then known as Gerry Braden,but he was replaced by Vic Oakley, giving the classic line-up of Vic Oakley (vocals), Micky Jones (guitar), Clive John aka Clint Space (keyboards), Ray Williams (bass) and Jeff Jones (drums). By 1968 the other members wanted to change musical direction to a more psychedelic/American west-coast guitar sound, so Oakley left, to be replaced by Deke Leonard and the band changed its name to Man.

With the tribulations of the 20-odd musicians who have at various times been through Man, and dissections of their 13 official studio albums (or around 45 if you include compilations and live recordings). Not too long ago it was calculated that their had been 17 different lineups had played 7,601 gigs, travelled 1,200,000 miles, blown 161 amplifiers, crossed 330 borders in and out of 17 countries, slept with 4,163 women, smoked 16,000 packets of Rizla papers and stayed in 6,424 hotels – and had been ejected from only 32 of those. They also managed to spend more than £200 on clothes.

Until recently the one strand of consistency in this tale was lead guitarist Micky Jones, who played in every line-up of Man. Besides a tendency for members to leave and persistently return, what makes Man’s history more unique still is that the responsibility of leadership has been rotated, and at least three of their members have assumed creative control, with others standing aside or departing – and sometimes coming back. For the first few albums it fell to keyboard player/guitarist Clive John to galvanise the band, before the baton was passed on to Deke Leonard, and it is now in the hands of Martin Ace.

Man were initially signed to Pye Records, for whom they recorded their first two albums with John Schroeder producing Revelation (January 1969) and Man wanted to name their follow-up Spunk Rock, but the label flatly refused, so it was entitled 2 Ozs of Plastic with a Hole in the Middle (September 1969). Whilst mixing the second album, Deke Leonard left, and was replaced by Martin Ace.

Their manager, Barrie Marshall, obtained a new record contract with Andrew Lauder of United Artists Records, for whom the band recorded the eponymous Man (March 1971) album, which received mixed reviews. Their media break came when outperforming Soft Machine, Yes and Family at a concert in Berlin, Having appeared on the United Artists double sampler album, All Good Clean Fun (1971).

The band’s breakthrough record was Do You Like It Here Now, Are You Settling In? For all their upward mobility, a laidback attitude remained. Martin Ace can be heard slurping from a can of cider during the song Manillo, recorded at Rockfield Studios it received good reviews. Constant touring was creating internal pressures, and in January 1972, keyboardist Clive John left the band, to form ‘Iowerth Pritchard and the Neutrons‘ with Phil Ryan and Will Youatt (1950-2017).

The new four piece supported Hawkwind and Brinsley Schwarz at a charity gig at The Roundhouse on 13th February 1972, recorded and issued as “Greasy Truckers Party” (with other artists, April 1972), a limited edition double album which rapidly became a collectors’ item.United Artists’ A&R man, Andrew Lauder, persuaded them to follow this up with a live album. Live at the Padget Rooms, Penarth was recorded on 8th April 1972. It was sold at a reduced price and only 8000 copies were pressed, which sold out in a week, making it No 1 in the “budget” album chart.

The band then tried to write a new studio album, but lacked inspiration. Bassist Martin Ace left, to form ‘The Flying Aces’, with his wife George, so Micky Jones and Terry Williams sacked Leonard, and keyboardist Clive John rejoined together with his new band members, Ryan (keyboards) and Youatt (bass). The new band recorded the first of Man’s three Peel Sessions on 29th August 1972, (the others being 18th September 1973 & 31st October 1974).

They then recorded Be Good to Yourself at Least Once a Day (November 1972) which received good reviews. A party on 19th December 1972, with Dave Edmunds, Help Yourself, The Flying Aces and others, was issued as Christmas at the Patti (July 1973), a double 10″ album, which again topped the “budget” album chart, but on tour keyboardist Clive John fell out with guitarist Micky Jones, and left the band again.

The four-piece started to record Back into the Future (September 1973), but felt the need for a second guitarist, so Alan “Tweke” Lewis joined from Clive Bunker’s ‘Wild Turkey’. On 24 June 1973 they recorded the live half of this double album at Man’s spiritual London home, The Roundhouse, backed by the Gwalia Male Choir, who had previously sung with Man at The Oval, when they supported Frank Zappa. The album initially sold well, and again, this was tipped to be album that would make the band, but pressing was restricted by a lack of plastic during the oil crisis. The follow-up tour had Deke Leonard’s ‘Iceberg’ as support. During the tour, Micky Jones and Leonard discussed a new Man line-up, so when Ryan and Youatt left to form ‘The Neutrons’ in December 1973, Leonard disbanded his band Iceberg and rejoined Man along with two former members of Help Yourself; Malcolm Morley (keyboards) and Ken Whaley (bass).

Leonard was back again for 1974’s next album Rhinos, Winos and Lunatics (May 1974) was produced by Roy Thomas Baker, noted for his work with Queen, and spent 4 weeks in the UK album chart, Morley left the day before recording started on the next album Slow Motion (October 1974). Before the album was released, the band toured the UK (again with Badfinger). Leonard: “Each time we gained momentum, a break-up seemed to be just around the corner. Barry [Marshall, manager] always used to dread calls from some ghastly place in Germany saying it had happened again. But he gave us enough rope to hang ourselves – and we duly obliged on a regular basis.”

The constant line-up changes and a strong internal rivalry were also hindrances. “I’ve been sacked by every member of the Man band at some point,” Leonard volunteers cheerily, “but they always found out that they couldn’t do it without me and had to invite me back.”

Pruned to a four-piece by the departure of guitarist/keyboard player Malcolm Morley for the self-produced Slow Motion album, the band were rejoined by Ace midway through a US tour with English folkies The Strawbs. It was during this trip that they met their hero John Cipollina, the (now long-deceased) guitarist with vintage San Francisco acid-rockers Quicksilver Messenger Service, who agreed to join Man for a tour of Britain.

They returned to the US in March 1975, but the tour collapsed on the first night. A new US tour, with REO Speedwagon and Blue Öyster Cult broke up two-thirds of the way through. Additional dates were arranged, but most were cancelled when Micky Jones developed pneumonia, so the final gigs were to be at the San Francisco Winterland. These were a great success, and promoter Bill Graham paid them a bonus, and rebooked them, but bassist Ken Whaley had had enough, and left. Martin Ace flew out as a stand in, and the band met and rehearsed with John Cipollina of Quicksilver Messenger Service, who played with them at Winterland, and agreed to play a UK tour.

On this tour, the Roundhouse gig was recorded for commercial release, and although Buckley and Ellingham state that it is rumoured that Micky Jones had to over-dub Cipollina’s guitar,it was only the track “Bananas” on which his playing was replaced: “Everything on Maximum Darkness which sounds like Cipollina is Cipollina“, per Deke Leonard.The album Maximum Darkness (September 1975) Martin Ace continued as “stand in” bassist, until the end of a French tour, with Hawkwind, Gong and Magma, when he returned to the ‘Flying Aces’.

The band changed label to MCA Records, Phil Ryan rejoined on keyboards, but as no bass players they knew were available, the band had to audition for the first time in their history. Auditions went badly, until the final audition, of John McKenzie of Global Village Trucking Company, who was immediately offered the job.

They then recorded The Welsh Connection (March 1976). With Ace departing again and just two songs finished Man were in the shit. Oddly enough, given that Leonard and keyboard player Phil Ryan were jostling for control, the record ended up being a concise and reigned-in collection of songs. It was only when Ryan “threw his piano” at Leonard while preparing a follow-up that the band realised they’d run aground. “I wasn’t in the band back then, but my understanding is that everyone thought they could do a better job than everyone else,” Ace offers. During the US tour differences arose again, and on the subsequent European tour keyboardist Phil Ryan and bassist John McKenzie announced they would be leaving, and the rest of the band agreed to call it a day. The MCA record deal, however, was for three albums, but nobody was willing to contribute new material, and their attempts at covers were poor, so MCA eventually agreed to a live farewell album. All’s Well That Ends Well (November 1977) was recorded at the Roundhouse on 11th–13th December.

“We’d spent seven years either on the road or in the studio. The weight of it all had been building up,” Leonard says. On his reason for leaving Man in the spring of 2004 to revive Iceberg, Leonard deadpans simply: “I felt the need to make a futile gesture.” A frequent broadcaster on Radio Wales, his uproariously funny novels Rhinos,Winos & Lunatics and Maybe I Should’ve Stayed In Bed have both received rave reviews. The first two albums represent space rock at its best, and the latter one shows a more structured approach yet some of their finest songwriting is on that album. However, space rock fiends cannot go wrong with their original 1969-1977 run of albums.

The Albums

  • Revelation
  • 2 Ozs of Plastic with a Hole in the Middle
  • Man
  • Do You Like It Here Now, Are You Settling In?
  • Be Good to Yourself at Least Once a Day
  • Back into the Future
  • Rhinos, Winos and Lunatics
  • Slow Motion
  • The Welsh Connection
  • The Twang Dynasty
  • Call Down the Moon
  • Endangered Species
  • Undrugged
  • Diamonds and Coal
  • Kingdom of Noise
  • Greasy Truckers Party
  • Live at the Padget Rooms, Penarth
  • Christmas at the Patti
  • Back into the Future
  • Maximum Darkness
  • All’s Well That Ends Well
  • Friday 13th
  • 1998 at the Star Club
  • Down Town Live

Image may contain: outdoor, text that says "DESPERATE JOURNALIST IN SEARCH OF THE MIRACULOUS OUT NOW"

“In Search of the Miraculous” is the third album from much-loved indie goth dreamboats Desperate Journalist and follows the bands critically acclaimed album Grow Up. If the title conveys a sense of wide- eyed ambition then the music on In Search Of The Miraculous fits the plot perfectly, featuring ten tracks fizzing with creative passion, giant choruses, heroic solos and poetic intensity.

Warning: this album contains love songs, anti-love songs and other songs wandering about, lost in an in-between-daze. It’s a bit complicated. Boasting one of the most inspired band names of recent times, the quartet take their moniker from a 1979 John Peel Session track by The Cure. If you ever wondered what Harriet Wheeler from the Sundays would sound like fronting a rawer version of the Smiths or the Cocteau Twins with energy and a shimmering indie edge, then Desperate Journalist is a must hear.

‘Satellite’ is the second single taken from the LP ‘In Search of the Miraculous’, out on 22nd February 2019 on Fierce Panda Records

Band Members
Jo Bevan – Vocals,
Simon Drowner – Bass,
Rob Hardy – Guitar,
Caz Hellbent – Drums

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I have followed the chameleon like career of Beth Jeans Houghton with great interest ever since seeing her Hooves Of Destiny shows at the Musician in Leicester few years ago. Since then after the Hooves of Destiny and, more recently, comes the Du Blonde moniker – complete with an altogether heavier, grittier sound.

Du Blonde may sound like a band, but in fact it is, and always has been, the work of just one person. Beth Jeans Houghton. Her new album “Lung Bread For Daddy” delves even deeper into self sufficiency, seeing Beth take the reigns on production, instrumentation, album artwork and direction of music videos. This project is entirely her own. Lung Bread For Daddy sees a meeting in which Beth’s previous two albums, 2015’s Welcome Back To Milk and her debut Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose, take a seat at the table and make amends. Veering wildly between proto-punk, psych rock and the wholesome song writing of the 1970’s, taking the listener on a journey through the landscape of her past. It is an honest and often uncomfortable look into the life of a person who’s experiences have been touched by a myriad of characters, homes across continents, periods of extreme loneliness, mental illness and a search for an understanding of personal identity. Houghton’s insatiable thirst for creation on her own terms has seen her take charge of every aspect of Lung Bread For Daddy including the brutal self portrait that adorns the cover of this record. Painted from a photograph taken during one of her lowest points, the image depicts Beth devoid not only of makeup, but self worth and confidence.

She will be releasing her second album as Du Blonde titled Lung Bread For Daddy via Moshi Moshi Records on the 22nd February, and it is described as a meeting in which her previous two albums, 2015’s Welcome Back To Milkand her debutYours Truly, Cellophane Nose, take a seat at the table and make amends.

The first single is the autobiographical Angel, referencing the end of a relationship with someone who promises a lot, but delivers very little. Angel by Du Blonde (aka Beth Jeans Houghton). Taken from her new album ‘Lung Bread For Daddy’ out on Moshi Moshi on 22nd February

Flamin groovies box cover

Coming up on February 22nd! The Flamin’ Groovies: “Gonna Rock Tonite!” The Complete Recordings 1969-71 is a 3CD clamshell box set reissue of three peerless albums – ‘Supersnazz’, ‘Flamingo’ and ‘Teenage Head’ – taken from the original master tapes and embellished with bonus outtakes, alternative versions and single mixes!

Irrespective of musical direction, sales figures or personnel changes, The Flamin’ Groovies have always had greatness attached to their name. Cyril Jordan’s mid-Seventies revamp of the band was certainly a huge influence on entire generations of skinny-tied power poppers, but the Groovies took their first tentative steps on the long and winding road to cult stardom back in the late Sixties, when lead singer, original band leader and rock’n’roll aficionado Roy Loney battled for the upper hand with young pup and Beatles obsessive Jordan.

After the tentative, privately-issued 10” mini-album debut Sneakers, The Groovies made the transition from San Francisco also-rans to genuine contenders with a trio of peerless albums – Supersnazz, Flamingo and the particularly magnificent Teenage Head – for major labels (Columbia’s Epic imprint and Buddah subsidiary Kama Sutra). Bolstered by sundry outtakes, alternative versions and single mixes, those three albums now appear under one roof for the first time with Gonna Rock Tonite!, a complete anthology of the band’s studio work during the pivotal 1969-71 timeframe: halcyon days that ended in late 1971 when Loney abruptly quit the group he’d formed just a few short years earlier.

Bursting with creative tension, wilful diversity and absurdist wit, Gonna Rock Tonite!climaxes with the classic albumTeenage Head, a brazen attempt to out-Stone the Stones that saw one critic describe it at the time of its mid-1971 appearance as “close to being the best hard rock album ever released by an American group”. The definitive issue of these definitive recordings, Gonna Rock Tonite! is a 3-CD set taken from the masters and housed in a striking clamshell box. It includes a 20-page booklet that also features a new 7,500 word essay on the band.

from Teenage Head (1971)

Stevie ray vaughan with david bowie the 1983 rehearsal broadcast double lp gatefold coloured 76939 1

In January 1983, David Bowie invited Stevie Ray Vaughan to record guitar for six new tracks he’d written for his upcoming album, “Let s Dance”. Vaughan’s powerful and unique guitar work brought a fresh sound to Bowie’s music, most famously on songs like China Girl and the record s title track. With the album a success, Bowie was keen for Vaughan to join his group for the subsequent “Serious Moonlight Tour”. However, with Vaughan reluctant to leave his own band Double Trouble (who had just finished recording their debut album, “Texas Flood”), David’s management offered to let the group open the show on select tour dates. However, just four days before the tour began, Bowie’s team reneged, telling Vaughan’s manager, Chesley Millikin,that the band would not be included and, furthermore, Vaughan wasn’t allowed to talk about the group or its new record in interviews. With the offer pulled, Milikin understandably took Vaughan off the tour. And although both artists still achieved huge critical and commercial success during the 1980s, what they might have gone on to do together remains one of rock’s great “What Ifs”. No video footage of Bowie and Vaughan performing together is known to exist. However, rehearsals for the tour, which took place at the Las Colinas Soundstage in Dallas – Stevie Ray’s hometown – on 26th April 1983, were not only recorded but broadcast on local radio too, thus allowing these legendary sessions to be heard again today.

This is interesting to hear the clever musical arrangements particularly the crisp horn sounds and backing vocals. Stevie Ray Vaughan played guitar here and was due to be a part of the touring band. His contributions are pretty much what you’d expect rather than anything fiery or super- inventive.
Bowie and the backing singers make some mistakes particularly Life on Mars, Golden Years and Red Sails, on which Bowie seems to be trying to find the correct voice.
It’s a must-have for fans but please be aware that 132 minutes were broadcast.

Stevie Ray Vaughan and David Bowie live 1983 rehearsal broadcast for the Serious Moonlight Tour! From An FM Radio Broadcast Recorded At The Las Calinas Soundstage, Dallas, TX, 26th April 1983. 19 tracks total including China Girland Let’s Dance.