The Vinyl Word: David Bowie

In a recent Vinyl Word column I wrote about Record Store Day which was celebrated on April 19th and mentioned that a number of classic albums were being rereleased on Vinyl.

One of these is a classic David Bowie Album, Stage, originally released in September of 1978.

Last week I managed to get my hands on the remastered double album so spent the weekend listening to classic Bowie, live.

It's a great album containing some of Bowie's best like Ziggy Stardust, Fame, Heroes and Station to Station.

When it was first released, Stage was praised for its quality of recording, considering that back then live recording quality was not up to the standards of today.

The Stage Album was Bowie's second live album and was recorded on the Isolar II Tour. The tracks featured were culled from concerts in Philadelphia, Providence and New York in late April and early May of 1978.

The first UK pressings were on translucent yellow vinyl and some European pressings were also available on blue vinyl.

If you a fortunate enough to own a copy of one of those, I would imagine they would be worth quite a bit of money.

One of the criticisms 'Stage' received was the lack of "live" audience atmosphere and I have to say listening to the remastered 2018 release, the same applies.

The reason for this is that the recording of Bowie and his band was taken direct from the instrument and microphone feeds, which increased the sound quality but at the same time minimized the crowd noise. Never the less, it's classic Bowie.

'Stage' became a huge success, reaching number 5 on the charts in the UK, and 44 in the US Charts at the time. It received mixed reviews from the music critics of the time. NME rated it 8/10, The Rolling Stone Album Guide gave it 3 and a half out of five and The Encyclopedia of Popular Music scored it 2 out of 5.

I'm sure if you are a true David Bowie fan, you will love it and if you have a turntable, get your hands on a copy and enjoy.