VA - Bowie Heard Them Here First (2014)

The latest release in Ace's Heard Them Here First series traces the career of David Bowie via songs he recorded by other writers. Presented in the (approximate) sequence he recorded his interpretations, the collection kicks off with Paul Revere & the Raiders original version of Louie - Go Home , as covered by the 17 year-old Bowie as leader of Davie Jones & the King Bees in 1964, and concludes with I Took A Trip (On A Gemini Spaceship) by maverick Texan outsider musician the Legendary Stardust Cowboy, a song Bowie included on his 2002 album Heathen . While promoting Heathen, Bowie recalled that he had been introduced to the Stardust Cowboy's work when they were with the same record company: [They] gave me a stack of singles by this guy and I thought they were unbelievably atrocious, but in that wonderful way that you couldn t stop listening to them, they were so awful. There are no prizes for guessing from whom Ziggy's surname was borrowed. Just days after putting Ziggy into retirement, Bowie began recording Pin Ups, an album of his favourite songs from the 60s, represented here with the Kinks Where Have All The Good Times Gone, the Pretty Things Rosalyn, the Mojos Everything's Alright, the Merseys Sorrow and Friday On My Mind by Australian combo the Easybeats. These are songs which really meant a lot to me then they re all very dear to me, Bowie recalled. They're all bands which I used to go and hear play down the Marquee between 1964 and 1967. Each one meant something to me. It's my London of the time. As one might anticipate from the chameleon-like Bowie, the featured songs come from a diverse assortment of musical genres and eras: from Lotte Lenya & the Three Admirals 1930 recording of Bertolt Brecht & Kurt Weill's Alabama Song to Frank Black and the Pixies spiky Cactus from their 1988 album Surfer Rosa. Other unlikely bedfellows Johnny Mathis and Iggy Pop, Bobby Bland and the Velvet Underground, Jacques Brel and Chuck Berry, Martha & the Vandellas and Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers make for a strikingly wide-ranging programme. The booklet features notes by Ian Johnston, who also wrote the notes for the recent The New York Dolls Heard Them Here First and The Ramones Heard Them Here First collections.