UNRELEASED BOWIE

I enjoyed Steve Pafford’s Unreleased Bowie (RC 354). Some great ideas there. However, I had to laugh at EMI’s Stephen Alexander’s quote that, compared to the catalogues of The Beatles and Queen,“if you look at the recordings of David Bowie, it’s not clear that we have done them anything like justice”. I don’t think that Bowie has been served too badly by EMI. Over the past decade, releases have included: the core catalogue remastered and repackaged in 1999, The Bowie At The Beeb CD set, The Best Of Bowie DVD and CD, Ziggy motion picture DVD, Serious Moonlight tour DVD and Glass Spider tour DVD, and recently the Live At Santa Monica CD. Also, the 30th Anniversary 2-CD editions of Ziggy, Aladdin Sane, and Diamond Dogs were released between 2002-4. Ziggy, Young Americans, David Live were all released in glorious 5.1 surround sound.

In contrast, The Beatles CD catalogue is now 21 years old, and in dire need of remastering, and EMI/ Apple have steadfastly ignored any possible anniversary releases (wouldn’t the 40th anniversary of Sgt Pepper in 2007 have been a great time to give the album deluxe edition, remastered treatment?)

Also, there have only been a handful of archival Queen reissues over the past few years, with the long rumoured ‘Anthology’ style box set still no-where to be seen, and the core album catalogue still languishing on CD with remasters from 1993-4. EMI should indeed give the Bowie catalogue the treatment it deserves, but to claim that it has done this for The Beatles and Queen is simply ridiculous!

by Paul Soper
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