Oil Well Bootlegs - RSC CD: David Bowie – Starman Oil Well

David Bowie – Starman
Oil Well – RSC 017 CD

1 White Light / White Heat 3:37
2 Let Me Sleep Beside You 3:14
3 Unwashed And Somewhat Slightly Dazed 3:58
4 Wild-Eyed Boy From Freecloud 4:35
5 Bombers 2:42
6 Looking For A Friend 2:57
7 Almost Grown 2:07
8 Kooks 3:02
9 The Superman 2:48
10 Ziggy Stardust 3:20
11 Five Years 4:20
12 Starman 4:00
13 Rock'N'Roll Suicide 3:05
14 Hang On To Yourself 2:40
15 Waiting For The Man 4:57

Note
All songs by David Bowe unless otherwise noted
Recorded live between 1970 and 1972.

Tracks 1,13 from Sounds Of The 70s, 23 May 1972, broadcast date 19 June 1972.

Track 2,3 recorded for Dave Lee Travis Show as "David Bowie and Junior's Eyes", 20 October 1969
Track 4 recorded for Sounds of The 70s: Andy Ferris - 25 March 1970, broadcast 6 April 1970
Tracks 5,6,7,8 recorded for In Concert as "David Bowie and friends", 3 June 1971, broadcast 20 June 1971.
Track 9 recorded for Sounds of the 70s: 21 September 1971, broadcast date 4 October 1971.

Tracks 10,11,14,15 from Sounds Of The 70s - recorded for Sounds of the 70s: Bob Harris as "David Bowie and The Spiders from Mars", 18 January 1972, broadcast date 7 February 1972.
Track 12 from Johnnie Walker Lunchtime Show 22 May 1972, broadcast date 5 June 1972–9 June 1972.

Lineup:
David Bowie – vocals, guitar,
George Underwood – vocal on tracks 5-6-7-8:
Dana Gillespie – vocal on tracks 5-6-7-8:
Geoffrey Alexander – vocal on tracks 5-6-7-8:
Mick Ronson – guitar, vocal on tracks 1-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15
Mark Carr-Pritchard – guitar on tracks 5-6-7-8:
Mick Wayne – guitar on tracks 2-3
Tim Renwick – rhythm guitar on tracks 2-3
Tony Visconti bass on track 4
John "Honk" Lodge – bass on tracks 2-3
Trevor Bolder – bass on tracks 1-5-6-7-8-10-11-12-13-14-15
Woody Woodmansey – drums on tracks 1-10-11-12-13-14-15
John Cambridge – drums on tracks 2-3-4
Mick Woodmansey – drums on tracks 5-6-7-8:

This album is a digital clone of: White Light White Heat - The Swingin' Pig ‎– TSP-CD 053
CD released with a 4-page booklet in a standard jewel case with black tray.
This Oil Well version has a fine cover, fine quality. Fold-out insert shows details of other CDs in the series. Limited to 200 copies only. Due to its rarity and good quality, this disc is recommended.
Some copies come with an OBI strip with a different barcode. This album has been released with a different cover art.

Audio quality:

Quality content:

© Official released material:
Track 1 has been released officially on: The Complete Unreleased BBC Sessions (Hd Remastered Edition)

Tracks 1,10,11,12, 13, 14,15 have been released officially on: Rock N' Roll Star (2024)
Tracks 2,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15 have been released officially on: Bowie At The Beeb
Track 3 has been released officially on: "Space Oddity - 40th Anniversary Edition"
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Bowie at the beeb

Bowie at the Beeb is a compilation album by David Bowie, first released in 2000. Originally, it came in a three-CD set, the third, bonus CD being a live recording made on 27 June 2000 at the Portland BBC Radio Theatre. Later editions contain only the first two CDs. The first pressing mistakenly included the second (disc 2, track 12) version of the song "Ziggy Stardust" twice on disc two, missing the first (disc 2, track 4) version. EMI declined to issue corrected replacement discs to customers, instead mailing out one-song CDRs of the first version.

This compilation also features a previously unreleased song, "Looking for a Friend" (disc 1, track 15), which John Peel said would be released as a single by Arnold Corns as a follow-up to the Arnold Corns versions of "Moonage Daydream" and "Hang On to Yourself", but it was never released, thus making this the only performance of "Looking for a Friend".

Sixteen years after being released on CD, Bowie at the Beeb finally gets the vinyl box set treatment, with some scanty bonus bits: a fantastic 1971 rendition of "Oh! You Pretty Things" where Bowie and Mick Ronson perform as a duo, from the Japanese CD, and a previously unheard version of "The Supermen," from March 1970, where he's backed by the Hype. It's tempting to assume the collection of his early BBC sessions is a posthumous cash-in, except that it was announced in December, three weeks before Bowie's death, thus making it a viable part of his beautifully choreographed stage exit. While the rush to winkle out clues from Blackstar in the wake of his passing felt a bit like pointing out how a magician does his tricks, it's worth asking why he pushed us toward these formative live sessions as he knew his life was coming to its end.

Simply put, perhaps it's nothing more than a show of gratitude toward an organization whose early belief in him never wavered (and whose publicly funded existence is always under threat from Britain's Conservative government). Bowie recalled failing a 1965 audition to work with the BBC, who stated, in their classic patrician tone, "'This vocalist is devoid of personality and sings all the wrong notes.'" And yet they gave him another shot, as Bowie pointed out: "So in your inimitable manner and with tremendous enthusiasm you got me back on for another audition, which I passed the second time around, which gave me freewheeling access to a lifetime of singing all the wrong notes."

This four-LP collection spans Bowie's second-ever BBC session, in 1968, through to May 1972, after which he wouldn't record another until 1991. Rather than a sign of rupture, that 19-year gap is possibly an indirect result of the BBC's support: After Bowie performed "Starman" on the network's "Top of the Pops" in July 1972, his fame rose enormously, leading him to America, tax exile in Switzerland and Germany, and into periods of immense productivity (and, of course, druggy preoccupations). Manager Tony DeFries may not have seen the point in having him do more sessions.

Ziggy Stardust

Yet in the early days, back when Bowie was still an earnest Anthony Newley wannabe whose career could never get seem to get off the ground, Auntie's arms were always there to scoop him up and give him another shot. His first chances came from John Peel, and from there he trickled down through Radio 1's primetime slots; by 1970, he was being given hour-long live appearances on the station. It's an appealingly linear type of progress, and a literal one, too; unlike Five Years and other more carefully curated Bowie box sets, Bowie at the Beeb is an anatomy of how he became a rock star.

The first session here (and second, historically) was recorded for Peel in May 1968, and finds Bowie in romantic mode, though bigger ideas are taking shape: the swoony "London Bye, Ta-Ta" characterizes the influx of immigrant communities to London as two lovers who don't make it. "Karma Man" and "Silly Boy Blue" both deal with Buddhism, but the latter gives the very timely fixation a Bowie spin, as he empathizes with a monk who doesn't fit in with his community. By October 1969, there's been a perceptible shift in attitudes: "Let Me Sleep Beside You" and "Janine" are tougher in sound and spirit.

Bowie's February 1970 session with the Tony Visconti Trio—aka the Hype—starts inauspiciously. He covers Jacques Brel's "Amsterdam" competently, and the acoustic "God Knows I'm Good" is a tedious ditty about a woman being caught shoplifting. But then comes "The Width of a Circle," and Mick Ronson's first-ever performance with Bowie. Maybe the subtlety of their work together here is a sign of a tentative new relationship: Ronson's riff is much more muted and ingrained in the mix than it would be on record, but still gorgeous. Their dynamic picks up steam on "Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed," as Bowie's frustrations at the loss of his father preempt a brilliantly wiggy Ronson solo.

As David Cavanagh's excellent book on John Peel's sessions points out, Bowie was hardly gigging even by 1971, when he had had a bona fide hit with "Space Oddity": "He doesn't have a regular band, his albums don't sell, and he's prone to being in a state of artistic flux." So the hour-long, June 1971 Radio 1 performance by David Bowie and Friends at London's Paris Theater was a huge showcase, preempting the release of Hunky Dory that December. Never mind the size of his ensemble, however; the highlight is a box-fresh, solo rendition of "Kooks," played acoustically just four days after it was written to herald the birth of his son, Zowie.

Bowie always called himself a "tasteful thief," and the permeability of his brain becomes clear on the third LP of the set, which deals with late 1971 and early 1972. Bowie had just returned from New York, where he met Andy Warhol, Lou Reed, and Iggy Pop. In early 1972, his covers of "Waiting for the Man" and "White Light/White Heat" are a little unconvincing, but no matter; the transformative experience has brought out a new ability in Bowie to really sell his own songs live as he never had before, ramping up his infectious, virile energy. You can hear the Spiders From Mars hitting their stride, and a lizardy streetwise quality appearing in Bowie's voice.

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars

Of course, all this nascent rockstardom comes to a head in The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, which Bowie previewed live on Radio 1 a month prior to release in June '72, across two separate sessions. By this point, "Starman" had been DJ Johnnie Walker's single of the week, which earned it daily plays, and allowed Bowie to delve a little further back into his catalog for hidden greatest hits: "Space Oddity," and "Changes," where Ronson transforms the original's hammered piano riff. But in the here and now, Bowie's ravishing yowl makes an early appearance on "Moonage Daydream," and you hear him start to reach outward, beyond the intimacy of radio into the visceral performer he would become. His May 22, 1972 session ends with—what else—"Rock'n'Roll Suicide," the last song he would play live on the BBC for 19 years.

As ever, nothing was accidental. Beyond the vinyl reissue of Bowie at the Beeb, Bowie reached out to the BBC one last time before he died. His last round of Twitter follows included BBC 6Music and some of the station's flagship DJs (along with a cheeky parody account: God). The new music industry ecosystems mean that bands are no longer built up by single organizations in the same way that Bowie was by the BBC at the turn of the 1970s, which made the day of his death all the more remarkable. Like thousands of other Brits, I found out by listening to BBC 6Music DJs Shaun Keaveny and Matt Everitt announce the news at 7:08 a.m. Although they were clearly grasping for words, Keaveny landed on the perfect summation of what happens when the value of patronage is recognized and repaid: "David Bowie's music is an absolutely central tenet of what we do here at 6Music." Bowie at the Beeb doesn't always make for essential listening, but it represents a foundational part of British culture, and upholds the importance of public broadcasting as a mutually beneficial relationship.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21558-bowie-at-the-beeb/