Last year for Halloween, I was playing in the Dudley Manlove Quartet and we were David Bowie which gave me the chance to dig into a little bit of his material for the first time. We would play a show on Halloween and for a set we would perform as a 'band'. Previous years we were the Talking Heads, the B52's, you get the idea.
Prior to last September, I had not spent any time listening to David Bowie - I could not even recall hearing one of his songs on the radio. The only thing I knew him from was Labryinth.
But now - I love his music. I only have his 'best of' cd's, I just have not dug any further to find some of his secret gems. Anyone know of any great ones? I love Hero, and Ashes to Ashes. Ashes to Ashes was a tricky one to pull of live, but I love that piano riff with the chorus and pitch bend. Totally awesome. The other thing I love is when you listen to these tracks on headphones, you can really hear the different stereo techniques that they use (for instance on Ziggy Stardust) and you can hear the mix - which is fantastic.
I have been listening to music lately and thinking about mixes because it is time for me to mix down my solo cd. Obviously, a solo piano w/ vocals cd is fairly simple to mix down, but there are still many different mic's to level out, and some parts that I added after the fact (pads, etc). I would recommend everyone listen to some David Bowie on headphones and just jam out for a while, but think about how reverb makes things sound further away from you, and how dry vocals in the left ear only give a certain effect, as well as doubled, tripled, quadrupled and quintupled voices on chorus'! Totally crazy, and masterful mixing on those tunes!
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