'David Live' by David Bowie

When Bowie toured Ziggy, he was accompanied by four people – a guitarist, a bassist, a drummer, and a pianist. By the time he was taking the Diamond Dogs tour across America, he was heading a band of eleven. As a result, the live album of the tour is, in parts, busier, fuller, more bloated, and messier than earlier live recordings.

The bulk of the album is material taken from ‘Diamond Dogs’ and ‘Aladdin Sane’, Bowie’s most recent two albums (sensibly discounting ‘Pin-Ups’). This is the material that works best. ‘1984’ makes for an excellent start, and ‘Sweet Thing’ and ‘Big Brother’ sound fantastic. The title track from ‘Aladdin Sane’ is successfully reworked for the stage, and ‘Time’ and ‘Watch That Man’ both benefit from the additional musicians.

Older songs are more of a mixed bag. ‘Suffragette City’ works well as a riot of noise, and ‘Space Oddity’ makes the transition well, but ‘The Width Of The Circle’ sounds more bloated than usual (and it’s bloated enough in the first place), and ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide’ is drained of its power by too much woodwind making it something of an anti-climax.

Most interesting are the two cover tracks. ‘Knock On Wood’ is reasonably disposable, but it carries a good sense of fun. ‘Here Today, Gone Tomorrow’ is something a departure – a more soul-influenced song which is the only real indication up to this point of the ‘Young Americans’ sound that was to come. As the tour progressed, these influences would apparently play a much more significant role, and it’s a shame, retrospectively, that the album wasn’t recorded during this later period.

As a result, this album can’t claim to be essential, or even mildly important, but it’s a decent enough listen with some good moments.