Customer Reviews

Stage

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Aside from the fact that this tour recording captured Bowie at his finest "stage" of his career (with his best touring band by far), it also should serve as a blueprint for further re-releases from singers or bands of the era.

The re-mastering is extraoridnary and blows the old RCA vinly and even the Ryco reissue out of the water. Restoring the original running order of the songs is also a bonus as is the two tracks never before released......Dennis Davis was an extraordinary drummer and Adrian Belew was so far advanced for his time it's truly remarkable to listen to his playing now; he was proof that you didn't have to recycle blues riffs endlessly in order to be in the spotlight.

In short this is like a time capsule which allows you to go back in time to 1978 and listen to one of the worlds most influential artists at arguably his creative peak backed by one awesome and compelling band......all in state of the art digital sound circa 2005.

I can't say enough about this album. Simply the best.

This CD was unavailable for many years. It is superbly remastered with fantastic classics, the best being "Station To Station", "Heroes" (a rousing guitar piece) and all the "Ziggy Stardust" classics. If you've ever wondered how a slow song like "Warsawza" could have ever been good in concert - just take a listen. It's hypnotizing! This double CD used to be tough to find, but this new remastered editon is fantastic - it is a welcome addition to Bowie's 'live' material. The addition of "Stay" and "Be My Wife" are more than welcome!

Bowie was in the prime of his art rock phase at the time of this recording, co-writing with Eno and King Crimson's Robert Fripp. Stage captures 3 different phases of his career in one recording. The reworkings of the "Ziggy Stardust" material as well as the Station To Station" period are just plain brilliant. "Heroes" is sung much more passionately here than on the original studio recording. David's voice was at it's prime here. It had deepend just a bit, but his falsetto was very much intact.

The only guitar player capable of doing Fripp's parts any justice is Adian Belew. This is actually when I first heard of him. He's an incredible guitarist who can coax sounds out of a guitar like nobody on Earth. It's no wonder that Fripp would later seek him out to reform King Crimson with two guitarists.

Now on to my complaint. Why on Earth would Ryko drop this from their catalog? In my book, this is essential Bowie. It deserves to be available. If anyone out there who has not heard this disc has an opportunity to purchase it used, don't blow it!

The thing that normally makes Bowie live albums (both major label releases and bootlegs) so worthwhile is Bowie's experimentation with new arrangements and re-interpretations. Of all of the live Bowie recordings, Stage stays the closest to the original studio versions, and yet is a real gem.

There are exceptions, like "What in the World" which begins at an odd, leisurely tempo then suddenly bursts into a high energy head-long rush that reveals the brilliance of both halves.

"Beauty and the Beast" and "Blackout" both benefit greatly from the energy of live performance. I much prefer these to the studio versions. "Stay" allows Adrian Belew to stretch out on guitar and deliver a solo that matches his best work with Talking Heads and King Crimson. "Station to Station" is very satisfying, though the arrangement differs little from the original.

The album does have its low points. Despite a great performance by the band, Bowie's toss-off vocal on "Heroes" makes this the poorest version I've heard. And though Bowie turns in a brilliant job on "Ziggy Stardust" the keyboard heavy backing weakens it. "TVC15" comes off a little rushed. And I could do without "Alabama Song" altogether.

But the live versions of Bowie's envelope pushing atmospheric and ambient pieces are brilliant. The Ziggy Stardust pieces (with the exception of the title track) are better than the live versions with the original Spiders from Mars.

Bowie's live albums go way beyond merely a document of the live event; they are valid albums in their own right. The vinyl version took advantage of this by making each side into an short coherent album (combining all of the instrumentals together on one side for example), rather than reproducing the running order of the show. In the CD form, it's easy to rearrange this album into a more satisfying sequence, or simply let it play as a concert.

Recorded right in the middle of his most adventurous period (the mid point between "Low"/"Heroes" and "Lodger"/"Scary Monsters") Bowie shows off both his artistic talent and his musicianship on Stage. It makes a nice counter point to Bowie the performer on David Live. And the guitar/synth dominated band (featuring Belew and Carlos Alomar) on Stage stands as a brilliant contrast to the keyboard and sax heavy David Live line-up.

I purchased both "David Live" and "Stage" on the date of their rerelease. The remastering of "Stage" points out why "David Live" was such a disappointment, and why my value judgement of "Stage" is two stars higher than "David Live."

Vocally, on "Stage," David is in terrific form. His singing sounds effortless and unaffected, even when he bangs his way through Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's "Alabama Song." The songs include Bowie at one of his artistic peak periods, with the albums "Low" "Heroes" and "Station to Station" informing the language of his music at the time. He also had two incredible guitarists on this tour, Carlos Alomar and Adrian Belew. Roger Powell (on loan from Todd Rundgren and Utopia) put the life into Bowie/Eno synthesizer epics like "Art Decade" and "Warszawa." Engineer Tony Visconti - as he states in the new disc's liner notes - approached recording "Stage" as if he were miking a studio album. And to that end, the horrific technical glitches that so mar "David Live" are completely absent from this album.

An additional benefit is the restoration of the concert's running order to include to leftover songs "Stay" and "Be My Wife." These repairs makes "Stage" flow more organically than the original album did. When you think of Bowie in concert from the late seventies, this is probably what you would have imagined. From the ominous opening of "Warszawa" to the sing-along catchiness at the end of "TVC-15," "Stage" is prime David Bowie. Highly recommended, and infinitely better than "David Live."

As anyone familiar with the trajectory of Bowie's career would know, the threshold he crossed with Fripp and Eno and the trio of records they did took Bowie out of, not just his addictions, but his pop-star status and placed him squarely in the serious artist with something to say. This tour flexed those new muscles with such conviction that it is almost hard to believe that the Bowie on LIVE AT THE TOWER is the same guy here.
This is about when I stopped dismissing him as a chic-star. His music had something more to it besides the glamour. The star of this recording, however, is not Bowie, Belew, Alomar or any of the other superlative musicians. It is Tony Visconti. His engineering and production skills advanced the art of the LIVE recording with this disc as it had not ever been advanced before. Quite a statement when you review the material, the musicians and the performance. But make no mistake about it, the effort made to record this was of the highest calibre and Visconti delivered a Live recording for the ages.
Visconti wrote the liner notes for this re-master and they are informative, to say the least. Narrowly escaping the money-grubbing clutches of Madison Square Garden, the shows were recorded eslewhere and Visconti captured the audience as brilliantly as he did Bowie. This set absolutely crackles with surprise and energy. Visconti remains one of Bowie's trusted producers and with good reason. He knows what David is looking for and he finds it. Enjoy this remaster. It is positively terrific and it should merit Visconti's inclusion in any producer and engineer's Hall of Fame.

This is one of Bowie's most criticized albums. I never understood why, considering the quality of the recording and the talent of the band, which included Carlos Alomar, one of the most important figures in Bowie's work, along with King Crimson member Adrian Belew (who seems to have performed with many important groups, the Talking Heads among them), and an incredible rhythm section, which included George Murray hammering the bass.

Tony Visconti, the producer, made some good points in the liner notes, among them that he wanted the quality of this recording to really shine, so he was very careful with microphone placement, even using four mics for the crowd, initially done for quadraphonic sound, but it now helps today with the surround mix. He also mentioned that there are NO overdubs, and only one edit to make sure "Station to Station" was a good take (he put two performances together). The overall result is a crisp and nearly perfect sounding concert.

Bowie's vocals are quite good, almost perfect, but that's Bowie. Bowie's vocal on "Heroes" is stunning, arguably better than the original, and the ending of "Ziggy Stardust", where he holds the note, is amazing. As Visconti has put it in the past, he's a one or two take singer. He can't help that he sings well. So I never understood the critics who said his vocals were too precise. Does he need to cough? Sing off key?

As for the band, they were on fire. Adrian Belew's guitar work was incredible, especially on "Heroes." Another song improved live is "What in the World", which benefits from a slower reggae swing in the beginning. I also love the electric violin on the instrumental "Warszawa". Give Bowie credit for playing his unusual instrumentals live, considering the impatience of American audiences; personally, I think they add to the atmosphere the show. It was a wise decision to re-sequence the tracks in the order of the concert (past versions were chronological).

One of the gems is the previously unreleased "Stay". The band really shines on this track. I wonder why it wasn't included on past versions.

No, I'm not a fan of "Alabama Song", "TVC 15" is a bit fast, and I do wish the guitars were a little more up front in the mix, but these are minor criticisms. This is an overlooked album in Bowie's catalog. Check it out.

(Also, if you can find the three disc version of "Bowie at the Beeb", disc three is from a stunning concert he gave in 2000.)

By far the better of David Bowie's two live albums, STAGE is an impressive document of the chameleonic rocker's 1978 North American tour, with an outstandingly tight band helping the Maestro to recreate some of his most carefully constructed studio recordings in concert. Their whelming success in this endeavor is indeed a pleasure to hear.
Focusing on material from the ZIGGY STARTDUST, STATION TO STATION, LOW and "HEROES" LPs, STAGE can't exactly be called a balanced retrospective of Bowie's career. Nevertheless, it's obvious right from the ominous opening chords of "Warszawa" that a great deal of thought went into selecting the material for these shows, with a keen and at times surprising intuition for what would work onstage. The disco-minimalist instrumentals Bowie crafted in collaboration with Brian Eno sound just great rubbing up against a faithfully reproduced half of ZIGGY, allowing the artist's progression to shine forth in clear, logical and above all tuneful relief. Said artist sings beautifully throughout, and Adrian Belew's effects-laden guitar work soars over the consistently strong rhythm section of Bowie stalwarts Carlos Alomar, George Murray and Dennis Davis. Anyone who loves David Bowie's classic 1970s work should consider STAGE - now expanded and rearranged into the original concert sequence - an essential element of his or her collection.

In April of 1978, I had the pleasure of seeing this tour at the Milwaukee arena ( when Rock N' roll Suicide was still in the set list). I sat in the second row, shot about 150 photographs and listened in amazement to one of the best concerts I have ever attended. Bowie's voice has never sounded better, and the band assembled for this tour was incredible. What was really impressive at the time was that Bowie was showcasing some decidedly noncommercial music from Low and "Heroes", and it sounded so good in concert.

When the original LP of Stage was released, I was disappointed because it failed to recapture the magic of the show. The resequencing of the songs prevented the listener from experiencing the momentum that built throughout the show.

This release rectifies that problem. Lovingly remastered by Tony Visconti (who also contributes some great liner notes here), this release sounds fantastic, and the songs are back in their concert running order. The version of "Heroes" on this CD is my favorite version of that song. However, to start picking out individual tunes is to be redundant. From the opening chords of "Warzawa" to the final "Oh Oh Oh" of TVC15, this is a great record of a great tour.

This CD was unavailable for many years. It is superbly recorded with fantastic classics, the best being "Station To Station", "Heroes" (a rousing guitar piece) and all the "Ziggy Stardust" classics. If you've ever wondered how a slow song like "Warsawza" could have ever been good in concert - just take a listen. It's hypnotizing! This double CD is tough to find and will not last long here at Amazon, so I recommend getting it while you can.