David Bowie 1973-03-10 Long Beach ,Arena.
Sound Quality Rating
01. Ode To Joy Intro.flac
02. Hang On To Yourself.flac
03. Ziggy Stardust.flac
04. Changes.flac
05. Moonage Daydream.flac
06. Whats That Man.flac
07. Panic In Detroit.flac
08. Aladdin Sane (1913-1938-197?).flac
09. My Death (Jacques Brel).flat
10. Width Of A Circle.flac
11. Time.flac
12. Five Years.flac
13. Surffragette City.flac
Label: No label
Audio Source: audience
Lineage: Digital transfer from 2 bootleg sources :
Total running time: 0:59:01
Sound Quality : Much noise ,dull ,but still good listened to
Attendance: 6.200
Artwork:
Note : Digital transfer from 2 bootleg sources (Audience recording): ‘The All American Bowie’ & ‘My Radio Sweetheart‘
After Suffragette City Bowie calls out “Thank you,goodnight!”.
On an abnormally cold Saturday evening of March 10 1973, Bowie ventured on stage as Ziggy Stardust and thrilled punters with an adventurous 16 song set list to almost 6,200 fans and curiosity seekers.
At the time Bowie was a genuine one a kind. In an age where most, if not all his contemporaries were denim clad prog rockers the American market was perhaps still not ready for something as diverse as Ziggy Stardust.
It didn’t stop Bowie playing to the larger venues, thanks mainly to shrewd management and marketing.
“Memories are fading.
The view we had was pretty good. But by then, Bowie was such a mainstream megastar that the audience was noisy and a bit rowdy, especially compared to the Santa Monica show
of the year before, when the audience was too busy picking their jaws up from the floor to make even a peep. Ronson was the best part of the show, totally on fire. I felt that Bowie was either drugged out
or exhausted, but professional enough to pull off a reasonable performance.
By the time he came out to solo for “My Death” I remember him kind of staring out into space as if his mind was on what to eat
from the hotel minibar later. Really not a bad show, but compared to Santa Monica 1972, which still sends electric jolts through my brain 42 years later, it was a bit of a letdown back then.
The funny thing is, Long Beach’s acoustics were so awful that it sounded like listening to the show through an earful of mud. The tape sounded 1000 times better than being there.
By the way, the bootlegger paid $100 for the tape. My understanding is that he butchered it because he, personally, didn’t care for Bowie and didn’t think it was worth putting out the whole concert as a double LP.
That’s how bootleggers were back in the innocent days of the 1970s, when their catalogs were governed more by personal taste than by greed.
Interesting about Cygnet Committee. But the original bootleg had an ugly “arsty-farsty” cover designed by a friend, consisting of a collage of photos (which he took at the show) and lettering cut out from newspapers.
Lord knows where the photos might be now.”
and to a question if he has any other recording of this period:
“Used to have plenty of tapes from many LA 1970s shows. No more. At one point I lost interest, and all my tapes, co-owned by a friend, were in his garage and ruined in a flood decades ago.”
It’s a pity that we obviously will never get the full show or a better version of the recording so grab this one here or get the untouched copies which have been upped to mwp not long ago.
I asked MossGarden if he would like to do a new CD cover for this and he was pleased to create one. The cover (front and back) is attached here and he surely will upload it to the mwp artwork sector.
The used photos are actually from the show.
Complete setlist (recording length 59:06 min.)
01 – Ode to Joy intro (cuts in)
02 – Hang On to Yourself
03 – Ziggy Stardust
04 – Changes
05 – Moonage Daydream
John, I’m Only Dancing*
06 – Watch That Man
07 – Panic In Detroit
08 – Aladdin Sane (1913-1938-197?) (fades in)
09 – My Death (Jacques Brel)
10 – The Width of a Circle
Space Oddity*
The Jean Genie*
11 – Time
12 – Five Years (fades in right after start of song)
Let’s Spend the Night Together (The Rolling Stones)*
Starman*
13 – Suffragette City
Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide*
* not included in recording
David Bowie Tour Band – The Ziggy Stardust Tour
Crew
To improve and especially to unify the sound of both sources I did the following:
1. EQ of all tracks. I lifted the treble of the AAB tracks and the bass of the MRS tracks.
2. Remove most obvious clicks and crackle with the help of Magix Music Cleaning Lab.
3. The sound level was balanced.
also
4. The running order of the tracks was arranged as in the original concert (source: setlist.fm)
This show and also in this combination of sources was on dime before but this is the first time that the songs were EQ’d and the running order was corrected.
So I think this is now quite listenable as already the sound of the 2 sources was not too bad.
I would give it now a VG rating (check samples of both sources). The show itself is great. Here is a comment froma previous upload:
“Performance is fantastic. Rono as usual is on fire and Garson’s solo in Aladin Sane is insane. Well worth the download.”
This torrent was uploaded to dime before and as a great surprise to me the guy who made the recording in 1973 (billywiz) gave the following comment:
“Cool. It was my tape that was used for the All American Bowie LP. Which the bootlegger then butchered. We used professional mics (forget which) and a crappy Sony cassette recorder.
We were in the middle left section, about a third of the way back from the stage, as I recall. The acoustics at Long Beach were always atrocious, and I never thought that show was
one of Bowie’s better performances, so I didn’t really care when I lost my tape a thousand years ago. But this nicely-corrected set is much appreciated.”
And on my question if he had still some memories of the gig:
Hello Jane,
It’s fantastic that you got this concert on a bootleg, I personally think this is a very nice concert. Photos are always welcome, you can send any you want to [email protected]
Hello, I was gifted many years ago a bootleg on red vinyl from this very concert. The cover as described with lettering & various pictures. Sound quality bad but after reading the above makes more sense now. I have pictures but unable to attach to this comment. Hope to be in touch & find out more about this LP.