The return of the Thin White Duke: The deluxe edition of David Bowie’s ‘Station to Station’
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
Pop & Hiss’ list of things for you to do today:
1. Tell your mother you love her.
2. Freak out that there’s very little of summer left.
3. Obsess over something/someone you shouldn’t obsess about. Decide to stop obsessing.
4. Listen to David Bowie’s ‘Station to Station,’ streaming now on KRCW.
We’re suspicious of expertise, but it is our expert opinion that listening to Bowie’s 1976 magnum opus of strung-out future funk would be simply phenomenal for your day. From the opening stalk of the title track to the wounded clutch of the closing sentimentalist’s tune ‘Wild as the Wind,’ ‘Station to Station’ could be Bowie’s most focused work and probably the most unfortunately persuasive case for the merits of death-defying amounts of drug consumption.
The occasion for such splendid streaming? EMI will be releasing two bonus-crazy packages of ‘Station to Station’ on Sept. 28.
Of course, ‘Station to Station’ has been re-released lots of times now -- in 1985, 1991, 1999 and 2007. Surely, if some astrologer charted that, some dazzling movements would be obvious in the skies -- but that’s not stopping EMI from milking this alien baby again. The three-CD Special Edition features the album and audio from a March 1976 concert at Long Island’s Nassau Coliseum. But it’s the deluxe edition that includes a completist’s frenzy of bonus goods.
Some of the bounty that ‘Station to Station Deluxe’ shall yield:
‘Station to Station’ and ‘Live Nassau Coliseum ‘76’ on LP
‘Station to Station’ DVD audio
‘Station to Station’ 1985 RCA CD master
24-page booklet with never before seen photos
Backstage pass replica
Concert ticket replica
Replica fan club folder
Replica fan club membership card
And what can a person do with a replica fan club membership card besides keep it in a temperature-controlled nerd vault? We don’t really know, but in a dream world, it’d be good for some special cocktail created at Varnish or some other temple of mixology, offered on Sept. 28. We’re thinking something white and smoky, some kind of Space Age milk that gets you tipsy, but the kind of tipsy where you contemplate your child’s future in 2099, when she’s living in one of the great subdivisions of the moon. Can you get on that, Eric Alperin?
-- Margaret Wappler