I wasn’t planning to do
another edition of Moonage Daydream
this year due to lack of time, but had intended to make it a more regular thing
in the New Year. They take quite a while to write and record which is why the
series is as occasional as it is, the pressure to do this weekly or even
monthly would be enough to drive me insane. The podcasts I have done have done
reasonably well; Mixcloud doesn’t get a great deal of listeners compared to the
Internet Archive but Mixcloud is an easier thing to keep everything together in
one place. Thanks to my Twitter onslaughts I can generate quite a bit of
interest by advertising it to all of the Bowie fan pages I follow, along with
celebrities with either a connection to the great man or those who are well
known fans. The last edition was retweeted by the likes of Gary Kemp, Bob
Harris, Boy George, Simon Goddard, and Louder Than War.
After the last proper edition,
I put out a filler called All Covered in Bowie
and had intended to put fillers out to buy the time to create the next series
in the continuity. Even this didn’t amount to anything due to timing, although
I have had the idea to put live concert audio out that relates to the era that
the series is in. At the moment we are just after the Ziggy Stardust retirement
and coming up to the album Pin Ups, so
would need audio from then. I have quite a large bank of concert footage audio
so should probably put one out from that time.
As I said though, Moonage Daydream service will resume in 2014.
This morning I was listening
to BBC 6Music, (I don’t hold a grudge against them for their shortsightedness
in not commissioning The Sunday Alternative
despite it being a 6Music show in all aspects apart from the station it
broadcasts from), and found out about the discovery of a tape that David Bowie
made. He did a mock radio show to promote Pin Ups in
which he played the original versions of some of the tracks he performed on the
album, (for those who don’t know, Pin Ups was a
covers album of 1960s tunes that shaped Bowie’s influences), and talked about
London in the sixties. Very little has been written about why he did this, and
it only made one newspaper as far as I can tell. It’s likely that this short
address was to be sent out to radio stations to play instead of having to traipse
around on the promotional circuit, or perhaps it was for a radio station to
test his ability for doing a longer show. Capital Radio (by which I mean the
proper Capital Radio in London and not that shitty ‘same six songs, all day
long’ station that plays around the whole country) used to be very experimental
in its show output, so the idea of David Bowie guest-hosting a show wouldn’t be
that out of the ordinary.
However, nobody ever heard
this tape and it languished in an archive until a couple of years ago when it
was found by one of Bowie’s collectors. This raises the question of how was
this missed until recently when we all know by now what a hoarder David is,
surely he would have taken it or a copy of it home for his vast collection? I’m
surprised it wasn’t considered for the V&A this year, as it could have
formed part of the audio experience as you walked around the exhibition.
It got me thinking about how I
used to make radio tapes when I was a child, (most kids want to be on
television or be pop stars, I wanted to sit in a hot soundproofed room and talk
in between records), and how I don’t have any of those tapes now. I only have
myself to blame as I recorded over them to make room for other things, and at
the age of eight or nine a blank cassette made quite a hole in your pocket
money if you only wanted one use of it. In fact, I recorded over my homemade
radio shows with other homemade radio shows a lot of the time. Maybe the BBC
felt the same which is why they have so many Doctor Who,
Dad’s Army, Hancock’s Half Hour, Top Of The Pops and Not Only But Also sized gaps in their archive; because someone
only got enough pocket money to occasionally buy new tapes.
David Bowie’s self-made show
is an amazing find, and having heard it for myself I can only think it a shame
that he didn’t do more. In fact it’s fitting that BBC 6Music played it today,
as there is a station ideally suited to allowing him to do his own series.
The timing was also perfect
with regards the continuity of Moonage Daydream
as it falls at just the right time in the David Bowie story. With this in mind
I recorded a brand new edition today and uploaded it straight away. It normally
takes ages to write but this didn’t really require too much from me besides an introduction.
When you get a 6Music gig
David, remember who suggested it first!
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