The 'Mercury' Demos
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The 'Mercury' Demos
''The 'Mercury' Demos'' is a box set by English musician David Bowie, released as a vinyl album in May 2019. It features ten songs in mono, demo form performed by Bowie with his friend John Hutchinson in early 1969. In November 2019, the compilation was released on CD as part of the ''Conversation Piece'' box set. Background Like the box sets ''Spying Through a Keyhole'' and ''Clareville Grove Demos'', the LP was released to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Bowie's 1969 album ''David Bowie''. The "Space Oddity" demo had already been released in an edited form as the first track of the 1989 box set '' Sound + Vision''. The box sets liner notes suggest that the tapes were recorded at David's apartment at Clareville Grove, South Kensington, sometime between the first studio attempt at "Space Oddity" on February 2, 1969, and David's move to Beckham in mid-April.Bowie – Mercury Demos Liner Notes, 2019, Parlophone Parlophone Records Limited (also known as Parlophone Rec ...
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David Bowie
David Robert Jones (8 January 194710 January 2016), known professionally as David Bowie ( ), was an English singer-songwriter and actor. A leading figure in the music industry, he is regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. Bowie was acclaimed by critics and musicians, particularly for his innovative work during the 1970s. His career was marked by reinvention and visual presentation, and his music and stagecraft had a significant impact on popular music. Bowie developed an interest in music from an early age. He studied art, music and design before embarking on a professional career as a musician in 1963. "Space Oddity", released in 1969, was his first top-five entry on the UK Singles Chart. After a period of experimentation, he re-emerged in 1972 during the glam rock era with his flamboyant and androgynous alter ego Ziggy Stardust (character), Ziggy Stardust. The character was spearheaded by the success of Bowie's single "Starman (song), Starma ...
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Parlophone
Parlophone Records Limited (also known as Parlophone Records and Parlophone) is a German–British record label founded in Germany in 1896 by the Carl Lindström Company as Parlophon. The British branch of the label was founded on 8 August 1923 as the Parlophone Company Limited (the Parlophone Co. Ltd.), which developed a reputation in the 1920s as a jazz record label. On 5 October 1926, the Columbia Graphophone Company acquired Parlophone's business, name, logo, and release library, and merged with the Gramophone Company on 31 March 1931 to become Electric & Musical Industries Limited (EMI). George Martin joined Parlophone in 1950 as assistant to Oscar Preuss (who had set up the London branch of the company in 1923), the label manager, taking over as manager in 1955. Martin produced and released a mix of recordings, including by comedian Peter Sellers, pianist Mrs Mills, and teen idol Adam Faith. In 1962, Martin signed the Beatles, a beat group from Liverpool who earlier ...
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Clareville Grove Demos
''Clareville Grove Demos'' is a box set EP by English musician David Bowie, released posthumously in May 2019. The set includes three 7" vinyl records containing six songs performed by Bowie with his friend John Hutchinson in early 1969. All songs in the collection are presented in mono, demo form. In November, all songs were released on CD on the ''Conversation Piece'' box set. Background Like ''Spying Through a Keyhole'', the box set was released to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Bowie's 1969 album ''David Bowie''. Two of the six demos, "Space Oddity" and "An Occasional Dream", had already been released in 2009 on the 40th anniversary reissue of that album. The material was recorded in January 1969 to promote Bowie & Hutch to potential record labels, as David had just been dropped by Deram.David Bowie With John 'Hutch' Hutchinson - Clareville Grove Demos Liner Notes, 2019, Parlophone Parlophone Records Limited (also known as Parlophone Records and Parlophone ...
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Conversation Piece (box Set)
''Conversation Piece'' is a box set by English musician David Bowie, released in November 2019, which contains five CDs featuring recordings made in 1968–1969. The box set includes home demos and BBC sessions, as well as two mixes of the 1969 album ''Space Oddity'': the original 1969 stereo mix, and a new 2019 mix produced by Tony Visconti specifically for the set. The release of the 1969 mix is a repressing of the 2009 remastered CD, which was chosen due to its being mastered to match the original LP release, a priority that was not taken for Parlophone's in-house remaster created for the ''Five Years (1969–1973)'' box set in 2015. Most of the demo tracks had been released earlier in 2019 in the vinyl box sets ''Spying Through a Keyhole'', ''Clareville Grove Demos'', and ''The 'Mercury' Demos''. The 2019 mix of ''Space Oddity'' was also given a standalone release on CD and LP and on digital download and streaming services, concurrently with the box set. Recording dates T ...
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Monaural
Monaural or monophonic sound reproduction (often shortened to mono) is sound intended to be heard as if it were emanating from one position. This contrasts with stereophonic sound or ''stereo'', which uses two separate audio channels to reproduce sound from two microphones on the right and left side, which is reproduced with two separate loudspeakers to give a sense of the direction of sound sources. In mono, only one loudspeaker is necessary, but, when played through multiple loudspeakers or headphones, identical signals are fed to each speaker, resulting in the perception of one-channel sound "imaging" in one sonic space between the speakers (provided that the speakers are set up in a proper symmetrical critical-listening placement). Monaural recordings, like stereo ones, typically use multiple microphones fed into multiple channels on a recording console, but each channel is " panned" to the center. In the final stage, the various center-panned signal paths are usually mixed d ...
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Demo (music)
A demo (shortened from "demonstration") is a song or group of songs typically recorded for limited circulation or for reference use, rather than for general public release. A demo is a way for a musician to approximate their ideas in a fixed format, such as cassette tape, compact disc, or digital audio files, and to thereby pass along those ideas to record labels, producers, or other artists. Musicians often use demos as quick sketches to share with bandmates or arrangers, or simply for personal reference during the songwriting process; in other cases, a songwriter might make a demo to send to artists in hopes of having the song professionally recorded, or a publisher may need a simple recording for publishing or copyright purposes. Background Demos are typically recorded on relatively crude equipment such as "boom box" cassette recorders, small four- or eight-track machines, or on personal computers with audio recording software. Songwriters' and publishers' demos are recorded ...
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Pitchfork (magazine)
''Pitchfork'' (formerly ''Pitchfork Media'') is an American online music publication (currently owned by Condé Nast) that was launched in 1995 by writer Ryan Schreiber as an independent music blog. Schreiber started Pitchfork while working at a record store in suburban Minneapolis, and the website earned a reputation for its extensive coverage of indie rock music. It has since expanded and covers all kinds of music, including pop. Pitchfork was sold to Condé Nast in 2015, although Schreiber remained its editor-in-chief until he left the website in 2019. Initially based in Minneapolis, Pitchfork later moved to Chicago, and then Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Its offices are currently located in One World Trade Center alongside other Condé Nast publications. The site is best known for its daily output of music reviews but also regularly reviews reissues and box sets. Since 2016, it has published retrospective reviews of classics, and other albums that it had not previously reviewed ...
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Spying Through A Keyhole
''Spying Through a Keyhole'' is a box set by English musician David Bowie, released in April 2019. The set includes four 7" Phonograph record, vinyl records containing nine songs written and performed by Bowie during 1968, the era in which he was writing for his album ''David Bowie (1969 album), David Bowie'' (1969). All songs in the collection are presented in Monaural, mono, Demo (music), demo form. Background Announced in January 2019, the box set was released to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Bowie's 1969 album ''David Bowie''. The title is taken from one of the included, previously unknown songs called "Love Is All Around". Some of the songs in the collection ("London Bye, Ta-Ta", "In The Heat of the Morning", and "Space Oddity") have been released before, but not in this form. A brief excerpt from "Space Oddity" is believed to be the first demo of the song that Bowie ever recorded. The set includes early photos of Bowie, including one taken in his friend (and freq ...
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David Bowie (1969 Album)
''David Bowie'' (commonly known as ''Space Oddity'') is the second studio album by English musician David Bowie. After the commercial failure of his 1967 self-titled debut album, Bowie acquired a new manager, Kenneth Pitt, who commissioned a promotional film in hopes of widening the artist's audience. For the film, Bowie wrote a new song, titled "Space Oddity", a tale about a fictional astronaut. The song earned Bowie a contract with Mercury Records, who agreed to finance production of a new album, with Pitt hiring Tony Visconti to produce. Due to his dislike of the song, Visconti appointed engineer Gus Dudgeon to produce a re-recording for release as a lead single, while he produced the rest of the album. Recording for the new album began in June 1969 and continued until early October, at Trident Studios in London. It featured an array of collaborators, including Herbie Flowers, Rick Wakeman, Terry Cox and the band Junior's Eyes. Departing from the music hall style of Bowie' ...
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Sound + Vision (box Set)
In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave, through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid. In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' by the brain. Only acoustic waves that have frequencies lying between about 20 Hz and 20 kHz, the audio frequency range, elicit an auditory percept in humans. In air at atmospheric pressure, these represent sound waves with wavelengths of to . Sound waves above 20 kHz are known as ultrasound and are not audible to humans. Sound waves below 20 Hz are known as infrasound. Different animal species have varying hearing ranges. Acoustics Acoustics is the interdisciplinary science that deals with the study of mechanical waves in gasses, liquids, and solids including vibration, sound, ultrasound, and infrasound. A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an ''acoustician'', while someone working in the field of acoustical e ...
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Space Oddity
"Space Oddity" is a song by English singer-songwriter David Bowie. It was first released on 11 July 1969 by Philips Records as a 7-inch single, then as the opening track of his second studio album ''David Bowie''. After the commercial failure of his self-titled debut album in 1967, Bowie's manager Kenneth Pitt commissioned '' Love You till Tuesday'', a promotional film intended to introduce Bowie to a larger audience. For the film, Bowie wrote "Space Oddity", a tale about a fictional astronaut named Major Tom; its title and subject matter were partly inspired by Stanley Kubrick's '' 2001: A Space Odyssey'' (1968) and Bowie's feelings of alienation at that point in his career. One of the most musically complex songs Bowie had written up to that point, it represented a change from the music hall-influenced sound of his debut to a sound akin to psychedelic folk and inspired by the Bee Gees. "Space Oddity" was demoed in early 1969 before the ''Love You till Tuesday'' ve ...
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Lesley Duncan
Lesley Cox (née Duncan; 12 August 1943 – 12 March 2010) was an English singer-songwriter, best known for her work during the 1970s. She received much airplay on British radio stations such as BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 2, but never achieved greater commercial success, in part because of her unwillingness to chase stardom, as well as crippling stage fright. Early life Duncan was born in Stockton-on-Tees on 12 August 1943, and left school while only 14 years old. At 19, while working in a London coffee bar, she and her brother were placed on weekly retainers by a music publisher. Within a year, Duncan had signed her first recording contract, with EMI, and appeared in the film ''What a Crazy World''. Career "Love Song" Considered one of Britain's first female singer-songwriters, her songs included "Everything Changes" and "Sing Children Sing", and the song for which she is best known, "Love Song". Elton John recorded a duet with Duncan of the song, similar to her solo version, ...
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