LIVE NASSAU COLISEUM '76

Now available separately after receiving its official debut on the Who Can I Be Now? boxed set, this set finally gives a proper release to a stellar performance that had previously been widely bootlegged.

Quite simply, the Nassau Coliseum show from 1976 is absolutely brilliant. Most of Station to Station is played - all the songs but for Golden Years - and Bowie shows a deft hand at picking material from his albums from Hunky Dory up to Young Americans to complement the material, as well as a well-executed cover of Waiting For the Man (one of Bowie's Velvet Underground favourites). Yes co-founder Tony Kaye adds a little twist of his own on keyboards, and the band in general is on peak form; the sound quality is, by and large, excellent, save for a mild dip in quality during Life On Mars? and Five Years - those two songs being a quiet interlude in the middle of an otherwise fast-paced and cataclysmically loud show. The opening performance of Station to Station has to be heard to be believed.

What a fun album! The most exciting DB live collection you can find, in my opinion. The man himself is in great voice & in an even better mood, and his band simply smoke. Thanks to master drummer Dennis Davis (who does wonders throughout) the climactic third part of 'Station to Station' sounds incredibly funky, and let's not forget lead guitarist Stacey Heydon, who joined Bowie just for this tour and was never heard of thereafter. Who needs Earl Slick when you can have Heydon? In the hands of this particular band, 'Stay' sounds about three times as exciting as the original studio version, and Bowie's performance of 'Word on a Wing' (which I always skip when listening to STATION TO STATION) finally acquires the depth it so sorely needed. It's a pity the 1976 live band never attempted 'Wild is the Wind'; I would have loved to hear Carlos Alomar's elegant guitar stylistics, which also dominated the delightful 'Golden Years' - another '75/'76 tune that's missing here... Alomar seems to be taking a back seat; during the set's highlights (such as 'Queen Bitch', 'Panic in Detroit' and 'Diamond Dogs') it's Stacey Heydon's heavily distorted guitar that stands out. Tony Kaye gets to play the piano part that was devised for 'Life on Mars?' by his eventual successor in Yes - wonder how he felt about that? As you can imagine, he leaves out most of Rick Wakeman's rococo flourishes, and generally speaking his keyboard accompaniments are subtle but highly effective.

Are there any problems with this collection? Well, I guess you could claim that 'TVC15' goes on for a little too long (though it features a splendid little bass solo by George Murray) and the same probably goes for 'The Jean Genie', the final number... (And if I have to be perfectly honest, I should add I could never stand 'Rebel Rebel'.) But let's be grateful for what we've got! Was Bowie still in the throes of addiction when this was recorded? If so, you just can't tell; he sounds like a man who's fully in his element.