David Bowie
Santa Monica '72

THE REVIEW

Journey into the Heart of the Ziggy Era.

Originally circulated as a bootleg recording of the electrifying concert held by the White Duke on the evening of 10/20/72 in an overcrowded Civic Auditorium in Los Angeles, "Santa Monica '72" was officially released only upon the premature death (1994) of Mick Ronson, the talented guitarist and skilled arranger of the Spiders From Mars. There's no need to dwell on the blow that the rarity of the album has dealt to Bowie fans like me, forced to seek out the only document of the captivating live performances of the Ziggy Era in repeated listens to the double album "Ziggy Stardust-The Motion Picture Soundtrack". If the latter might seem marred by the overly clean and intrusive mixing done by Tony Visconti's "magic fingers" and the more famous "David Live" is compromised by an interpretation too markedly soulful for purists, the album I have the privilege to review presents neither flaw: it is a work that captures unabated the explosive energy expressed by David and company in the heart of the Ziggy Era.

Despite the not brilliant audio quality sometimes giving the listener the sensation of following the concert by eavesdropping from the door, the tracks from "Hunky Dory", "Ziggy Stardust", "Aladdin Sane" and "The Man Who Sold The World" enjoy here the renewed and spontaneous vitality of a concert not certainly (at the time) intended to provide material for official releases. The apocalyptic climate of disintegration that runs through the entire "Ziggy Stardust-The Motion Picture Soundtrack", a recording that portrays the spectacular death of Ziggy brilliantly staged on stage by a Bowie already distracted by American plastic soul, finds no place here. The protagonist is instead a Ziggy at his maximum splendor, backed by the compelling talent of one of the greatest guitarists of all time and the battered skins of Woodmansey.

The voice of a mysterious speaker overwhelmed by the hysterical screams of a delirious audience and there emerges Ronson's tortured Les Paul spitting out the tense riff of "Hang On To Yourself": this is a much rawer and punkier version than the original recorded in the studio, punctuated by the pounding rhythm of Woodmansey's percussion and Bowie's rowdy vocal performance. Worth mentioning as well is the clever reinterpretation of "Andy Warhol": the track from "Hunky Dory" is here performed with an unprecedentedly delicate guitar arrangement and an almost whispered singing style that does far better justice to the piece than the acerbically ironic cut of the original. Not to be overlooked is the brilliant interpretation of the Velvet-esque "Waiting For The Man", adorned with the most virtuosic guitar performance on the album and rendered seductive by a magnificently baritone vocal interpretation. An implicit nod to the Velvet Underground can be found in the brisk execution of "Queen Bitch". Compared to the version on "Hunky Dory", the song benefits from a far more ramshackle rhythm, a testament to the pronounced protopunk inclination never dormant in the style of the Spiders. A preview of the imminent "Aladdin Sane" is offered with "The Jean Genie", a mocking visit to American Hard blues seemingly designed to conquer the States.

Overall, the skillful sparing use of keyboards and the almost total absence of brass impart to tracks like "Life On Mars", "Moonage Daydream", "Changes" and "Five Years" a sincere naïveté and freshness hardly detectable in other official Duke live albums, against which "Santa Monica '72" holds its own perfectly.