David Bowie – Bowie at the Beeb (Virgin)

“Out of sight, out of mind” is a regrettable malady I suffer from all too often as a music listener. I was a big Bowie fan in my late teens and the crown in my modest collection was a Ryko cassette copy of Ziggy Stardust, played ad infinitum on a cheap Sony boom box, often to my Dad’s vociferous chagrin. Somewhere along the way, I lost the tape or maybe it broke, I can’t remember which. Years passed and I kept meaning to reacquire the album on disc, but every time it cropped up in my consciousness, I’d always find myself dissuaded by Virgin’s exorbitant pricing scheme. The Ryko edition with its small cache of bonus tracks had long since fallen out of print into collector’s status. Enter Yourmusic.com and their complete line of RCA masters for six bucks a pop. Recognizing the bargain, I quickly parted with the coin for ZS, The Man Who Sold the World and this 2-disc collection gathering “the best” of Bowie’s voluminous work for the BBC. Too many highlights scroll by to detail in the short space here, among them rocking renderings of Chuck Berry’s “Almost Grown”, a pair of Velvet Underground staples and raucous takes on the best cuts from ZS. Instead, I’ll touch on the two versions of “Ziggy Stardust” that grace the second disc. Guitarist Mick Ronson earns MVP on both and practically every cut on which he appears. His fanged, fret-shredding sound, replete with scorching flange effects on the first take at the January ’72 session, ramps to a transcendent peak in equal parts glam and metal. It’s an exemplary candidate for air guitar ascendancy. The second take from four months later is more refined and in line with the iconic album version, but Ronson once again pulls the stops in a barrage of feedback-trailing riffs that infuse Bowie’s bitchy transgender vocals with even greater punch. It’s good to be back in the Thin White Duke loop after such a long hiatus and this set is a potent reminder of what I’ve missed.