David Bowie — Welcome To The Blackout (Live London '78) [RSD]

Limited Record store Day Exclusive 3xLP / Record Store Day 2018 Exclusive (latter word embossed), as per the silver hype sticker that appears on the bottom right hand corner of the shrink wrap. Trifold sleeve, black inner sleeves with plastic lining. / Recorded live by Tony Visconti with The Manor Mobile. Recording engineered by Jeremy Allom and Ken Capper Mixed by David Bowie and David Richards at Mountain Studios, Montreux, 17th - 22nd January, 1979
'Sound and Vision' and 'TVC 15' mixed by John Prestage at Air Studios, London. Recorded live at Earls Court, London, 30th June and 1st July, 1978. / Originally released as a Record Store Day exclusive in April 2018 but swiftly receiving a CD and digital release, Welcome to the Blackout (Live London '78) gathers 24 highlights from David Bowie's two-night stint at Earls Court on June 30 and July 1, 1978. Apart from "Sound and Vision" and "Be My Wife," which appeared on a 1995 compilation, this album consists of previously unreleased -- but heavily bootlegged -- live performances, all dating from the end of Bowie's 1978 tour. Stage, which came out a few months after this performance, captures the same tour, but Welcome to the Blackout isn't as stiff as that contemporaneously released double album. Bowie and band -- which includes guitarists Adrian Belew and Carlos Alomar, bassist George Murray, and drummer Dennis Davis, along with Roger Powell, a keyboardist who served in Todd Rundgren's Utopia -- are loose, sometimes rushing a tempo and sometimes settling into it, as they do on a louche "Heroes" that kicks off the record. The positioning of "Heroes" is telling: it's not here as a triumphant closer but a grooving keynote, setting the pace for a set where Bowie attempts to find the right balance between art and a party. He doesn't always get it right -- Powell tends to overwhelm on the suite of Ziggy Stardust numbers, painting everything with swathes of synths -- but the performance is invigorating even with its flaws. - allmusic