Changesbowie - Bowie, David (CD 1990)

It seems amazing to me now that it has been nearly ten years since that fateful fishing trip which saw me begin a day with one opinion about an artist and go to sleep that night with the seeds sown for a diametrically opposite point of view to assert itself.

Drop of the hat fishing expeditions to the nearby coastal town of Mandurah had become a regular fixture for myself and my friends David and Jamie. Mandurah was nearby, but still about an hours drive and as David was the only one of us with a car at the time, Jamie and I often found ourselves at the mercy of the overblown hotted-up stereo system in his crummy old Datsun van - You know, with the sort of speakers that you can actually see moving in and out with the thumping of the bass.

David liked some truly shocking music at the time and when Changesbowie found itself into the stereo my reaction was something like "You aren't actually going to put David Bowie on are you? How can you listen to this stuff?!" For a miserable hour each way I was forced to listen to song after song played at ear-drum shatteringly high volume and by the time we got home in the early hours of the following morning, my ears were ringing and my head throbbing. I went to bed and slept until 4PM in the afternoon.

After waking up and recovering from my post-Bowie headache I thought about how surprised I had been at hearing familiar songs on the album which I had previously had no idea were part of David Bowie's repertoire. I realised that only the volume overkill in David's car had prevented me from truly enjoying the album and the realisation finally hit me that I had let my lifelong dislike of Space Oddity prejudice me against Bowie as an artist and prevent me from exposing myself to his full talents. What a short sighted fool I had been!

The following week I had the amazingly coincidental fortune to win a cassette copy of the album in a radio competition and further explorations began.

Changesbowie is the absolute best David Bowie compilation available on the market today with the cassette actually being a little better than the compact disc version with at least two extra tracks which immediately spring to mind - Starman and Is There Life On Mars. Both songs were huge favourites of mine from the cassette and when my tape finally passed on and I had to upgrade to compact disc I was incredulous at their omission. Such are the limitations of 74 minute compact discs.

The omission of Starman from the compact disc version of a greatest hits Bowie album seems completely insane, but when you look at the quality of the remaining tracks you realise that all of the songs deserve to be there. There is quite simply not a weak link among them and the tracks are arranged in such an order that they somehow perfectly compliment one another, with just the right mood shift from song to song.

Space Oddity and Ashes To Ashes, while not great personal faves of my own are essential inclusions and I am under no illusions about my minority status in my feelings towards these songs, although I have softened my previously harsh judgements over time and actually quite like both now.

Changesbowie never lets up with quality tracks such as the wonderful Changes as well as Suffragette City and Ziggy Stardust which all make an appearance in the first half dozen tracks and the quality remains sustained right through to the closing track, Blue Jean which was an inspired choice to round off the album, with it's final seconds ringing in your ears subliminally urging you to play the album though just one more time.

The music of David Bowie is lively and hugely innovative for it's time and even today has the potential to appeal to a new generation of fans. Seasoned old-timers will find this the perfect foil for Bowie cravings, while at the same time brave new explorers mounting their first forays into the wonderful world of David Bowie could have no better an introduction to the work of this talented performer than with a sitting of Changesbowie.